the minor constellations podcast

Abolitionismus Part II | Justice Collective: in conversation with Mitali Nagrecha and Anthony Obst

This episode is the second of a two-part focus on the subject of abolition: which denotes both a theoretical approach and a series of political and social movements that advocate for the overcoming of violent state institutions such as prisons and the police. In this episode, we talk to Mitali Nagrecha and Anthony Obst of the project Justice Collective, a Berlin-based European project that aims to end society’s reliance on policing and punishment by engaging in advocacy, research, public education, and organizing to reveal and resist punishment as a tool of racism and economic injustice. Our conversation centers on how abolition can look in practice and explores the questions that Justice Collective deals with, particularly in relation to their current focus on Ersatzfreiheitsstrafe (substitute imprisonment) in Germany. We recorded the conversation in mid-December, and just a week later, the German government agreed to pass the draft bill that Mitali and Anthony criticize into legislation. Although this news is a disappointment to Justice Collective, they are nevertheless continuing their work and building new strategies to respond to this development. For links, a list of references, and more information about our guest please visit https://minor.hypotheses.org/podcast Our amazing intro track is by Shane Cooper, called "Bass in the Bathroom", from the album "Small Songs for Big Times", March 2020. For more, please visit https://shanecooper.bandcamp.com/releases

Abolitionismus Special Part I | Abolitionist Futures: in conversation with Vanessa Thompson and Daniel Loick

This episode is the first of a two-part focus on the subject of abolition: which denotes both a theoretical approach and a series of political and social movements that advocate the overcoming of violent state institutions such as prisons and the police. In this episode talk to Vanessa Thompson and Daniel Loick in light of the publication of their German-language reader Abolitionismus, which was published by Suhrkamp in July 2022, and which makes some of the most important voices of the international discussions around Abolition accessible in German for the first time. We talk about theoretical approaches to abolition, and the question of how these might be translated (both in the literal and wider senses of the word) across different geographic and political contexts, and the kinds of futures that abolition anticipates. For links, a list of references, and more information about our guest please visit https://minor.hypotheses.org/podcast Our amazing intro track is by Shane Cooper, called "Bass in the Bathroom", from the album "Small Songs for Big Times", March 2020. For more, please visit https://shanecooper.bandcamp.com/releases

Episode 12 | Rethinking Jewish Diaspora: in conversation with Ben Ratskoff

In this episode, we talk to Ben Ratskoff, who is visiting assistant professor in the Louchheim School of Judaic Studies at Hebrew Union College and the University of Southern California. Our conversation departs from two articles he wrote. One was published in Funambulist, titled “Rethinking Jewish Diaspora”,  in which he wants to nuance the concept of Jewish radical diasporism beyond Jewish opposition to Zionism. The other,  titled "Against Analogy" appeared in Jewish Currents, titled "Against Analogy". It was written just weeks after the murder of George Floyd and suggests that progressive Jews need to go beyond invoking Jewish suffering as a means to enable Jewish solidarity with other minorities. The conversation addresses questions of Jewish identity, diaspora politics and analogy. This time, we recorded our conversation with a live audience, as part of the Minor Cosmopolitan Assembly event, at Silent Green Kulturquartier in Berlin Wedding. For links, a list of references, and more information about our guest please visit https://minor.hypotheses.org/podcast  Our amazing intro track is by Shane Cooper, called "Bass in the Bathroom", from the album "Small Songs for Big Times", March 2020. For more, please visit https://shanecooper.bandcamp.com/releases

Episode 11 | Nation and Ageing: in Conversation with Ira Raja

In this Episode we talk to Ira Raja, Professor of English at the University of Delhi and she held the Potsdam Postcolonial Chair for Global Modernities in the 2022 Summer Semester. The conversation centres on her article titled, “Nation and Ageing: Mother India’s Mutable Body”, from The Handbook to Ageing, forthcoming from Bloomsbury. We start from the ways in which imaginaries of the nation are often constructed through motherly figures, and how in India, certain mothers, such as Dalit and Muslim mothers, cannot be abstracted to stand in for the nation. Ira then talks about the ambivalence inherent in the figure of the ageing mother as either a token of postcolonial decline, or in the reading she offers, as having great potential in signalling a nation more porous and open to change, crucial in a time of rampant Hindutva. For links, a list of references, and more information about our guest please visit https://minor.hypotheses.org/podcast Our amazing intro track is by Shane Cooper, called "Bass in the Bathroom", from the album "Small Songs for Big Times", March 2020. For more, please visit shanecopper.bandcamp.com/

Episode 10 | New Growth: in conversation with Jasmine Nichole Cobb

In this episode we talk to Jasmine Nichole Cobb, who is Professor of African & African American Studies as well as of Art, Art History and Visual Studies at Duke University, and who has also recently joined the RTG Minor Cosmopolitanism's network of international partners. Our conversation focuses on her latest book, titled New Growth: The Art and Texture of Black Hair forthcoming in December from Duke University Press. The book explores Afro-textured hair as a surface upon which black liberation is represented from slavery to the present day. We talk to Jasmine about how hair functions as a form of representation within black visual culture, before moving to hear her explain how she thinks about hair in relation to scholarly work on the notion of the flesh. Finally, we about how hair is connected to feeling both in the tactile and affective sense. For links, a list of references, and more information about our guest please visit https://minor.hypotheses.org/podcast Our amazing intro track is by Shane Cooper, called "Bass in the Bathroom", from the album "Small Songs for Big Times", March 2020. For more, please visit shanecopper.bandcamp.com/