Who is afraid of Ontology?

This article, which was delivered as the 2014 Annual Marilyn Strathern Lecture, outlines both some of the stimuli that led to the ‘ontological turn’ in anthropology and some of its implications. Ontology is outlined here by the author as an anti-epistemological and counter-cultural, philosophical war machine.

America Critica, 2020

The investigation of the self, of what exists, and of the ontological properties of the cosmos is nothing new in the history of anthropology. In the last two decades, however, the discipline has undertaken an "ontological turn." This perspective focuses on how different societies define the entities that inhabit the world and the relationships between them. The ontological turn is built upon the critiques of the Great Divide (nature/culture), and on Western naturalism as the modern dominant ontology. It is also a reaction to the linguistic turn that began to dominate in the 1980s. In this paper we present the most salient traditions of the ontological turn (the English, French, and North American), highlighting differences and similarities between them.-Ontological turn, political ontology, recursive anthropology, nature/culture. Abstract-La investigación sobre el yo, acerca de lo que existe y sobre las propiedades ontológicas del cosmos no es algo nuevo en la historia de la antropología. Sin embargo, en las últimas dos décadas, la disciplina ha emprendido lo que ha venido a llamarse como "giro ontológico". Esta perspectiva se centra en cómo las diferentes sociedades definen las entidades que habitan el mundo y las relaciones entre ellas. El giro ontológico se basa en las críticas a la Gran División (naturaleza/cultura) y al naturalismo occidental como ontología moderna dominante. También es una reacción al giro lingüístico que comenzó a dominar en la década de 1980. En este documento presentamos las tradiciones más destacadas del giro ontológico (la inglesa, la francesa y la norteamericana), destacando las diferencias y similitudes entre ellas.-Giro ontológico, ontología política, antropología recursiva, naturaleza/cultura.

This essay suggests loosening pedagogical boundaries in order to prepare children for useful philosophical reflection, particularly ontological boundaries. The argument for this is that the analytic-continental distinction is muddier than most realize. I explain analytical developments in logic from 1884 to 1931 in a way designed to show there should be no real distinction between analytic and Continental philosophy. I suggest this explanation provides sufficient support for dismissing ontological boundaries in certain philosophical contexts as well as in early philosophical education.

Ontological conflicts (conflicts involving different assumptions about "what exists") are gaining unprecedented visibility because the hegemony of modern ontological assumptions is undergoing a crisis. Such crisis provides the context and rationale for political ontology, a "project" that, emerging from the convergence of indigenous studies, science and technology studies (STS), posthumanism, and political ecology, tackles ontological conflicts as a politicoconceptual (one word) problem. Why? First, because in order to even consider ontological conflicts as a possibility, one must question some of the most profoundly established assumptions in the social sciences, for instance, the assumptions that we are all modern and that the differences that exist are between cultural perspectives on one single reality "out there." This rules out the possibility of multiple ontologies and what is properly an ontological conflict (i.e., a conflict between different realities). Second, because ontological conflicts pose the challenge of how to account for them without reiterating (and reenacting) the ontological assumption of a reality "out there" being described. To tackle this politicoconceptual problem, I discuss the notion of an all-encompassing modernity and its effects, present the political ontology project, and offer a story of the present moment where the project makes sense.

Foucault Studies, 2014

This following essay explores the meaning and implications of philosophical critique and creativity within the work of Gilles Deleuze and Michel Foucault. The two philosophers’ appeals to ontology, as an important site upon which their ethico-political commitments to critique and creativity simultaneously converge and diverge, frame this exploration. The first part of the essay shows how Deleuze’s and Foucault’s respective ontologies further critique and creativity. The second part of the essay focuses on a point of divergence in the two thinkers’ appeals to ontology: the relationship between philosophy and history. From a Foucauldian perspective, the ahistorical character of Deleuze’s ontology of difference threatens to undermine its transformative potential, whereas from a Deleuzian perspective, the historical character of Foucault’s ontology of the present, while it may not undermine transformation, certainly does not facilitate it. In conclusion, I argue that it is precisel...

Synthese

In this paper we analyze relations between ontology in anthropology and philosophy beyond simple homonymy or synonymy and show how this diagnosis allows for new interdisciplinary links and insights, while minimizing the risk of cross-disciplinary equivocation. We introduce the ontological turn in anthropology as an intellectual project rooted in the critique of dualism of culture and nature and propose a classification of the literature we reviewed into first-order claims about the world and second-order claims about ontological frameworks. Next, rather than provide a strict definition of ontology in anthropological literature, we argue that the term is used as a heuristic addressing a web of sub-concepts relating to interpretation, knowledge, and self-determination which correspond to methodological, epistemic, and political considerations central to the development of the ontological turn. We present a case study of rivers as persons to demonstrate what the ontological paradigm in...

Political Studies

This article provides a critical appraisal of the ontological method of political theorizing through an examination of the methodological development of the work of William E. Connolly. Connolly has often been taken as a paradigmatic figure of the ‘ontological turn’. This is not only because of the significance of his work in the field but because he is one of its major methodological articulators. However, there has been no systematic evaluation of that method and its development. This paper rectifies that lacuna by critically illustrating Connolly’s turn from a post-positivistic interpretivism to his much noted ‘onto-political method’. It argues that the latter, while usually thought to be modelled on the work of Friedrich Nietzsche and Michel Foucault, is structured by Heidegger’s understanding of ontological difference. The paper then argues that this leads to several problematic tendencies within Connolly’s model that undermine the critical-explanatory and normative power of his methodology by compromising the critical reflexivity ontology is meant to provide. All of this raises some concerns and criticisms of the use of ontological method of political theorizing, which has escaped sustained methodological analysis and scrutiny.

European Psychologist, 2021

One of the central debates in Ontological Security Studies (OSS) has been about the level-of-analysis. While some authors focus on individuals, others have scaled up the concept and applied it to collectives such as states as the main ontological security seekers. In this article, we contribute to the level-of-analysis debate in OSS by providing a novel argument in defense of scaling up. By drawing on the literatures on complexity and securitization, we conceptualize ontological security as an emergent phenomenon. It arises from the ground-up and is driven by feedback loops in a non-linear and spontaneous fashion from horizontal micro-interactions and securitizations from below, ultimately reaching a tipping point. We illustrate this argument in a case study of anti-immigrant mobilization in Serbia since the outbreak of the European migration crisis (2015-2020). At the outset of the crisis, state officials interpreted the migration crisis as a manageable and temporary situation, adopted an "open door" policy and even banned far-right extremist demonstrations against migration. Over time, however, ontological insecurity over the migrant threat has gradually emerged from the bottom-up through a cascade of rumors, connective action, and everyday securitizing acts. While it might be too early to conclude that the national tipping point has been reached, this case study clearly shows why ontological insecurity merits to be studied as an emergent phenomenon.

Symposia Melitensia, 2021

In his 2016 work entitled Dante's Broken Hammer, Graham Harman first coins the term "onto-taxonomy", and proclaims it to be the main nemesis of his "object-oriented" approach to philosophy. The term has however rarely appeared in the absolute majority of his subsequent works, and has also been largely overlooked by thinkers broadly working within and around the field of Object-Oriented Ontology (OOO). In this paper, I propose to make up for this relative neglect in two ways. Firstly, Harman's critique of "onto-taxonomy" is analysed and situated in the context of other prominent critiques, such as those of Martin Heidegger's assessment of "Onto-theology" and Quentin Meillassoux's assessment of "correlationism." Secondly, I shall show how what I believe to be the three fundamental tenets of Harman's philosophical approach are derivable from his critique of "onto-taxonomy."