Alternative Ontology Research Articles

Victims or Masters of Adaptation? How the Idea of Adaptation to Climate Change Travels Up and Down to a Village in Simanjiro, Maasailand Northern Tanzania

Abstract Moving beyond objectivist stances that for a long time have dominated the climate change research agenda, this paper explores an alternative ontology of adaptation. By tracing a travelling idea about ‘Adaptation to Climate Change’ (ACC) along multiple encounters and negotiation arenas, this paper wishes to explore the epistemological and political challenges that are entailed by this narrative in the making. It focuses on the power dynamics and (ontological) politics that are revealed by the translation that characterize the emergence of this nascent discourse in Tanzania. It is argued that this travelling idea – which is continuously co-produced and reshaped by varying actors in its journey to the ‘local’ level – brings longstanding tensions to the fore that exist between Maasai agro-pastoralists and the Tanzanian government. Whereas the government portrays the pastoralists in the debate both as victims as well as perpetrators of a changing climate, the grassroots organizations and NGOs represen...

Securing the future in the anthropocene: A critical analysis of the millennium ecosystem assessment scenarios

This commentary analyzes the ontological character of the United Nations’ Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (2005) and its attempt to imagine business-as-usual and transformative human-environmental futures. The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MA) constitutes the first and most significant attempt by an international political body to incorporate environmental concerns into the field of imaginative scenario building. In addition to its lengthy report on the threatened status of planetary ecosystems, the MA contains extensive “future scenarios” that imagine how human-environmental relations might unfold over the course of the twenty-first century. These scenarios arise out of the lineage of military scenarios generated during the Cold War, and continue to inform UN assessments in the present. This commentary explores how a politico-military concern for security informs the framework of the scenarios, and limits how the MA characterizes the fundamental human act of narration. In the process, the commentary explores alternative ontologies of narration and how these may lead to more transformative narratological interventions.

From Dis-Enclosure to Decolonisation: In Dialogue with Nancy and Mbembe on Self-Determination and the Other

What might a sense of decolonisation (not)/be? Or, what comes after the logic of the coloniser? This question is at the centre of many debates in South Africa and extends to all countries worldwide who are faced with the challenge of self-determination by rethinking the world we live in after the domination of the world by the so-called “all enclosing Western world-view” incarnated in various oppressive political, economic, social and intellectual practices. The challenge of rethinking the world following the demotion of the West from its centre, as will be argued, is not only for those who are particularly living in a previously colonised world, but also for those who were/ still are in the position of dominance, which is a universal task. It is at this point where the various philosophical traditions meet, more precisely that of continental philosophy of religion and African philosophy. Accordingly, this article seeks to explore the question in two parts by way of an inter-cultural approach. Part one retraces the critique of (a certain) Western metaphysics in terms of its onto-theological constitution. Subsequently, this onto-theological constitution is discussed in relation to the notions of identity and political to outline what a sense of decolonisation might not be, that is a re-enforcement of the logic of the coloniser, which denies the full existence of an-other. In part two, four suggestions are made on what a sense of decolonisation might be in dialogue with Jean-Luc Nancy and Achille Mbembe. The suggestions include a two-sided attitude of reticence/dissidence against falling back into the problematic logic. A move to consider decolonisation as the dis-enclosure of the world, which in turn, opens up a space for an alternative ontology that acknowledges our existence as always being-in-the-word with others. The fourth suggestion concerns the implications of this alternative ontology regarding a non-substantialist notion of identity as mêlée, which is the action of constant struggle within the re-opened space for what it means to live in the world. Finally, it is concluded that the alternative ontology of decolonisation as dis-enclosure implies a universal task of taking responsibility for the reparation of the dignity of the whole of humanity within our shared world.

The Composite Community: Thinking Through Fanon's Critique of a Narrow Nationalism

Abstract This article presents Édouard Glissant's account of a composite community as an articulation of Frantz Fanon's alternative, de-colonial conception of the nation. It shows that, subsequent to Fanon's critique of the xenophobia and racism of a narrow nationalism (found in The Wretched of the Earth), we are left with a conception of a national consciousness that registers with what Glissant names, in Poetics of Relation, a composite community in relation. Both accounts ground community in a foundation of difference, process and dynamism, all of which is carried into a collective identity, without the reductive homogenizing practices of most nation-building endeavors. As such, the article argues that Glissant's work is positioned to underscore what, in Fanon's understanding of national culture, is meant to protect the living dynamism of a people from a chauvinistic ultra-nationalism. Similarly, the work of The Wretched of the Earth can be used to take Glissant's alternative political ontology into the arena of thinking the nation otherwise.

From Mother/Fetus to Holobiont(s): A Material Feminist Ontology of the Pregnant Body

Across scientific, medical, legal, political, popular, and religious discourses, the “mother” and the “fetus” are regarded as being separated by a physical boundary. Time and time again, feminist theorists have proposed ways to disband the mother/fetus division derived from Cartesian self/other binarism and individualism. The goal of this article is to introduce and explore an alternative ontology of the pregnant body I call the motherfetus. I follow material feminist Karen Barad (2007) in contending that the “fetus” does not preexist as an object with a distinct agency who interacts with the “mother,” but only materializes through what Barad calls intra-action. I argue that the pregnant body can be reconfigured in such a way that the material distinction between the “mother” and the “fetus” disappears. This endeavor entails re-interpreting material “evidences” provided by twenty-first century technosciences while mobilizing the motherfetus as an apparatus of bodily production. Through a lens that insists on rejecting the genetic, immunological, anatomical, and physiological separation of the “mother” and “fetus,” this article will borrow elements from immunology, microchimerism, and the human microbiome to generate multiple incarnations of the motherfetus as a material-discursive product. In the conclusion, I will examine how the motherfetus as a feminist theory can alter the ways in which the pregnant body is dealt with in feminist activisms as well as in scientific studies and medical practices.

How to Be a Substantivalist Without Getting Shifty About It*

AbstractAccording to substantivalism, spacetime points and regions are real entities whose existence is not dependent on matter. In this paper, I motivate and defend a version of substantivalism which takes the totality of spacetime as fundamental, and show how this position avoids certain problem cases, in particular the objection from static Leibniz shifts, and better conforms to how we think about space in physics. I argue that, even though the static Leibniz shifts do not show ordinary substantivalism is committed to in‐principle undetectable physical structure (pace Dasgupta (2015a)), they do indicate something problematic about the modal profile of space‐time and its constituents. While the problem is modal, the solution cannot be solely a matter of revising the substantivalist's modal claims. Rather, I argue, the substantivalist must revise her background ontology of space‐time. I show how this can be done by developing substantivalist theory that rejects this picture in favor of an alternative ontology of space‐time in the spirit of priority monism.

Studying Infrastructuring Ethnographically

This paper is motivated by a methodological interest in how to investigate information infrastructures as an empirical, real-world phenomenon. We argue that research on information infrastructures should not be captive to the prevalent method choice of small-scale and short-term studies. Instead research should address the challenges of empirically studying the heterogeneous, extended and complex phenomena of infrastructuring with an emphasis on the necessarily emerging and open-ended processual qualities of information infrastructures. While existing literature identifies issues that make the study of infrastructuring demanding, few propose ways of addressing these challenges. In this paper we review characteristics of information infrastructures identified in the literature that present challenges for their empirical study. We look to current research in the social sciences, particularly anthropology and science and technology studies (STS) that focus on how to study complex and extended phenomena ethnographically, to provide insight into the study of infrastructuring. Specifically, we reflect on infrastructuring as an object of ethnographic inquiry by building on the notion of “constructing the field.” Recent developments in how to conceptualize the ethnographic field are tied both to longstanding traditions and novel developments in anthropology and STS for studying extended and complex phenomena. Through a discussion of how dimensions of information infrastructures have been addressed practically, methodologically, and theoretically we aim to link the notion of constructing the ethnographic field with views on infrastructuring as a particular kind of object of inquiry. Thus we aim to provide an ethnographically sensitive and methodologically oriented “opening” for an alternative ontology for studying infrastructuring ethnographically.

Shamanic spiritual activism: alternative development in the Brazilian Itamboatá valley

Drawing upon critiques that claim a lack of interest in spirituality in development studies, this paper aims to show how alternative ethical forms of development can be enacted when adopting shamanic spiritual worldviews. The paper draws upon ethnographic research conducted in Terra Mirim, an intentional shamanic community, located in the Itamboatá valley, Bahia, Brazil. Drawing upon contributions from Chicano scholars, this research engages with the concept of ‘spiritual activism’ to understand how alternative ontologies of development are shaped around the idea of interconnectedness and relational consciousness.

Humility, Love and Radical Discipleship: Steps toward an Ontology of the Sainted Self

My goal is to explicate the ontological framework of the human self that is required for radical discipleship. I do this through two notions: Christian love (agape) and Christian humility. To that end I explore the other- and the self-regarding aspects of humility and love, posing a problem for love and humility rooted in our typical notions of self-interest and phronesis. I then propose a way of rethinking humility and love in the context of a sketch of solidarity and an alternative ontology of the self.

El «positivismo fenomenológico» como respuesta al escepticismo: una revisión de la estrategia antiescéptica de Merleau-Ponty

In this article we will attempt a critical reconstruction of Merleau-Ponty’s argument against skeptical doubts about our perceptual experience, in a dialogue with previous approaches to the problem within the existing literature, and with the purpose of pointing out that the phenomenologist’s anti-skeptical argumental strategies do not need to be considered as presupposing a previous rejection of metaphysical realism and as, correlatively, based on an alternative ontology. To do this, we will appeal to an analogy with Merleau-Ponty’s critique of skeptical relativism concerning the «laws of thought»: if psychologistic doubts about our possible «confinement» in limited evidences, proper to our psychic constitution, are excluded, this is simply because, in order to articulate the skeptical tenet itself, we need to be considered capable of acknowledging as such those evidences which, however, cannot be evidences for us. The positive fact of the existence of a form of experience such as ours, according to Merleau-Ponty, becomesin this way the insurmountable basis of any epistemological evaluation.

El «positivismo fenomenológico» como respuesta al escepticismo: una revisión de la estrategia antiescéptica de Merleau-Ponty

In this article we will attempt a critical reconstruction of Merleau-Ponty’s argument against skeptical doubts about our perceptual experience, in a dialogue with previous approaches to the problem within the existing literature, and with the purpose of pointing out that the phenomenologist’s anti-skeptical argumental strategies do not need to be considered as presupposing a previous rejection of metaphysical realism and as, correlatively, based on an alternative ontology. To do this, we will appeal to an analogy with Merleau-Ponty’s critique of skeptical relativism concerning the «laws of thought»: if psychologistic doubts about our possible «confinement» in limited evidences, proper to our psychic constitution, are excluded, this is simply because, in order to articulate the skeptical tenet itself, we need to be considered capable of acknowledging as such those evidences which, however, cannot be evidences for us. The positive fact of the existence of a form of experience such as ours, according to Merleau-Ponty, becomesin this way the insurmountable basis of any epistemological evaluation.

A critical exploration of collaborative and distributed leadership in higher education: developing an alternative ontology through leadership-as-practice

ABSTRACTSince the turn of the millennium, interest in collaborative and distributed conceptualisations of leadership has gathered momentum, particularly in education. During the same period, higher education institutions have been embedded in practices shaped by New Public Management. The resultant reconfiguration of structural arrangements within institutions has led to the existence of two staff groups, professional and academic. The former is often aligned to the rise in managerial practices over claimed academic collegial practices, thus creating conditions for a possible dualistic positioning with the two groups. Distributed leadership and collaboration are claimed to be approaches that overcome this dualism, yet they may also be susceptible to maintaining this dual state and subtly reaffirm embedded interests and structures. As an alternative, a leadership-as-practice approach ontologically shifts the way in which sense is made of organisations. The practice-based model for understanding organisations presented in this paper offers a theoretical and applied framework that incorporates and also goes beyond collaborative and distributed leadership due to its association with practice theory.

Gothic Truth and Mimetic Practice: On the Realism of Schiller’s Geisterseher

ABSTRACTThe official reality claim of the eighteenth-century novel established itself in sharp distinction from fantastic modes of narration (ancient epics, medieval romances, religious allegories, etc.). Realist narratives following the laws of probability draw on a fictional ontology of contingency that goes back to the Aristotelian definition of the term as “possible” and “not necessary.” The pluralistic poetics of the early novel, thereby, not only participate in the programatically modern project “of a scientific scrutiny of life” (Watt) but also forms an essential part of the modern belief in the self-determined nature of the human subject. By contrast, Gothic realism gains all its attraction by depicting impossible events and actions as “real” and assumed unrealities as “possible.” Gothic novels develop an alternative ontology of contingency that actualizes the real possibility of non-being. Next to Walpole’s Castle of Otranto, I analyze Schiller’s Ghost Seer. Schiller’s contagious poetics of mimesis transforms calculable contingencies into the imponderability of sheer accidents. Moreover, it is a tale about the mystery of sociality and about the morally justifiable degree of individual freedom. Within a fictional framework of radical indeterminacy and unexpected novelty, Schiller’s tale calls for an ethics of absolute contingency. It does not content itself with taking the possible for real and the real for non-necessary; instead, its narrative environment calls for a radically situational ethics.

"Miracle, Mystery and Authority": a Deconstruction of the Christian Theology of Omnipotence

"Miracle, Mystery and Authority":a Deconstruction of the Christian Theology of Omnipotence1 Gwenaëlle Aubry "There are three powers, three powers alone, able to conquer and to hold captive forever the conscience of these impotent rebels for their happiness—these forces are miracle, mystery and authority": so speaks Dostoevsky's Grand Inquisitor in The Brothers Karamazov (320). I would like to show how those three powers, those three forces, can be derived from the Christian theology of omnipotence, and accordingly how this theology forms a place of scission between ethics and the religious. To that end, I shall pick up some of the conclusions from a forthcoming book, Genesis of the Sovereign God (Genèse du Dieu souverain), the second volume of an archaeology of power that I began earlier in God without Power (Dieu sans la puissance). These two books form a diptych that highlights two symmetrically opposed figures of the divine: the Aristotelian model of a god without power and identical with the Good; and the Christian model of an omnipotent God who can be posited as beyond the Good and even capable of evil. However, along with this theological mutation, my goal is also to identify an ontological mutation that is indissociable from the theological one and that, in my interpretation, lies at its core: that [End Page 1327] is, the mutation that substitutes the modern ontology of power and action for the Aristotelian ontology of in-potency and act (dunamei/energeiai). In other words, my aim is to identify afresh the emergence of what Agamben calls the "ontology of operativity" (Opus Dei 4) and Heidegger, in "Metaphysics as History of Being," "the representation of being as efficiency," but also to show that this ontology is built not on the basis of the Aristotelian one, to which it is usually referred, but against it. This deconstruction and new sequencing not only illuminate a turn in the history of metaphysics, but also reveal within it—and even more, at its source, with Aristotle—an alternative ontology and an alternative theology. These in turn prompt us to call into question certain equivalencies inherited from the Nietzscheo-Heideggerian tradition (such as the one between the God of the metaphysics, the omnipotent God and the moral God),2 and moreover to reformulate the question—the old question—of theodicy. 1. "Miracle, mystery, authority" To begin, let us see how the three powers of the Grand Inquisitor also constitute three names of the Almighty. a. Miracle, first. The divine attribute of omnipotence is the basis for Christianity's key dogmas such as ex nihilo creation, incarnation, and resurrection.3 It accounts for that which is unthinkable to Greek rationality. One of the founding texts of the theology of omnipotence, Peter Damian's De Divina omnipotentia, thus opens with the question of whether God can restore virginity to a woman who has lost it—a seemingly minor and somehow ludicrous issue, but which amounts to asking if God can undo the past. Now, for the pagan tradition, to undo the past, or "make what has been done undone" is an absolute impossibility, even for god or the god: "This only is denied even to God/The power to make what has been done undone," writes Aristotle, quoting Agathon, in the Nicomachean Ethics (VI, 2, 1139b5–12). Alexander of Aphrodisias and Pliny the Elder also mention this example in their lists of things impossible even for god—such as making something out of nothing, raising the dead, or making 2+2 equal 5.4 But for Peter [End Page 1328] Damian, defending omnipotence means exempting it from the laws of logic as well as of nature, maximally extending the field of contingency, positing, at least in principle, a world of miracles and marvels. Now, and this is what interests me here, in the Aristotelian scheme, what is against nature is called violent: there is a strict opposition between what is φύσει and what is βίᾳ (cf. Phys. IV, 8, 215a 1–4; Gen. et Corr. II, 6, 333b 29–31). The Christian conception of miracle focuses to a great extent on undoing this opposition, that is to say, on positing that what is not natural...

Against Critical Race Theory

Critical Race Theory (CRT) seeks to apply the negative dialectics of critical theory to the intersection of race, law, and power in the pursuit of racial and ethnic equality in Western society. That is to say, critical race theorists seek to convict Western society for not identifying with their values due to the prevalence of racial and ethnic oppression and subordination in the society. I argue here that this pursuit of racial emancipation and anti-subordination through the negative dialectics of critical theory by critical race theorists offers a false sense of racial difference which is convicting the values of the West for an alternative ontology and epistemology upon which to re-constitute its ideals in particular and society in general. I conclude that the postmodern/poststructural emphasis on the politics of the racial and ethnic physical bodies as offering an ontological and epistemological difference from the episteme of the West is baseless. The tenets of critical race theory are a reflection or inversion of the values and ideals of the West against themselves for their non-identification, and do not offer an oppositional alternative discourse from which to replace Western ontology and epistemology for its oppression and subordination against humanity and the earth. As such, I conclude that critical race theory is a conservative discourse that offers no real substantive solution to the crisis facing humanity and the earth in the face of the Protestant Ethic and spirit of capitalism9s exploitation and oppression. In fact, I want to go so far as to suggest that CRT prevents social change amidst the social and ecological devastation Western episteme has unleashed unto the world.

Land als Ressource, Boden und Landschaft: Materialität, Relationalität und neue Agrarfragen in der Politischen Ökologie

Abstract. The Anthropocene reorients the agrarian question as an ecological question of planetary scale. Rather than resolving the inherent tension between political economy and the biophysical environment by moving political ecology closer to the natural sciences, we propose an active engagement with impulses from the environmental humanities and anthropological engagements with alternative ontologies. The relational political ecology of agriculture that we outline in this article draws on feminist science studies, multispecies ethnography, new materialism and critical geography. We show the relevance of a relational approach to agriculture as a natureculture entanglement by reviewing three conceptualisations of land in political ecology in relation to our anthropological research in South India (Münster) and geographical research in Northern Pakistan (Poerting). Notions of land as resource, land as soil and land as landscape respectively exemplify shifts in theoretical and political engagements with agriculture in the Anthropocene. A relational political ecology of agriculture incorporates these theoretical sensibilities and brings them in conversation with ontological politics of agro-ecological movements who respond to the variegated crises of the anthropocene. We suggest a perspective on agrarian landscape assemblages as coproduced by histories of capitalist transformations and the (affective) relations between humans, other species and materials.

Negative Politics of the Good: A Critique of the Politics of Rights and of Recognition

Contemporary democratic political culture prioritizes the right over the good. The right is imagined as a non-controversial, universally acceptable and non-negotiable good. The liberal politics of the right assumes the substance ontology of the disengaged, rational, autonomous subject. The alternative ontology of the engaged, embodied, cultural and historical self, which inspires the liberal politics of identity, however, conceives recognition of identity as a substantive, complete, determinate and non-negotiable right. This paper argues that the non-substance ontology of the self can, in fact, stimulate a politics of the non-substantial good, which is incomplete, indeterminate and imperfect. Such a conception of the good can powerfully evoke the moral sense undergirding the good, albeit negatively, when it is put into circulation in the common discursive space of politics. In polities of radical diversity like India, the negative politics of the good is especially pertinent.

The Becoming-Statistic

This article examines how computerized adaptive testing functions in relation to learning in control societies. We first document the transition from static and discrete forms of statistical work that characterized Foucault’s disciplinary societies into the continuous, predictive analytics that have emerged as the powerful form of statistical work in Deleuze’s control societies. We then explore the function of information science ontologies in adaptive testing and learning applications from the perspective of Deleuze’s philosophical ontology. Working between these two conceptions of ontology enables us to open a critical space in which to posit the need for an alternative ontology of number in education. Focusing on the case of Pearson, the world’s largest edu-business, we consider how the “datafication” of education is presenting opportunities to exploit information assemblages for profit. The primary focus of analysis is Pearson’s Next Generation Assessment agenda, which focuses on the development and implementation of computerized adaptive testing within a broader digital learning environment. Next Generation Assessment is theorized as an information assemblage that functions according to an axiomatic modeling of numerical data enabling the production and communication of information throughout proliferating data infrastructures in education. We argue that the shift from “becoming a statistic” in disciplinary society to “the becoming-statistic” in control society is facilitating the development of digital learning platforms that risk limiting the conditions for learning in the creative sense of this term.

The work of art in the time of technogenesis

Abstract In our current environment the digital screen has become part of the daily rhythm of work and play. Yet as those digital screens become more refined and flatter they also approach the form and presence of a painted surface. A painting is also a screen, an image bounded by an edge, portable and primarily visual. Both kinds of screens have native temporal designs that are in productive tension with each other. By fracking into their differential relationship images are shown to metabolize time, arriving out of time for the sake of an unsustainable time, concealing an end of time, hidden beneath a fantastic time beyond time. This article will develop an alternative ontology of the image through interlocked notions of time, temporality, colour and presence based on contemporary painting, the plastic arts and an uncertain relation to the visual, brought on by information communication technologies. Using the ideas of Martin Heidegger, Richard Dienst and Bernard Stiegler it will be shown that by deconstructing everyday notions of time there is a fractal proliferation of temporal modes that releases an explosive plasticity of visual presence with a hue and density held somewhere between the agency of light and the plastic materiality of the screen.

Converging pathways of contemporary leadership: In the footsteps of Māori and servant leadership

The world is a turbulent space for leaders and organisations. Leadership scandals and failures have changed views on leadership behaviour in the West. There is increased demand for more ethical leadership, inspired by ideas of humanness, and care of the well-being of all stakeholders. This article offers our conceptualisation of two emerging domains in leadership – servant leadership and Indigenous Māori leadership. Both not only have strong resonance with each other but also reflect a common concern with individual and collective morality that draws us to the significance of human relationships and, context-specificity specifically as derived from worldview. We suggest these two leadership domains offer transformative realisation of leadership development that accepts alternative ontologies, epistemologies and worldviews, providing for richer and more meaningful understanding of leadership for the 21st century.