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The willingness and ability to ‘compromise’ – to negotiate an agreement in which each side makes concessions – is a cultural technique central to the functioning of modern societies. Georg Simmel even called 'comprose' “one of the greatest human inventions”. There is a wide-spread diagnosis that the ability and willingness to compromise has been waning in recent years. What does this mean for society? In this seminar, we will a) discuss central texts on the theory, history, forms and functions of compromise, b) discuss selected case studies of failed and of successsful compromises, primarily from the Anglophone world (e.g., the 1998 Good Friday Agreement for Northern Ireland), and c), as literary scholars, will look at the role conflict narratives play in enabling or precluding compromise. How, we will ask, do certain ways of narrating a conflict make compromise more or less likely? A reader containing an initial selection of materials will be made available electronically in early October. Depending on the interests of participants, further texts and case studies can be agreed upon in the seminar. |
