Minor Universality. Narrative World Productions After Western Universalism

Project Information

Minor Universality

Grant agreement ID: 819931

DOI

10.3030/819931

Project closed

EC signature date 11 July 2019

Start date 1 September 2019

End date 31 August 2024

Funded under

• EXCELLENT SCIENCE - European Research Council (ERC)

Total cost

€ 1 999 310,00

EU contribution

€ 1 999 310,00

Coordinated by

UNIVERSITAT DES SAARLANDES
Germany

Periodic Reporting for period 4 - Minor Universality (Minor Universality. Narrative World Productions After Western Universalism)

Reporting period: 2024-03-01 to 2024-08-31

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

The modern global entanglement of persons, data, and goods of all kinds has not led to a shared and uncontested consciousness of humanity. The collapse after 1989 of a post-war world order has not caused a unifying trajectory of universalism, either. Indeed, the return of old and the emergence of new political, relativist, and identitarian fragmentisms has rather signaled a step back, calling seriously into question the sustained hegemony of a Western universalism founded in the ideals of Christian, Marxist, or even (racial) anthropocentric systems of thought and life. The present moment forces us rather to reckon with the injustice committed in the name of such a universalism, while also grappling with the increasing danger to democracy, inclusion, equality by a fragmentary identitarian political turn. The project has investigated the genesis of a new consciousness of universality under way of being produced in contemporary social practices and cultural forms and expressions such as oral transmissions and narrations of the self, literatures and archives, films and festivals, curatorial spaces and museums. From a transdisciplinary approach across the humanities, social sciences, and the arts, the project has produced a theory of minor universality, which may make accessible and even render possible practices and styles of thinking that overcome the impasse of both hegemonic universality and relativist identitarianism.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

The ERC project Minor Universality established an open-access, peer-reviewed, multilingual book series with an internationally recognised editorial board, called “Beyond Universalism. Studies on the Contemporary” / « Partager l’universel. Études sur le contemporain » with de Gruyter (Berlin, Boston). Listed here are books of project members that have been published in the series: 1) “The Epoch of Universalism, 1769-1989”, edited by Markus Messling and Franck Hofmann (2021); “Minor Universality. Rethinking Humanity After Western Universalism”, edited by Markus Messling and Jonas Tinius (2023); “Reparation, Restitution, and the Politics of Memory”, edited by Clement Ndé Fongang, Mario Laarmann, Carla Seemann, and Laura Vordermeyer (2023); “Universality After Universalism. On Francophone Literatures of the Present” by Markus Messling, translated by Michael T. Taylor (2023); “Universalisme & … Conversations”, edited collectively by the Minor Universality Resarch Team (2024); “Tier-Mensch-Relationen by Maria-Anna Schiffers” (forthcoming late 2024); “Beyond the Universal Machine” by Jonas Tinius (planned for publication in 2025); “Penseurs de l’exil. Enquête sur les migrations forcées des professions intellectuelles en Europe au XXIe siècle” by Elsie Cohen (planned for publication in 2025). The French translation of “Universalität nach dem Universalismus” by Markus Messling, (2019, Matthes & Seitz, 2019) has been published with Presses universitaires de France (PUF, 2023) with a foreword by Souleymane Bachir Diagne.

Since 2020, we have conducted a series of extensive conversations with artists, historians, philosophers, and anthropologists under the heading “Universalism & ...”, which has concluded with its eighth iteration, and include Leyla Dakhli, Giovanni Levi, Souleymane Bachir Diagne, Gisèle Sapiro, Arjun Appadurai, Adania Shibli, Maria Stavrinaki, and David Scott. All conversations are recorded and accessible on our dedicated YouTube channel.

Between 2021-2022, we have realised an international artist-in-residence programme and exhibition called “The Pregnant Oyster. Doubts on Universalism” in cooperation with Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW) in Berlin, which hosted the show and a public programme. A catalogue-book for the exhibition is under way of being produced by Jonas Tinius, Markus Messling, and Franck Hofmann with the publishing house Archive Books (Berlin, Milan).

In cooperation with Villa Vigoni – The German-Italian Excellence Centre for European Dialogue, we organised the international workshop “Histoire / histoires. Le concret et l’universel dans les SHS/Concreteness and Universality in Cultural and Social Sciences” and the international summer school “Restitution, Reparations, Reparation – Towards a New Global Society?” in cooperation with the Cluster for European Studies (CEUS, Saarland University).

Furthermore, we coordinated several international conferences with our structural project partners. Among them “Universalisme, hégémonies, identités” in Tunis in collaboration with the Académie Tunisienne des Sciences, des Lettres et des Arts (Beit El-Hikma) with an artistic atelier at the Centre des arts vivants de Radès; “Universality after Universalism? – Questions of Philology, Translation, and Intellectual Biographies“ in Mexico City in cooperation with El Colegio de México, and “Minor Universality, Cultural Translation, and the Politics of Language after Western Universalism” in Hong Kong in cooperation with The University of Hong Kong.

Besides a public seminar series hosted at Saarland University with Olivier Remaud (EHESS Paris), Omri Boehm (New School, NY), Soumaya Mestiri (Université de Tunis), Julia Christ (EHESS Paris), and Souleymane Bachir Diagne (Columbia University), we also convened a public workshop and closing event at the Käte Hamburger Research Centre for Cultural Practices of Reparation (CURE) at Saarland University with David Scott (Columbia University).

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

The historical context of the project years was marked by the Covid pandemic and the “revision" of globalisation, post-truth, and the rise of the far right, anti-occidentalism and the new East-West divide. These developments made the subject matter of the project even more relevant in unforeseeable ways than could have been anticipated: The question of how a way of thinking (about) humanity can be constructed that breaks away from the centrist and hegemonic implications of Western universalism is more urgent than ever in order to legitimise knowledge, rights, and institutions. Universal knowledge and universal norms are in a crisis, which can be conceptualised but not answered conceptually. The project's fundamental thesis that this does not have to signify the end of universal consciousness, but rather that it is rearticulated in the form of incorporated, staged, and mediated processes, has been substantiated by numerous studies carried out as part of the project. In investigations based on general considerations of narrative theory, it could be shown for various cultural productions, such as museums, film and visual arts, literature festivals, testimonies and oral reports, that a horizon is aimed at, opened up, made tangible, which we call a minor universality. This has led to important methodological openings, for instance a new examination of microhistory, discussion of translation procedures and a delimitation of the concept of reading, as well as theoretical openings through discussion of idealism and materialism, deconstruction and the concept of truth, empirical and normative universality. A large number of new doctoral and research projects already refer to the conceptualisation of a minor universality as proposed by our ERC project. The project results are also discussed critically in the societal debate on the universality of democratic republicanism.

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