The Political Ontology of OWS

Dissent, 2012

Philosophy & Social Criticism, 2011

Cultural Studies, 2009

This paper is a response to a growing body of geographical literature exploring the interface between ontology and politics. We develop an understanding that does not start by building ontological bedrocks, to which the question of politics is then rooted. Ontology building, we argue, operates against the essential possibility of the political invested in ontological openness, and thus remains blind to politics inconsistent with, but also practised upon, its own foundations. We propose a relation between the political and the ontological as questioning that grows from the events and situations, which ontologically position us in multiple and unexpected ways.

In: Meurer, Michaela; Eitel, Kathrin (eds.). Ecological Ontologies. Approaching Human-Environmental Engagements. Berliner Blätter 84, 3-19 DOI: 10.18452/22952, 2021

This introduction to the issue presents the political dimensions of research carried out within the framework of the ontological turns that stretch between Anthropology and Science and Technology Studies (STS). Drawing on the concept of political ontology, practical ontology, and the papers assembled in this issue, we embrace the political to be practically sitting transversally in different political fields that foster the constitution of new forms of life as alternative ontologies. In this sense, politics is a critical endeavor to unravel power asymmetries. It attempts to not only illuminate different ontologies, but to realize and co-constitute them. To avoid getting trapped in a mere description of alteritarian worlds and their political power structures, we propose focusing on the largely invisible moments of ontological uncertainties. These eerie moments, which exist in common but non-contemporaneous environments appearing in between something and-time, can provide a learning opportunity for understanding inheritance as responsibility. Their appearance jumbles time and ontological orders, granting us insights into automatic modes of action that normally go unseen. We thus sketch a policy for making oddkins throughout worlds, including its specters.

Berliner Blatter , 2023

This supplement contains Mario Blaser's response to the concepts of Political Ontology and Practical Ontology as discussed by Casper Bruun Jensen in his paper »Practical Ontologies Redux«. The paper was published in Berliner Blätter (issue 84) in 2021, edited by Michaela Meurer and Kathrin Eitel. Additionally, this supplement includes a response by Jensen addressing Blaser's critique.

In this paper, I draw on contemporary social ontology to deal with the classic legal- philosophical problem of the ontology of institutions. Institutions are made up of rules— of constitutive rules that define most institutional procedures, roles, and facts. Hence, if we are to investigate the question of institutional ontology, we must conceive it in light of the traditional legal-philosophical problem of the ontology of rules. I thus criticize two competing views developed in social ontology in the effort to pin down the ontology of constitutive rules: the collective-acceptance view (which I treat under the heading of “rule realism”) and the textualist view (which I treat under the heading of “rule positivism”). I argue that although each view captures important aspects of the ontology of institutions, neither captures them all.

Ontological Apology attempts to examine how our attitudes and interactions with work both as individuals and a society have shaped our culture. Whereas for the majority of the modern age we have shirked Ontology [being] for Epistemology [process] this work hopes to bring the question of doing back into relation with meaning where it belongs. I hope to make the case for a neo-teleology born from what we can know via the guideposts rooted in the natural world all around us. By seeking purpose not to transcend but circulate, we may better prepare ourselves for the creativity the future will demand of us.

Cultural Critique, 2022

A reply to "Instituting Thought" by Roberto Esposito, examining approaches to the concept of "political ontology" and its relationship to totalitarianism and democracy.

Contemporary Political Theory, 2017