Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: doi:10.22028/D291-40524
Title: On Minor Universality
Author(s): Messling, Markus
Tinius, Jonas
Editor(s): Messling, Markus
Tinius, Jonas
Language: English
Title: Minor Universality : Rethinking Humanity After Western Universalism
Startpage: 1
Endpage: 31
Publisher/Platform: De Gruyter
Year of Publication: 2023
Place of publication: Berlin
Free key words: universalism
decolonisation
Mediterranean internationalism
Venice Biennale
exhibition-making
narration
microstoria
truth-procedure
Alain Badiou
Gilles Deleuze
Frantz Fanon
Giovanni Levi
Zineb Sedira
DDC notations: 100 Philosophy
300 Social sciences, sociology, anthropology
440 French, Romance languages in general
700 Arts
840 French literature
Publikation type: Book Chapter
Abstract: Our contribution seeks to render intelligible minor forms of a world-consciousness generated through social and cultural practices. Departing from Zineb Sedira’s installation “Dreams Have No Titles” for the French Pavilion of the 2022 Venice Biennale and concluding with our project’s research exhibition “The Pregnant Oyster: Doubts on Universalism” at Berlin’s Haus der Kulturen der Welt, we discuss how narrative forms (beyond the book) produce experiences of a shared world. Shifting from an understanding of universality as effect of the universal in particular worlds, we return to the epistemological proposal of the microstoria (Ginzburg, Levi, Revel) to inverse this relation. In doing so, we suggest the concept of a minor univer- sality, by which we describe the genesis of a universal consciousness from concrete contexts. Our notion mobilises Deleuze and Guattari’s concept of the minor through their engagement with Franz Kafka. We draw on it to address the Algerian anti-colonial struggle and the practice of sonic radio resistance described in Frantz Fanon’s “This is the Voice of Free Algeria”. Not captured through the binary of power/resis- tance, minority/majority, ours/yours, the minor produces instead a potentiality for change, for the not-yet, which foreshadows and intuits a new humanity.
DOI of the first publication: 10.1515/9783110798494
URL of the first publication: https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/9783110798494-001/html
Link to this record: urn:nbn:de:bsz:291--ds-405241
hdl:20.500.11880/36412
http://dx.doi.org/10.22028/D291-40524
ISBN: 978-3-11-079864-7
978-3-11-079849-4
Date of registration: 13-Sep-2023
Third-party funds sponsorship: European Research Council (ERC) Consolidator Grant
Sponsorship ID: 819931
EU-Projectnumber: info:eu-repo/grantAgreement/EC/ERC/819931/EU//MinorUniversality
Notes: Schriftenreihe: Beyond universalism : studies on the contemporary = Partager l’universel ; Band 2
Faculty: P - Philosophische Fakultät
Department: P - Romanistik
Professorship: P - Prof. Dr. Markus Messling
Collections:SciDok - Der Wissenschaftsserver der Universität des Saarlandes

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