The Negotiation of National Narratives: Collective Narratives in Times of War and Peace.

The main question driving this research project is: what happens when two groups with conflicting collective narratives want to reconcile? The usual answer would be a cessation of violence and subsequent peace agreement, meaning the division of land and t he mutual recognition of sovereignty. I argue that this is not enough: we cannot simply hope that our collective memories will somehow disappear or change by themselves. Instead groups need to engage in a series of practices of reconciliation in which th ey address the existential and symbolic dimensions of the conflict. The end of the twentieth century has witnessed an array of reconciliatory practices such as political apologies, demands for forgiveness, and political reparations that aim to address the past. To this list of practices, I argue, we should include the negotiation of national narratives where both parties engage in a dialogue about their respective narratives. The goal is to move towards new representations of historical events that are at tuned to a more peaceful and just future. This approach seems counterintuitive since collective narratives, it is commonly argued, are the ideological fuel that stoke the political fires. Narratives tend to sanctify our own self-image while defaming the o thers. In situations of intractable conflicts, be it in Northern Ireland, Cyprus, Israel/Palestine and many other places, national narratives are in fact part of the problem, something we ought to leave aside. This project, however, seeks to examine in wh at ways they can be part of the solution. Taking this perspective begs a series of questions: why should enemy groups negotiate their national narratives? How it is that collective memories have become something that is negotiable? If it is the case that national narratives can be negotiated, what does narrative negotiation look like? What conceptions of negotiation are at play? Is there something of one's past that is in fact non-negotiable?