Materialist Ontology Research Articles

“In the Raw”

Abstract Based on the critical concept of trans*aesthetics, the author examines the aesthetic agency of photography and photographs of and for trans* women living in two iconic periods within the history of modern Singapore, namely, the early 1980s and early 2010s. He prioritizes the creative production over the visibility agenda and receptive prejudices that pertain inherently to trans* activism. The author argues that the act of posing in front of the camera for trans* women cannot be reified but must be critically examined for its materialist ontology, a framework that includes the body, the dress, and the attitude of the model. The transformation of these three domains, including the different attitudes of being demure, fierce, or natural, will determine the otherwise transnormative subject position presented by the photographer.

The Materiality of Memory: Affects, Remembering and Food Decisions

Sociology has focused predominantly upon ‘collective memories’ and their impact on social continuity and change, while relegating individual memories to the status of an empirical data resource for research on experiences and identity construction or maintenance. This article suggests, however, that sociology has overlooked the part individual memories play in social production. It applies a post-anthropocentric, new materialist ontology, in which bodies, things, social formations, ideas, beliefs and memories can all possess capacities to materially affect and be affected. To explore the part that personal memory can play in producing the present and hence the future, data from in-depth interviews in a study of adults’ food decision-making and practices are reported. Personal memories deriving from earlier events affect current food practices, and these contribute to the materiality of people’s consumption of food stuffs. The article concludes by reflecting on the wider importance of personal memory for sociological inquiry and memory studies.

Contributions of a materialist ontology to the critical knowledge of labour processes and workers struggles

This essay argues that a materialist ontology can contribute to a renewal of the analysis of contemporary labour processes and indicate new possibilities for addressing workers struggles. An ontological/explanatory critique is indispensable to a transformative praxis that confronts the capitalist organization of labour and creates alternatives for the emancipation of labour and humankind. Part of this critique would have to be directed to theory itself, including Labour Process Theory. The main contributions of a materialist ontology in this respect are related to: commodity production inserted in a wider historical context; the overcoming of the subjectivist/objectivist dilemma; labour processes and struggles as open-ended dynamics in which the possibility of freedom always plays a central role; the focus on the qualitative aspects of value (social form), its manifestations and expressions in concrete labour processes and the ways it conditions or determines social relations of production, actions and struggles; the consideration of everyday life and its ontological deep determinants; the analysis of workers organisations and struggles as social exercises of freedom (conscious choices) under structural historically constructed constrains.

ONTOLOGIA E CONHECIMENTO NOS PRINCÍPIOS DA FILOSOFIA DO FUTURO DE LUDWIG FEUERBACH

Neste artigo pretendo discutir o tema do conhecimento como um problema filosófico no pensamento de Ludwig Feuerbach, tomando por fundamento as formulações desenvolvidas pelo pensador no escrito Princípios da filosofia do futuro (1843). Nele comparece o interesse de Feuerbach por estabelecer a importância de uma filosofia cuja base é a realidade concreta e o reconhecimento da sensibilidade, a que nomeia “nova filosofia”. Por discutir a importância da concretude material para tematização do conhecimento, Feuerbach pressupõe a admissão de certa concepção ontológica, de modo que foi preciso passar por uma breve demarcação da ontologia materialista da qual a nova filosofia parte.

A Tissue of False Memories

A Tissue of False Memories Sarah Ellenzweig (bio) Traditionally defined historical fields—like eighteenth-century studies—can be charged fairly with an under-developed relationship to theory and to certain kinds of conceptual abstraction. Yet it is also the case (though less frequently acknowledged) that on the theory side of things, an overly crude sense of the past leads to ill informed assumptions and prejudices about history. A crude sense of the past hampers our capacity to understand, as Thomas Pfau puts it, “how ideas and conceptions actually develop over time—viz., as a long, if uneven dialectical progression.”1 In telescoping historical time, in other words, we fail to understand both the past and contemporary realities as well as we might.2 I will explore this problematic by examining the rhetoric of the “new materialism” and the way it positions itself in relation to history. New materialism’s recent bid for our attention centers on a key claim about the ontology of matter: that we understand it better now than philosophers did in the past. As the story goes, the “Cartesian-Newtonian” legacy erroneously understood matter to be mere extended stuff—uniform, passive, and inert—and thus always in need of something outside itself to render it active.3 By contrast, new materialist writing celebrates their “discovery” of matter’s self-active nature as an explicitly polemical correction to history. Since so much of new materialism relies on this supersessionist reading of the history of philosophy, it seems to me that those of us who work in the fields designated as “old” should weigh in. We should weigh in not only about [End Page 217] what early moderns thought about matter, but also about the larger question of present theory’s relationship to a deeper historical-intellectual context. Might that deeper context provide us with a perspective on the blind spots of our own time? Early modern matter theory, whatever that might have been, functions as a straw-man for new materialism, a paper tiger against which today’s theoretical advances are allowed far too easy a triumph. Part of the problem here is that new materialists do not appear especially interested in actually reading the diverse writings of someone like Descartes. They are satisfied, instead, with relying on standard cliches about dualism, many of which have been generated by theory itself.4 For theory, Descartes has long been an enemy, since he was one of the first to usher in the age of “reason” that appears to have led to so many retrograde social-political constructs, including most recently, human exceptionalism. It is not remarkable, then, to see Descartes invoked once again as part of a story about a reactionary past. The more interesting aspect of this story speaks to this forum’s concern with the problem of intention. Though we typically place Descartes the metaphysician among the champions of free will, his physics always suggested a more deterministic view of the natural order.5 Once again, Descartes’ legacy is far more complicated than new materialism has allowed. My concern here, however, is less with how Descartes understood intention, than with how we, as scholars of the Enlightenment, understand intention in the history of ideas. Foucault tried to teach us that authors of a theory, tradition, or discipline create “a possibility for something other than their discourse, yet something belonging to what they founded.”6 One need not spend a lot of time investigating the reception of Cartesianism during the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries to discover the pertinancy of Foucault’s insight. What Ronald Meek calls the “law of unintended consequences” was exactly what many seventeenth-century readers of Descartes worried about.7 To anyone getting his Descartes from today’s theory, it is surprising to learn that many contemporaries thought that Descartes’s mechanistic account of matter failed to register matter’s passivity strongly enough. Once body and matter were separated from spirit in the Cartesian sense, they threatened to become sufficient explanatory models, and thus, more than merely passive and inert substances.8 The important and unexpected point here is that Descartes’ dualist separation of immaterial mind and material body, which modern theory made notorious...

The Domestic Politics of Disability in Octavia Butler's Kindred

The Domestic Politics of Disability in Octavia Butler's Kindred Todd Comer (bio) Octavia Butler died in late February of 2006 following a fall outside of her home, the house a MacArthur Foundation Genius Grant enabled her to purchase. This freak accident, a tragedy for anyone touched by her writing, serves as an appropriate reminder of many of Butler's most significant themes. Like any death, hers foregrounds our mortality and by doing so also foregrounds our relation to others—an ethical connection that is so central to her writing. Butler wrote of division and violence; of the dichotomy between the self and the objective world, home and otherness; and of what could be gained and lost by decreasing the distance between others. In her 1993 novel Parable of the Sower, Butler writes of a young girl, locked behind neighborhood walls in an apocalyptic world, who is gifted, and cursed, with empathy; she can experience others' pain, real or feigned (11). Lauren Olamina's hyperempathy is a disability as it marks her out as other and interferes with her ability to easily navigate and succeed in a violently hierarchized world. Yet Lauren does succeed while retaining her empathic connection to the world. Lauren has a strong sense of her identity, yet fosters a connection to others at the same time. Here we have what appears to be a perfect ethical balance between assuring a certain level of personal singularity, without the violent hermeneutic assimilation of others. What more can we ask of any ethics? I demonstrate how in Butler's Kindred disability amounts to a sort of [End Page 84] ideological denaturalization, and thereby an ethical opening beyond the domesticated walls of an able-bodied self. As I see Butler's text as a radical response to W.E.B. Du Bois and Frantz Fanon, their work on the complex nature of African-American experience will help contextualize the crucial themes of home, health, and subjectivity that are my concern here. In "Of Our Spiritual Strivings," Du Bois contextualizes the "revelation" of his difference by referencing his "rollicking boyhood" during which he first noticed the veil separating him from others. Physically, this difference leads not to running, but to "plod[ing] darkly on in resignation" (8-9). Notice how the experience of black subjectivity is embodied in the following famous passage: After the Egyptian and Indian, the Greek and Roman, the Teuton and Mongolian, the Negro is a sort of seventh son, born with a veil, and gifted with second-sight in this American world,—a world which yields him no true self-consciousness, but only lets him see himself through the revelation of the other world. It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one's self through the eyes of others, of measuring one's soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity. One ever feels his two-ness,—an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder. (emphasis added) (8–9) This "torn" or wounded condition forces African-Americans to juggle two mental registers at the same time. It is physically debilitating, slowing one down and risking, at every moment, a violent hemorrhage, both mental and physical. While Du Bois is concerned with ontological matters here, the body carries the weight of his argument. This contrary pull between America and Africa threatens both the body and mind, which, he says, have "been strangely wasted, dispersed, or forgotten" (9). Ontological confusion (or over extension) equals physical disability: "A people thus handicapped," he writes, "ought not to be asked to race with the world, but rather allowed to give all its time to its own social problems" (12, emphasis added). Du Bois is intent on erasing the "vast veil" (7), and it is worth dwelling [End Page 85] on this veil for a moment in order to better grasp the modern subject he would have come into being. A veil separates, yes, but not entirely. It remains porous, torn, if you will, allowing for connection to others...

Ontology matters: a commentary on contribution to cultural historical activity

This commentary promotes discussion on the imaginary provided by Sanaz Farhangi in her article entitled, Contribution to activity: a lens for understanding students’ potential and agency in physics education. The commentary is concerned with aligning ontological assumptions in research accounts of learning and development with transformative aims. A broad definition of ontology as the theory of existence is preferred. Sociocultural approaches share relational ontology as a common foundation. I agree with scholars elaborating Vygotsky’s Transformative Activist Stance that a relational ontology does not imply activism. However, I argue that relational ontology provides a necessary and sufficient theoretical grounding for intentional transformation. I draw upon positioning theory to elaborate the moral aspects of language use and to illustrate that a theory of being as relational already eliminates the transcendental position. I draw on Farhangi’s article to further the discussion on the necessity and sufficiency of relational ontology and associated grammars in accounting for activism.

First-Order Theistic Religion: Intentional Power Beyond Belief

Diversity and disagreement in the religious beliefs among many religious people seem here to stay, however much they bother some inquirers. Even so, the latter inquirers appear not to be similarly bothered by diversity and disagreement in the scientific beliefs among many scientists. They sometimes propose that we should take religious beliefs to be noncognitive and perhaps even nonontological and noncausal regarding their apparent referents, but they do not propose the same for scientific beliefs. Perhaps they would account for this difference in terms of more extensive diversity and disagreement among religious beliefs than scientific beliefs. We shall attend to the alleged significance of diversity and disagreement among religious beliefs, with an eye toward its bearing on epistemic and ontological matters in religion. In particular, we shall ask whether the significance recommends a retreat from first-order to “second-order” religion, as suggested by Branden Thornhill-Miller and Peter Millican.

Deontic power, authority, and governance in international politics

Barnett and Duvall have offered a highly useful constructivist taxonomy of power in response to the rationalist question of why constructivists formerly lacked a theory of power. However, in applying their taxonomy of power to the question of global governance, they draw upon a specific interpretation of their ‘structural’ form of power from the radical theory of Steven Lukes. This move generates a number of ontological and analytic issues that constructivists normally avoid. This article offers three amendments to Barnett and Duvall’s thesis. These involve the (1) recognition and use of the subsumption of the constitutive forms of power that they theorize within the concept of ‘deontic power’, introduced in the institutional philosophy of John Searle and (2) recognition that the posited distinction between subjective and objective interests returns us to a rationalist and materialist ontology that resolves the question of actor interests and motivations through exogenous imputation by the analyst – a retrograde step for constructivist theory that can and should be avoided. (3) In developing the deontic bases of the constitutive forms of power introduced by Barnett and Duvall, we will recover the social means by which power can be exercised as authority.

Dirty things: spiritual pollution and life after the Lord’s Resistance Army

ABSTRACTIn post-war northern Uganda (as elsewhere), the reintegration of ex-combatants into their home communities is an ongoing process that involves long-term social and spiritual labour. The “re” of “reintegration,” however, might falsely assume a static and cohesive Acholi cosmology within which the parameters of such labours are clearly defined. Pathways taken with the goal of lessening suffering caused by war are tread by Acholi civilians and ex-combatants alike, and the ways former Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) fighters attempt to alleviate spiritual distress illuminate wider struggles for moral authority in everyday life. These practices are embedded in cosmologies which, though predating the 20 years of violent upheaval that ended in 2006, are sites of contestation where the politics of belief and doubt are played out. Drawing on insights gleaned from ethnographic fieldwork over the last decade, we focus here on targeted research from January to August 2014 with former LRA individuals who were part of a bigger study of clients at an ex-combatant reception centre. We explore how these persons have experienced, described, and responded to the suffering caused by ajwani (“dirty things”) – the stuff of a polluted cosmos. We further discuss the politics of “belief” and doubt in contemporary Acholi. The labour of ex-combatants and their communities to alleviate spiritual suffering demonstrates how ritual practices both challenge and uphold the power of moral authorities. In the wider context of post-war sociality in Acholi, effective and socially acceptable alleviation of spiritual suffering is contested, processual, and highly constrained by material resources and perceptions of ritual legitimacy. The practices of belief and doubt are not only a matter of metaphysics or ontology, but of shifts in worldly power.

Morality, Ontology, and Corporate Rights

Abstract Does the ontology of corporations matter for corporate rights? Much of the philosophical literature on corporate rights focuses on whether corporations are real entities, aggregations of individuals, or fictions to which rights or other entitlements can be ascribed. We argue that this focus is misplaced. Whether corporations have rights, and the sort of rights they have, is a question of moral theory. It is not fundamentally a matter of ontology, as F.W. Maitland thought, or a matter of legal or moral semantics, as H.L.A. Hart once argued. The going moral theory, not conceptual requirements or explanatory criteria, determines the conditions a corporation must satisfy to have various rights and duties. We argue that this truth is independent of the deontic, consequentialist, or hybrid character of the moral theory. This paper defends three claims. First, the ontological status of a group as an intentional agent is neither necessary nor sufficient for its moral status or entitlements. A moral theory in principle could recognize groups that are not intentional agents, and a group’s existence as an intentional agent does not by itself require moral recognition. A moral commitment to corporate rights and duties is therefore not determined by the indispensability of groups in explaining group behavior. Second, the substantive claims of a moral theory (understood broadly) determine the conditions for assigning rights and duties to corporations. Third, this moral conception of corporate rights has both legal and moral implications for the treatment of corporations.

Perceptual Experience and Aspect

A number of contemporary philosophers of mind have brought considerations from the study of aspect to bear on the ontological question how perceptual experiences persist over time. But, apart from rare exceptions, relatively little attention has been devoted to assess whether the way we talk about perceptual occurrences is of any relevance for discussions of ontological matters in general, let alone discussions about the ontological nature of perception. This piece examines whether considerations derived from the study of lexical aspect have a significant bearing on what ontological views of perception we should endorse: I shall argue that such aspectual considerations are in fact of very little use for settling the relevant ontological issue.

Innovative learning environments and new materialism: A conjunctural analysis of pedagogic spaces

An Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development research priority, innovative learning environments (ILEs) have been translated into policy and practice in 25 countries around the world. In Aotearoa/New Zealand, learning spaces are being reconceptualised in relation to this policy work by school leaders who are confronted by an impetus to lead pedagogic change. The article contributes a conjunctural analysis of the milieu around the redesign of these education facilities. Recognising that bodies and objects entwine in pedagogic spaces, we contribute a new materialism reading of ILEs as these are instantiated in New Zealand. New materialism recognises the agential nature of matter and questions the anthropocentric narrative that frames the post-enlightenment conception of what it means to be human. The decentring of human subjects through a materialist ontology facilitates a consideration of the power of objects to affect the spatial politics of learning environments. The article traces a relationship between the New Zealand strategic plan for Education 2015–2021 and principal conceptions of ILE as the lived spaces of this policy actualisation and the disciplinary/control society conjuncture. Informed by theories of spatial practice, we argue that principals’ understandings of ‘space’ are integral to pedagogic approaches within open-plan spaces. A conjunctural analysis can expand the capacity to act politically. By examining the complex conditions of a political intervention, in this case ILEs, we trace the displacements and condensations of different sorts of contradictions, and thus open up possibilities for action.

Attempts on (writing) her life: ethics and ontology in pro-feminist playwriting.

Does a feminist dramaturgy exist for male playwrights? The post-1990s work of British playwrights Simon Stephens, Tim Crouch and Martin Crimp variously enact an attrition between female protagonists and male writers. Appraising these "attempts on (writing) her life" requires a feminist criticality that can incorporate the unique, intersubjective relation of playwright and character. What is the gendered relationship of these actors? In the manner of Performance/Philosophy, this essay finds that Levinasian fecundity answers this call – finding a crucial space for continental philosophy in the pro-feminist movement. Drawing on the philosophical significance of “objectification”, this essay argues that ethical portrayals of gender - in Peggy Phelan’s notion of the ‘representational economy’ - bestow a responsibility upon male playwrights to explore the potential to contribute to feminist critical writing. Whether this is a matter of ontology – and the essentialism of sexual difference that accompanies such a position – is weighed against the ethics of men-writing-women.

Exploring William James’s Radical Empiricism and Relational Ontologies for Alternative Possibilities in Education

In A Pluralistic Universe, James argues that the world we experience is more than we can describe. Our theories are incomplete, open, and imperfect. Concepts function to try to shape, organize, and describe this open, flowing universe, while the universe continually escapes beyond our artificial boundaries. For James and myself, the universe is unfinished, a “primal stuff” or “pure experience.” However, James starts with parts and moves to wholes, and I want to start from wholes and move to parts and back to wholes again. This is an issue between us I further consider, for while he describes himself as a radical empiricist, emphasizing the parts, my descriptions are in terms of w/holism. I use this opportunity to explore James’s contributions to my metaphor of “pure experience” as being like an infinite Ocean and the fishing nets we create represent our ontologies and epistemologies that help us catch up our experiences and give them meaning. I also make the case for why a better understanding of ontology matters for us as educators, using Maria Montessori’s curriculum and instruction design, Dine Primary School, and Cajete’s theology of place and culturally based science as examples of relational fishing nets we could be using to teach our children.

VITALITY OR WEAKNESS?

This article explores the role of nature in two strands of contemporary materialist philosophy: new materialism, and transcendental materialism. Through an analysis of these strands of materialism via the work of Jane Bennett, William E. Connolly, Catherine Malabou, and Adrian Johnston, the article attempts to delineate these perspectives into the opposed camps of monist and dialectical materialisms. The implications of these differing materialist ontologies are then discussed in terms of the theorization of nature as either a vital material force or as a weakness characterizing matter itself. After outlining the importance of nature for these two opposed theories, the lack of serious engagement with the work of F.W.J. Schelling by either group is discussed as a potential middle ground between the Spinozism of the new materialism and the Hegelianism of transcendental materialism, due to its large-scale political analysis, less pessimistic perspective towards the possibility of a contemporary humanism, and embrace of recent advances in the empirical sciences.

La apertura ontológica de la antropología contemporánea

Recent decades have seen a proliferation of works in anthropology which refer to matters of ontology. They reflect anthropological concerns with the nature of being and reality, and at the same time critically review the boundaries and categories of Western modernity. Yet to what extent have these ontological anthropologies interrogated or transformed fundamental anthropological concepts such as culture, difference, materiality, alterity, comparison or ethnography? This article offers an overview of the key theoretical and methodological contributions of ontological anthropologies (both conceptual versions, such as the so called «ontological turn», and more ontic versions), with respect to issues which include the notion of radical alterity, the return to animism, the idea of symmetrical anthropology or the methodological proposals of recursivity and controlled equivocation. At the same time, the paper outlines the main debates which have emerged in our discipline as a result of this opening up to ontological matters, such as the discussions around the nature-culture dichotomy, the frontiers of alterity, the nature of reality, and the reach of ontologically informed political programmes.

Féminisme, matérialisme et liberté

In the past few years, the “new materialisms”, which draw particularly on anthropology and the history of science, have abounded in feminist and queer thought. This does not mean that their arguments coincide, however. Elizabeth Grosz’s argumentation, defined as a “materialist ontology”, tries to reintroduce “what it is in the nature of bodies in biological evolution that opens them up to cultural transcription, social immersion and production, that is, to political cultural and conceptual ev...

Green Allies: Speculative Realism, Evangelical Christianity, and Political Pluralism

This essay addresses the question of how to build political coalitions to address global warming. For speculative realists such as Levi Bryant, responding to climate change demands materialist ontologies that recognize the efficacy of things themselves, e.g. fossil fuels. And yet, I argue, Bryant does not sufficiently address the political assignment of building political coalitions with people who endorse different ontologies. To illuminate this possibility, I show how the American evangelical David Gushee arrives at similar conclusions by a different route. The essay encourages speculative realists to fold modesty into their political thinking for the sake of building coalitions with theists about matters of common concern.

COMAT: core ontology of matter

Purpose – Matter is an important topic of science as a discipline since its inception. Nevertheless, along with the evolution of semantic web, matter has got equal importance among the ontology developers. The current work describes an ontology of matter that the authors developed in the lab. The purpose of this paper is to come up with an exhaustive list of concepts and relations to cover matter domain under one umbrella, after identifying the gaps in the present ontologies. Design/methodology/approach – Ontology was developed following faceted analytico-synthetic approach of knowledge organization. The authors followed hybrid developmental approach which includes top-down as well as bottom-up development strategy, for creating classes and subclasses. The authors modelled matter domain comprehensively considering different aspects of matter. The theories behind the modelling approach helps to maintain the consistency of further extensions. Findings – Final ontology has around 280 concepts and as many as 60 properties which include both object property and datatype property. Research limitations/implications – There exists very vague definition of concepts in different subject areas, as matter is a domain of study in physics, chemistry, material science, metallurgy, etc. Same material has been adopted differently depending upon purpose of its study/use in that field. For example aspirin is simply a chemical compound in chemistry, whereas in medicine it is also an agent. Practical implications – Present work claims to influence the ontology engineers to develop more extension to this core ontology of matter (COMAT). Also this will find its use in information retrieval, semantic annotations and in several other semantic knowledge-based systems. Originality/value – COMAT is the most recent work of the domain. Originality lies in the way matter domain has been looked up, from a very wide perspective, as well as in the approach of modelling the domain.