Ontological Recognition Research Articles

Epistemic territories of kawsak sacha (living forest): cosmopolitics and cosmoeducation

ABSTRACT This article aims to present the experience of Kichwa Indigenous peoples of Pastaza in Ecuador, and their agency in enforcing their rights to their ancestral cultures and lands. In their political action, they express the revitalization of their ecological and cultural knowledge as conditional to the protection of their territorial integrity. Including ancestral and land-based knowledge in education supports politics of inclusion, ontological recognition, and revitalization of ecological and cultural knowledge of Indigenous people. It also enforces their political legitimacy and sovereignty over their lands and conservation practices. The theme of education and power in Ecuador has been addressed within the decolonial thinking of modernity/coloniality, placing knowledge and pedagogical designs at the core of political debates between indigenous organizations and the central state. We will discuss Kichwa’s cosmology of Kawsak Sacha (living forest) and the way it inspires both territorial governance and educational practices.

Amaqaba nama Gqobhoka?

Abstract Working through the two concepts of amaqaba nama gqobhoka, I outline ‘ontological derision’. I argue that ontological derision is rooted in intra-Black conflict that leads to interracial conflict, and propose ontological recognition as a resolution to the tensions that exist in the South African political landscape. To reach the postcolonial condition advanced by scholars like Mahmood Mamdani (2021), the modes of life that existed in South Africa prior to colonial imposition need to be recognised as legitimate and worthy of participation in the formation of the public sphere. I argue that recognising this ontology will inform the genuine formation of an inclusive national identity in South Africa. Such a proposal is rooted in the thinking of William Wellington Gqoba, who suggests that the more the two cultures understand each other, the less tensions will exist between them.

Declarations of Independence: Sovereignty, Identity, and the Constitution of the “Other”

ABSTRACTWith the rise of Indigenous awareness, the formation of groups to argue for native title, and the global diaspora coming together in their pursuit of landed recognition, claiming sovereignty takes many forms: declaration, contestation, governance, land reclamation, and enterprise formation. These forms, examined as a collective whole, may be seen as the first pragmatic steps in self-determination for, often Indigenous, minorities. More importantly, they may be seen as a stage in the evolution of expressing spiritual and cultural ontology of the “other.” Not only is this expression, the seeking of an acknowledgement of a changing cast of actors in the global regime for self-determination, spiritual, and ontological recognition, but also underlies the need for recognizing a plurality of thought that one system of jurisprudence may not be able to defend.

‘Do not go gentle into that good night’: the Anthropecene and the cyclical time of human suffering

ABSTRACT This short essay explores the notions of ontological recognition in relation to ecological disasters, and examines possibilities for survival. It presents forced migration as an important aspect of the anthropocene and its consequences as suffering and death through the lens of time. The main argument draws on Dylan Thomas’ poem to introduce the politics of the Anthoropocene and addresses the question of death beyond contemporary forms of understanding human suffering via the concept of the aporia of death.

Beyond the critical: reinventing the radical imagination in transformative development and global(ization) studies

ABSTRACT Evidence is mounting of severe planetary and civilizational crises, interrelated and mutually constitutive of one another at unprecedented scales caused by the ‘globalization' of a hegemonic mode of civilizational ‘(mal-)development.' Critical scholarship in both Development and Global(ization) Studies faces numerous challenges. In this article, we argue that critical scholarship needs to be radically transformed to become radically transformative. This means that we need to critically revisit what identifies both fields as “critical”, at the meta-theoretical level, as a joint transformative project, fundamentally independent of capital’s discursive lexicons and historical logics. An ontological recognition of the truth and a new dialectic of the truth and the real help enact an action-oriented agenda to explore the potentials for liberation. It is now time to bravely explore the realm of impossibility by re/imagineering alternative lifeways beyond capital, beyond fossil fuel, and beyond commodity-oriented cumulative growth and their associated narrow rationalities.

Deadly Mirrors: Animal Death in Tommaso Landolfi and Stefano D'Arrigo

From Hegel to Heidegger and Agamben, modern Western philosophy has been haunted by how to think the connections between death, humanness and animality. This article explores how these connections have been represented by Italian writers Tommaso Landolfi (1908–79) and Stefano D'Arrigo (1919–92). Specifically, it investigates how the death of a nonhuman animal is portrayed in two works: ‘Mani’, a short story by Landolfi collected in his first book Il dialogo dei massimi sistemi (Dialogue on the Greater Harmonies) (1937), and D'Arrigo's massive novel Horcynus Orca (Horcynus Orca) (1975). Both ‘Mani’ and Horcynus Orca display how the fictional representation of the death of a nonhuman animal challenges any philosophical positions of human superiority and establishes instead animality as the unheimlich mirror of the human condition. In fact, in both stories, the animal — a mouse and a killer whale, respectively — do die and their deaths represent a mise en abyme that both arrests the human narrative and sparks a moment of acute ontological recognition.

Etnografía simétrica y espiritualidad. Aproximación ontológica al laicismo

En estas páginas me propongo conectar los debates recientes sobre el laicismo y cierta antropología de la religión/espiritualidad involucrada en un ejercicio de participación radical, simetrización y reconocimiento ontológico de los objetos que estudia. Destrascendentalizar la religión resulta eficaz hasta donde los efectos de esa operación intelectual cancelan la agencia y realidad metodológica de los seres, energías y fuerzas con los que tratan los sujetos. Maquillar u omitir lo más excepcional o incomunicable de la experiencia etnográfica y las notas de campo para diluirlo en un discurso científicamente aceptable, un proceder tan común según Favret-Saada, resulta tanto más inquietante cuando no se comparte la premisa según la cual las epistemes, relatos y prácticas religiosas pertenecen/remiten al universo de lo irracional, lo imaginario, lo inobservable, se levantan sobre un error de percepción o un desvarío intelectual, lo que convierte la verdad en un saber independiente de los enunciados de los nativos. Este artículo, que trata de todo ello y es eminentemente teórico, sería inconcebible sin los años de trabajo de campo dedicados a las cuestiones metodológicas, epistemológicas y ontológicas implicadas en la comprensión de las religiones/espiritualidades, entendidas como política, pero también como una forma excepcional de alteridad perceptiva y sensorial.

Levinas and the Ambivalence of Recognition

Abstract This paper argues that Emmanuel Levinas’ critique of the “ontological imperialism” does not amount to a perfunctory and rejective attitude towards ontology. Against the commonly held interpretation of Levinas, I argue that if we keep in mind that the understanding of the other is grounded on and determined by ethical recognition of the person, ontological recognition of the other person does not necessarily entail violent relation towards of the other person. Moreover, ethical recognition provides a standard of evaluation for ontological recognition and traditional theological discourse. The distinction between the two forms of recognition is essential to Levinas’ account of “religious life”. The two forms of recognition are nevertheless interconnected, if not reducible to one another. It is only when we lose sight of the fundamental ethical perspective that the ontological recognition is in danger of becoming violent and repressive.

Law's Poverty

This article adopts an analysis that explicitly politicises poverty and relates it to the concrete history of racialised capitalism and structural inequality that defined colonialism and apartheid and continues to persist and intensify in "post"-apartheid South Africa. Rather than formulating racialised poverty in legalist, economist or managerial terms, it should rather be understood as a form of oppression that comprises exploitation, marginalisation, powerlessness, cultural imperialism and violence. Such a formulation would make social structure, historical injustice and power central and would also allow for poverty to be grasped beyond a purely distributive logic by bringing to light the non-distributive, non-economic dimensions of poverty. Comprehending poverty in this way, as not only a question of economic distribution and empowerment, but also one of ethical, moral and even ontological recognition necessitates an enquiry into the emancipatory force of rights. Given their centrality in political and social discourse and in legal scholarship on poverty, it is worth considering whether and to what extent rights can be utilised in the struggle against (racialised) poverty.

Acknowledgment and Avoidance in Coleridge and Hölderlin

In this paper I propose a reading of Coleridge and Hölderlin using Stanley Cavell’s philosophical theory of acknowledgment and avoidance as an interpretive rubric. I argue that recognition (acknowledgment) of the skeptical limits of reason and the imagination allow Hölderlin, through his poetical theory, philosophy and practice, to overcome the epistemological limits of the romantic imagination; this factor is instanced in his poetry. On the other hand, Coleridge's work remains trapped within skeptical limits because of his “avoidance” of this ontological recognition, which is due to his continued desire for an intellectual intuition. I further my argument by using the hermeneutics of Heidegger as a secondary tool in reading both poets and in helping to illuminate their relative poetic and philosophical positions. Both poets ultimately recognize the limits of our imaginative autonomy; however, they articulate these limits in very different ways – ways that are useful keys in unlocking the work of Coleridge and Hölderlin.

A Study on Ontological Recognition and Fashion Design Value in Practice

본 연구는 존재론을 바탕으로 인간 삶의 실존개념을 이해하고 디자인의 존재 의미와 가치를 재조명하는데 있다. 새로운 것을 소유하고 싶은 욕망을 바탕으로 트렌드의 양산과 의도적 폐기화가 강요되고 있는 인간 삶의 현실에서, 디자인 분야를 중심으로 환경과 사회를 배려하는 주체적인 노력과 사회적 확산을 위해서 인간 실존의 개념으로부터 디자인이 추구할 미적 가치들을 되돌아보는 것은 의미가 있다.<BR> 본 연구는 인간의 실존을 이미 정해져 있는 존재가 아니라 되어가는 존재, 만들어가는 ‘가능성’의 열린 존재로 파악하고 디자인의 궁극적인 목적을 주어진 현실을 극복하는 실천적 방법으로 인식하고 패션디자인이 추구할 미적 가치의 도출을 목적으로 하였다.<BR> 연구방법은 문헌연구와 사례연구를 병행하였다. 먼저 존재론의 개념과 삶의 방식으로써 소유의 양식과 존재의 양식을 구분하여 살펴보았다. 또한 존재론적 관점의 디자인 고찰로써 윤리적 디자인, 생태적 디자인, 행동주의 디자인에 대해 살펴보았고 패션디자인에서 존재론적 특성이 반영된 사례를 제시하였다.<BR> 존재론적 인식을 바탕으로 패션디자인의 추구할 실천적 가치로는 존재 지양, 관계 지향, 창조 지향이 도출되었다. 존재론적 인식을 바탕으로 한 패션디자인의 실천적 가치로써 존재 지양은 패션디자인에 대한 모든 통념을 하나의 철학적 사고의 대상으로 간주하게 한다. 관계 지향은 인간과 환경, 생산자와 소비자, 상품가치와 소비가치 등 다양한 영역에서 새로운 인식과 의미의 생산을 요구한다. 창조 지향은 현대 소비사회에서 디자인을 영역을 중심으로 추구되고 있는 미적혁신의 가상성에 대한 반성과 함께 존재의 지양, 관계의 지향을 동반한 새로운 디자인을 통해 진정한 의미의 미적 혁신과 가치의 창조적 혁신을 요구하고 있다.

Word add-in for ontology recognition: semantic enrichment of scientific literature.

BackgroundIn the current era of scientific research, efficient communication of information is paramount. As such, the nature of scholarly and scientific communication is changing; cyberinfrastructure is now absolutely necessary and new media are allowing information and knowledge to be more interactive and immediate. One approach to making knowledge more accessible is the addition of machine-readable semantic data to scholarly articles.ResultsThe Word add-in presented here will assist authors in this effort by automatically recognizing and highlighting words or phrases that are likely information-rich, allowing authors to associate semantic data with those words or phrases, and to embed that data in the document as XML. The add-in and source code are publicly available at http://www.codeplex.com/UCSDBioLit.ConclusionsThe Word add-in for ontology term recognition makes it possible for an author to add semantic data to a document as it is being written and it encodes these data using XML tags that are effectively a standard in life sciences literature. Allowing authors to mark-up their own work will help increase the amount and quality of machine-readable literature metadata.

Response to Allison Fraiberg's Essay, 'Of AIDS, Cyborgs, and Other Indiscretions' and Fraiberg's reply to Porush

Response to Allison Fraiberg's Essay, 'Of AIDS, Cyborgs, and Other Indiscretions' David Porush David Porush responds to Allison Fraiberg’s essay, “Of AIDS, Cyborgs, and Other Indiscretions,” Postmodern Culturev.1 n. 3(May, 1991): Allison Fraiberg uses the discourses of AIDS to read large oppositions and tendencies at work in our culture. As such, AIDS is one more battlefield between right thinking and wrong thinking. Here wrong thinking is promoted by a reactionary, self-serving, moralizing majority that prescribes a cure for AIDS in “traditional” values to the exclusion of others an that denies the extent to which all our bloods and responsibilities commingle in the vast, luscious, and newly-dangerous circuitry of sexuality. The Bad Guys in her reading of her culture are clearly defined: they are listed and quoted at the beginning of her essay and resurface in various guises—people who promote the nuclear family, white middle class males, ad propagandists who ironically forget how to use sex to sell the public on the use of condoms. At times, Fraiberg manages to free herself from her orgy of jargon and deconstructionist agitprop to achieve real eloquence, especially when she calls for a redefinition of sexuality—also the most fun parts of the essay. Almost all of the conclusions which she reaches in her argument are both inarguable and quite tame: we must all engage in safe sex, but do so with the awareness that sex puts us in the circuit, that we take responsibilities for our own bodies, that AIDS should not be a tool for scapegoating and de- humanizing groups of people. Rather, AIDS ought to impel us to redefine the body, the self, and our sexuality (along with our discourses sexuality) as participants in a looping feedback with the interpenetrating systems of otherness which really create our culture (or really culture our creativity). The essay, however, has a tendency to discard or demolish practices and ideals that would satisfy even a new cyborg mentality simply because they have been tainted by association with conventional, conservative ideology. In this, there is a confusion or conflation between reactionary rhetoric (out of homophobia and racism, the moral majority use their prescriptions to define the other as alien, diseased) and technically safe practices (monogamy, safe sex, abstinence from IV drug use, the nuclear family)—in short, discretionary activities. The clearest example comes when Fraiberg writes, [16] . . . monogamy means little if one partner is HIV+ and the couple, thinking they have fulfilled the moral requirement in the symbolic contract that disqualifies them from contraction, practices unsafe sex. While we would not argue with the premise (that there’s something nasty about the prescription of exclusive monogamy for everyone in the culture) nor with the amusing analysis elsewhere in this essay (that the more you ask folks to say no to their pleasure they more likely they are to embrace it impulsively), we might argue with the conclusion. After all, monogamy means quite a lot, especiallyif one partner has AIDS. It promotes responsibility to and awareness of everyone else in the circuit, and indeed fulfills Fraiberg’s own call to greater cyborg awareness. The second problem here actually arises from the essay’s greatest strength: Fraiberg’s excellent application of deconstruction methods to the term “discrete” and “discretion.” The effect of her analysis is to construct a marvelous pun (there is high magic to low puns): she converts the word discretefrom its first meaning (distinct, separate, severed, discontinuous) into its other meaning, as in discreet(exercising judgment, discernment, etc.). To enhance the beauty of this play, and in typically deconstructive fashion, phrases like to exercise discretionFraiberg notes, ought to mean the opposite of the first kind of discrete: the “discreet” individual now knows that AIDS uncovers the very extent to which we are not discrete but are participants in the circuit. All well and good so far. The problem is that Fraiberg herself has trouble explaining exactly what all this means and resolving the contradictions to which it leads: [21] The traditional, tenuous limits of the body dissolved into fused networks, into open circuits of interconnectedness, produce an ontological recognition that, from this perspective, urges the...