Abstract
Abstract Relational ontologies that postulate the primacy of relations over their relata may seem like a contrary and incompatible approach to object-oriented ontology (OOO). Therefore, this paper aims to clarify the relationship between Barad’s and Escobar’s relational ontologies and Harman’s OOO by comparing and contrasting the relative coherences between them. After outlining the central assumptions of the different accounts, I discuss the problems of relational ontologies with regard to several ethical, political, and posthumanist issues. I argue that OOO is able to avoid their pitfalls without rejecting the major benefits of relational ontologies. After a critique of the pluralization of worlds within relational ontologies, I argue for the rejection of the concept of world(s) in favor of understanding space and time as emerging from polar tensions within the quadruple objects. Consequently, this highlights the potential of OOO to encounter the Anthropocene beyond scientific realism and to account for the plurality of reality without granting any hegemonic access to it. This paper, therefore, argues for a conceptualization of ontological difference without one or many worlds.
Highlights
Relational ontologies that postulate the primacy of relations over their relata may seem like a contrary and incompatible approach to object-oriented ontology (OOO)
The ontological turn in the field of social and cultural anthropology, for example, aims to overcome a dualistic representationalism and logocentrism.[1]. This ontological turn includes “the attention to a host of factors that deeply shape what we come to know as reality but that social theory has rarely tackled— factors like objects and things, non-humans, matter and materiality [...], emotions, spirituality, feelings, and so forth.”[2]. In particular, relational ontologies have been preferred for conceptualizing the plurality of the world without postmodern constructivism through epistemic systems, and for conceptualizing reality without the hegemonic demand of scientific realism
After outlining the central assumptions of Escobar and Barad’s relational ontologies and Harman’s OOO, I will discuss the problems of relational ontologies with regard to several ethical, political, and posthumanist issues that are entangled with these problems
Summary
In the last few years, there has been an increasing tendency within the humanities and cultural sciences to proceed beyond thinking and shed light onto the realm of being, which was dark and beyond our grasp since Kant. The central problem of the OWW project comprises the introduction of the double ontological rift It implies “a particular way of separating humans from nature (the nature/culture divide); and the distinction and boundary policing between those who function within the OWW from those who insist on other ways of worldling (the colonial divide).”[34] The relational ontologies of Barad and Escobar avoid this inability of the OWW to account for ontological differences by insisting on the performative enactment of worlds and the inseparability of natureculture. I will discuss this in more detail and tackle it with a focus on applicability to ethical, political and posthumanist issues
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