The Politics of Ontology:

Anthropological Positions

Martin Holbraad Morten Axel Pedersen Eduardo Viveiros de Castro

Position Paper for Roundtable Discussion

112th AAA Annual Meeting Chicago, 20-24 November 2013
Martin Holbraad University College London Morten Axel Pedersen University of Copenhagen Eduardo Viveiros de Castro Federal University of Rio de Janeiro

At first blush ontology and politics make strange bedfellows. Ontology evokes essence, while politics, as modern, democratic, multiculturalist citizens tend to understand it, is about debunking essences and affirming in their stead the worldmaking capacities of human collectives. Yet, this notion of a social construction of reality itself instantiates a particular ontology, and a powerful one at that and here we also mean politically powerful. Still, as anthropologists we are attuned to the powers of the weak to the many complex connections, some of them crucially negative, between power differences (politics) and the powers of difference (ontology). For purposes of discussion, then, we begin with a broad distinction between three different manners in which ontology and politics are correlated in the social sciences and cognate disciplines, each of which is associated with particular methodological prescriptions, analytical injunctions and moral visions: (i) the traditional philosophical concept of ontology, in which politics takes the implicit form of an injunction to discover and disseminate a single absolute truth about how things are; (ii) the sociological critique of this and other
3

essentialisms, which, in sceptically debunking all ontological projects to reveal their insidiously political nature, ends up affirming the critical politics of debunking as its own version of how things should be; and (iii) the anthropological concept of ontology as the multiplicity of forms of existence enacted in concrete practices, where politics becomes the non-sceptical elicitation of this manifold of potentials for how things could be what Elizabeth Povinelli (2012b), as we understand her, calls the otherwise. So how might the otherwise be rendered manifest ethnographically? Here, we need to remind ourselves that ethnographic descriptions, like all cultural translations, necessarily involve an element of transformation or even disfiguration. A given anthropological analysis, that is, amounts to a controlled equivocation (Viveiros de Castro 2004) that, far from transparently mapping one discrete social order or cultural whole onto another, depends on more or less deliberate and reflexive productive misunderstandings (Tsing 2005) to perform its translations and comparisons, not just between different contexts, realms and scales, but also within them. This, if
4

anything, is what distinguishes the ontological turn from other methodological and theoretical orientations: Not the dubious assumption that it enables one to take people and things more seriously than others are able or willing to,1 but the ambition and ideally the ability to pass through what we study, rather as when an artist elicits a new form from the affordances her material allows her to set free, releasing shapes and forces that offer access to what may be called the dark side of things. Accordingly, while the ontological turn in anthropology has made the study of ethnographic difference or alterity one of its trademarks, it is really less interested in differences between things than within them: the politics of ontology is the question of how persons and things could alter from themselves (Holbraad & Pedersen 2009, Pedersen 2012b). Ontology, as far as anthro pology in our understanding is concerned, is the
1

Although one could somewhat uncontroversially argue

that to take other ontologies seriously is precisely to draw the political implications of how things could be for us, given how things are for those others who take these other ontologies seriously as a matter of fact.
5

comparative, ethnographically-grounded transcendental deduction of Being (the oxymoron is deliberate) as that which differs from itself (ditto) being-as-other as immanent to being-as-such. The anthropology of ontology is anthropology as ontology; not the comparison of ontologies, but comparison as ontology. So this, in our understanding, is what the ontological turn is all about: it is a technology of description (Pedersen 2012) designed in the optimist (non-sceptical) hope of making the otherwise visible by experimenting with the conceptual affordances (Holbraad, forthcoming) present in a given body of ethnographic materials. We stress that such material can be drawn from anywhere, anytime and anyone; there is no limit to what practices, discourses and artefacts are amenable to ontological analysis. Indeed, articulating what could be in this way implies a peculiarly non- or anti-normative stance, which has profoundly political implications in several senses. For a start, subjunctively to present alternatives to declarations about what is or imperatives about what should be is itself a political act a radical one, to the degree that it breaks free of
6

the glib relativism of merely reporting on alternative possibilities (worldviews, etc.), and proceeds boldly to lend the otherwise full ontological weight so as to render it viable as a real alternative. For example, the relativist reports that in such-and-such an ethnographic context time is cyclical, with the past ever returning to become the present. It is an evocative idea, to be sure. But strictly speaking, it makes no sense. To be past is precisely not to return to the present, so a past that does so is properly speaking not a past at all (in the same sense that a married bachelor is not a bachelor). By contrast, like a kind of relativist-turbo, the ontologically-inclined anthropologist takes this form of e(qui)vocation as a starting-point for an ethnographically-controlled experiment with the concept of time itself, re-conceptualizing past, present, being etc. in ways that make cyclical time a real form of existence. In this subjunctive could be experiment, the emphasis is as much on be as on could: imagine a cyclical time!, marvels the relativist; yes, and here is what it could be!, replies the ontological anthropologist. Furthermore, when such ontographic (Hol7

braad 2012) experimentations are precipitated by ethnographic exposures to people whose own lives are, in one way or other, pitted against the reigning hegemonic orders (state, empire, and market, in their ever-volatile and violent comingling), then the politics of ontology resonates at its core with the politics of the peoples who occasion it. In such a case, the politics of ontologically-inclined anthropological analysis is not merely logically contingent upon, but internally constituted by and morally imbricated with, the political dynamics in which the people anthropologists study are embroiled, including the political stances those people might themselves take, not least on the question of what politics itself could be. Indeed, one of the most oft-quoted (and criticized) mottoes of the ontological turn in anthropology is the notorious anthropology is the science of the ontological self-determination of the worlds peoples and its corollary, to wit, that the disciplines mission is to promote the permanent decolonization of thought (Viveiros de Castro 2009; for an earlier version of the argument, see Viveiros de Castro forthcoming [2002]). In this connection, the first (unproductive) misun8

derstanding that should be dispelled is the idea that this is equivalent to fighting for indigenous peoples rights in the face of the world powers. One does not need much anthropology to join the struggle against the political domination and economic exploitation of indigenous peoples across the world. It should be enough to be a tolerably informed and reasonably decent person. Conversely, no amount of anthropological relativism and old-hand professional scepticism can serve as an excuse for not joining that struggle. Secondly, the idea of an ontological selfdetermination of peoples should not be confused with supporting ethnic essentialization, Blut und Boden primordialism and other forms of sociocultural realism. It means giving the ontological back to the people, not the people back to the ontological. The politics of ontology as self-determination of the other is the ontology of politics as decolonization of all thought in the face of other thought to think of thought itself as alwaysalready in relation to the thought of others. Thirdly, the idea of self-determination of the other means that a fundamental principle of anthropologists epistemological ethics should be
9

always leave a way out for the people you are describing. Do not explain too much, do not try to actualize the possibilities immanent to others thought, but endeavour to sustain them as possible indefinitely (this is what permanent means in the phrase permanent decolonization of thought), neither dismissing them as the fantasies of others, nor by fantasizing that they may gain the same reality for oneself. They will not. Not as such, at least; only as-other. The selfdetermination of the other is the other-determination of the self. This brings us to a final point regarding the political promise held by ontologically-oriented approaches in anthropology and cognate disciplines. Namely, that this promise can be conceived, not just in relation to the degree to which such approaches are in affinity with (or even actively promote) particular political objectives, or with the abiding need for a critique of the state and the turns of thought that underpin it, but also in relation to their capacity to enact a form of politics that is entailed in their very operation. Conceived of in this manner, the ontological turn is not so much a means to externally defined
10

political ends, but a political end in its own right. Recapitulating, to some extent, standing debates about the political efficacies of intellectual life (e.g. the ambivalent stance of Marxist intelligentsias to Communist Parties calls to political militancy in the 20th century Adorno, Sartre, Magritte, etc.), the question is whether ontologically-oriented analyses render political the very form of thinking that they involve, such that being political becomes an immanent property of the mode of anthropological thought itself. If so, then the politics of ontography lies not only in the ways in which it may help promote certain futures, but also in the way that it figurates the future (Krijer forthcoming) in its very enactment. The major premise of such an argument might border on a cogito-like apodeicticity (sensu Husserl): to think is to differ. Here, a thought that makes no difference to itself is not a thought: thoughts take the form of motions from one position to another, so if no such movement takes place, then no thought has taken place either. Note that this is not an ontological credo (e.g. compare with Levi Bryants recent (2011) ontic
11

principle, which is pretty similar, but cast in the philosophical key of metaphysical claim-making). Rather it is offered as a statement of the logical form of thinking a phenomenology in Simon Critchleys sense (2012: 55) that is, moreover, apodeictic insofar as it instantiates itself in its own utterance. The minor premise, then, would be the (more moot) idea that to differ is itself a political act. This would require us to accept that such non-controversially political notions as power, domination, or authority are relative stances towards the possibility of difference and its control: to put it very directly (crudely, to be sure): domination is a matter of holding the capacity to differ under control to place limits upon alterity and therefore, ipso facto (viz. by internal implication from the to-think-is-to-differ premise above) upon thought also. If these two premises are accepted, then a certain kind of politics becomes immanent to the ontological turn. For if it is correct to say that the ontological turn turns, precisely, on transmuting ethnographic exposures recursively into forms of conceptual creativity and experimentation, then ontologically inflected anthropology is abidingly
12

oriented towards the production of difference, or alterity, as such. Regardless (at this level of analysis) of the political goals to which it may lend itself, anthropology is ontologically political inasmuch as its operation presupposes, and is an attempt experimentally to do, difference as such. This is an anthropology that is constitutively antiauthoritarian, making it its business to generate alternative vantages from which established forms of thinking are put under relentless pressure by alterity itself, and perhaps changed. One could even call this intellectual endeavour revolutionary, if by that we mean a revolution that is permanent in the sense we proposed above: the politics of indefinitely sustaining the possible, the could be.

13

Roundtable Abstract
Much energy has been devoted over the last decade or so to the so-called ontological turn in the social sciences, and in anthropology in particular. A number of statements, critiques, and discussions of this position are now available (e.g. Viveiros de Castro 2002; Henare et al 2007; Pedersen 2011; Holbraad 2012; Candea & Alcayna-Stevens 2012; Palecek & Risjord 2013), and its implications for anthropological research are being concertedly explored and debated more and more passionately (e.g. Venkatesan et al 2009; Alberti et al 2011; Viveiros de Castro 2011; Ramos 2012; Ishii 2012; Strathern 2012; Laidlaw 2012; Pedersen 2012a). This roundtable sets out to explore the theoretical positions and methodological projects pursued under the banner of ontology, focusing particularly on the political implications of the turn, including its potential pitfalls. Why have social scientists turned to the concept of ontology in the ways that they have, and why is the move as controversial as it is proving itself to be, at least among anthropologists? What explicit and implicit political projects does the turn to ontology (as well as various critiques of it) evince?
14

Does the ontological turn open up new forms of cultural critique and progressive politics, or does it represent a closet-culturalist and potentially dangerous rehearsal of past essentialisms? What, in short, does the ethnographic commitment to ontology do for our engagements and collaborations with the people with whom we work, and for anthropologys role within the global intellectual and political landscape at large? This roundtable discussion brings together scholars whose work has a stake in the debate about ontology in anthropology, taking its politics in a variety of directions. Viveiros de Castro (2009, forthcoming) and Hage (2012) have sought most explicitly to connect these concerns with an on-going project of decolonizing anthropological thinking, while Blaser (2013) and Holbraad (2013) have recently sought in different ways to formulate political ontology as an anthropological concern, drawing also on Povinellis (2012a) analyses of the politics of alterity in late liberalism. Candea (2011) and Pedersen (2011) have addressed the possibilities and the limitations, not only of the turn to ontology, but also of the broader anthropological penchant to see politics
15

as an omnipresent phenomenon. In doing so, all have shared an interest in the diverse ways in which ontological issues inflect political lives a question that has been explored ethnographically also by Crook (2007), Kohn (2013), Scott (2007) and, on a cross-cultural scale, Descola (2013). Bruun Jensen (2010), Mol (2003) and Verran (2001), have explored the purchase of ontology at the interface of anthropology and Science and Technology Studies, a field in which the possibility and promise of ontological politics have been developed in great depth, while Alberti and his associates (Alberti & Marshall 2009) have pioneered ontological approaches in archaeological research.

References
Alberti, B., S. Fowles, M. Holbraad, Y. Marshall, C. Witmore. 2011. Worlds otherwise: archaeology, anthropology, and ontological difference. Current Anthropology 52(6): 896-912 Alberti, Benjamin & Yvonne Marshall. 2009. Animating archaeology: local theories and conceptually open-ended methodologies. Cambridge Archaeological Journal 19(3): 344-356 Blaser, Mario. 2013. Ontological conflicts and the stories of peoples in spite of Europe: toward a conversation on political ontology. Current Anthropology 54(5): 547-568 Bryant, Levi R. 2011. The Democracy of Objects. Ann Arbor: Open Humanities Press Candea, Matei. Our division of the universe. Making a space for the non-political in the anthropology of politics. Current Anthropology 52 (3): 309-334. Candea, Matei & Lys AlcaynaStevens. 2012. Internal others: ethnographies of naturalism. Cambridge Anthropology 30(2): 36-47.

16

17

Critchley, Simon. 2012. Infinitely Demanding: Ethics of Commitment, Politics of Resistance. London: Verso Books Crook, Tony. 2007. Anthropological Knowledge, Secrecy and Bolivip, Papua New Guinea: Exchanging Skin. Oxford: Oxford University Press Descola, Philippe. 2013. Beyond Nature and Culture. Trans. J. Lloyd. Chicago: University of Chicago Press Hage, Ghassan. 2012. Critical anthropological thought and the radical political imaginary today. Critique of Anthropology 32(3): 285308 Henare, A., M. Holbraad & S. Wastell, 2007. Thinking Through Things: Theorising Artefacts Ethnographically. London: Routledge Holbraad, Martin. 2012. Truth in Motion: The Recursive Anthropology of Cuban Divination. Chicago: University of Chicago Press Holbraad, Martin. 2013. Revolucin o muerte: self-sacrifice and the ontology of Cuban Revolution. Ethnos DOI: 10.1080/00141844.2013.794149
18

Holbraad, Martin. Forthcoming. Can the thing speak? Anthropology, pragmatology, and the conceptual affordances of things. Under Review in Current Anthropology. Holbraad, Martin. and Morten Axel Pedersen (2009). Planet M : The intense abstraction of Marilyn Strathern. Anthropological Theory 9 (4): 371-394. Ishii, Miho. 2012. Acting with things: Self-poiesis, actuality, and contingency in the formation of divine worlds. HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory 2 (2): 37188 Jensen, Casper Bruun and Kjetil Rdje, eds. 2009. Deleuzian Intersections in Science, Technology and Anthropology. Oxford: Berghahn. Kohn, Eduardo. How Forests Thinks.Towards an Anthropology Beyond the Human. Berkeley: University of California Press. Krijer, Stine. Forthcoming. Figurations of the Future: Forms and Temporality of Left Radical Politics in Northern Europe. Oxford: Berghahn Books.
19

Laidlaw, James. 2012. Ontologically challenged. Anthropology of This Century, vol. 4, London, May 2012. URL: http://aotcpress.com/articles/ ontologically-challenged/. Mol, Annemarie. 2003. The Body Multiple: Ontology in Medical Practice. Durham: Duke University Press Paleek, Martin & Mark Risjord. 2013. Relativism and the ontological turn within anthropology. Philosophy of the Social Sciences 43(1): 3-23 Pedersen, Morten Axel. 2011. Not Quite Shamans. Spirit Worlds and Political Lives in Northern Mongolia. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Pedersen, Morten Axel. 2012a. Common nonsense. A review of certain recent reviews of the ontological turn. Anthropology of This Century, 5. http://aotcpress.com/articles/common_nonsense/ Pedersen, Morten Axel. 2012b The Task of Anthropology is to Invent Relations: For the Motion. Critique of Anthropology 32 (1): 59-65. Povinelli, Elizabeth. A. 2012a. Economies of Abandonment: Social Belonging and Endurance in
20

Late Liberalism. Durham: Duke University Press Povinelli, Elizabeth. A. 2012b. The will to be otherwise / the effort of endurance. The South Atlantic Quarterly 111 (3): 453-57. Ramos, Alcida R. 2012. The politics of perspectivsm. Annual Review of Anthropology 41: 481-94. Scott, Michael W. 2007. The Severed Snake: Matrilineages, Making Place, and a Melanesian Christianity in Southeast Solomon Islands. Durham NC: Carolina Academic Press Strathern, Marilyn. 2012. A comment on the ontological turn in Japanese anthropology. HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory 2 (2): 4025 Tsing, Anna L. 2005. Friction. An Ethnography of Global Connection. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press Venkatesan, S., M. Carrithers, K. Sykes, M. Candea & M. Holbraad. 2010. Ontology is just another word for culture: motion tabled at the 2008 meeting of the group for debates in anthropological theory. Critique of Anthropology 30: 152-200
21

Verran, Helen. 2001. Science and an African Logic. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Viveiros de Castro, Eduardo. 2002. And. Manchester: Papers in Social Anthropology. Viveiros de Castro, Eduardo. 2004. Perspectival anthropology and the method of controlled equivocation. Tipit: Journal of the Society for the Anthropology of Lowland South America 2 (1): 3-22. Viveiros de Castro, Eduardo. 2009. Mtaphysiques cannibales. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France Viveiros de Castro, Eduardo. 2011. Zeno and the art of anthropology: of lies, beliefs, paradoxes, and other truths. Common Knowledge 17 (1): 128-145. Viveiros de Castro, Eduardo. Forthcoming [2002]. The relative native. Trans. M. Holbraad & J. Sauma. HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory

22

23