Conflict and Consensus in The Ambassadors

In The Ambassadors, an escalating dispute over the nature of the change in Chad Newsome, who has been away in Paris for some years, reverberates across a discursive spectrum in which some voices are heard, and others compromised or silent. Lyotard's notion of the 'differend' provides a theoretical framework for understanding what is at stake in unresolvable conflicts, and forms the basis for a discussion of the novel's rhetorical strategies in negotiating difference.