Co-reading and Co-writing Diplomacy: from Literature to Multiplicity

Abstract This essay reflects on the critical role of language in diplomacy, as highlighted in the manifesto “Provincializing New Diplomatic History.” It discusses the potential for literary scholars and diplomacy scholars to work together; and the affordances of literature as a kind of “diplomatic technology,” from the insights literature offers into the nature of diplomacy (e.g. in British envoy George Macartney’s 1793–94 China travel journal), to literary texts themselves as sites of diplomatic encounter (e.g. in Turkish writer Halide Edib’s 1953 play Masks or Souls? , or Italo Calvino’s 1976 novel Invisible Cities ). More broadly, the essay considers the open-ended invitation extended in the manifesto as an opportunity to find new ways of co-reading and co-writing diplomacy across disciplines, guided by Calvino’s ethos of “multiplicity.”