The Swiss publishing house Diaphanes has published a collection of essays “Minor Cosmopolitan: Thinking Art, Politics, and the Universe Together Otherwise,” edited by XIANG Zairong. The book contains reflections of various authors—researchers, artists, and activists—about the crisis of cosmopolitanism and new forms of solidarity. The publication is available to order in electronic format and in September it will appear in stores.
“When cosmopolitanism first emerged as a political idea for modernity in the European Enlightenment, the project embraced the liberal promises of a globalizing economy, yet remained oblivious to, and even complicit with, capitalism, slavery, and colonialism. It centered on the male, bourgeois, and white liberal subject, irrespective of the ongoing disenfranchisement, dehumanization, and extermination of its Others.” According to the researchers, the liberating potential of cosmopolitanism was betrayed and the violence initiated by it continues to this day. As a solution to the problems caused by the hegemony of the global cosmopolitan discourse, the authors of the collection offer other, “minor” cosmopolitanisms and seek to describe new strategies of coexistence and cooperation, taking into account historical differences and local characteristics.
More information: diaphanes.net.
