Our conversation explores the idea of what it might mean to have a minor orientation in thinking and in practice. We talk about constellations of positions, narratives or geographic locations as forming not fixed minoritarian identities, but different ways of worldmaking that exist in varied relationships of orientation to one another. We also talk about how attending to the minor in its different forms can enable us to undermine from within in order to trace unexpected connections and perhaps even remake the world anew.
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In Conversation with:
Prof. Dr. Dirk Wiemann (University of Potsdam), and Prof. Dr. Satish Poduval (EFLU, Hyderabad)


Dirk Wiemann is Chair of English Literature at the University of Potsdam, Germany. He is a member of the DFG-funded Research Training Group (Graduiertenkolleg) “Minor Cosmopolitanisms”. He was also the director of the bilateral research and exchange network “Writing the Cosmopolitan Imagination: Genre Transactions in World-Literary Space” with the University of Delhi, for the grant period 2016 to 2020. His research interests include postcolonial and South Asia studies, cultural and literary theory, genre transformations in world literary space, and theories and practices of cosmopolitanism.
For an updated list of publications please see: https://dirkwiemann.wordpress.com/
Satish Poduval is Professor of Cultural Studies at the English and Foreign Languages University in Hyderabad, India. He is currently guest professor at the Potsdam Postcolonial Chair for Global Modernities, which is hosted by the Department of English and American Studies and funded by the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) from 2020-2022. His research interests include film and media studies as well as critical theory, focussing on connections and differences between Western and (South) Asian approaches.
For more information, visit https://thedepartmentofculturalstudies.wordpress.com/satish-k-poduval/
References:
- Cosmopolitanism in a ‘Minor’ Mode. (12 Oct. 2018), Available at www.uni-potsdam.de/en/minorcosmopolitanisms/about/research-profile/cosmopolitanism-in-a-minor-mode
- Dalit Politics: For information and projects please visit the following links:
- “Unlearning Caste Supremacy Reading List”: https://www.equalitylabs.org/castereadinglist
- “Twelve books that form part of the arsenal of Dalit writing”: https://caravanmagazine.in/books/twelve-books-dalit-writing
- ongoing Dalit History Month events in Berlin: http://kunsthalle.kunsthochschule-berlin.de/Dalit-History-Month.html
- Gramsci, Antonio. Selections from the prison notebooks. Duke University Press, 2007
- Kant, Immanuel. “What is enlightenment?.” On history (1784): 3-10
- The Minions: Trailer, Available at – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eisKxhjBnZ0&ab_channel=MovieclipsTrailers
- Rorty, Richard. Contingency, Irony and Solidarity. Cambridge University Press, 1989.
- Scott, David. Conscripts of Modernity: The Tragedy of Colonial Enlightenment. Duke University Press, 2004.
- Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. “Can the subaltern speak?.” Die Philosophin. 2003. Vol. 14 No. 27, pp: 42-58
- 1972 And 1974 Miners’ Strikes, www.agor.org.uk/cwm/themes/events/1972_1974_strikes.asp.
- Woolf, Virginia. Mrs Dalloway. Hogarth Press, 1990.