Ontological Questions Research Articles

The Commodification of Food, Farming and Farmers: A Critical Review of Farm Laws, 2020

The recently enacted Farm Laws in India has led to widespread and vigorous protests across the country. It has been hailed as a watershed moment by the neoliberal market analysts and is compared to the 1991 economic reforms, based on the notions of liberalisation, privatisation, and globalisation. A critical review of these laws and amendments needs to be situated in the larger narrative of commodification, wherein certain essential goods and services are appropriated and standardised and traded at market-determined prices. The present review intends to place these new laws in the broader policies and ‘projects’ of neoliberalisation of nature. A critical look at these laws shows that they have profound implications for social justice and environmental sustainability. It seeks to cross-question the food question and the peasant question by revisiting the ontological questions of what constitutes food and farming. It considers the new debate and the old vision of ‘food as commons’, and find that the new laws are, in fact, a continuation of attempts by neoliberal markets and states to commodify food and farming activities. Nevertheless, such attempts, for various reasons, face active resistance in the form of countermovements by the peasantry and enter the arena of political economy. The review argues that the present peasant resistance should be considered as part of the larger environmental justice movements.

The unbearable circularity of easy ontology

In this paper, I argue that Amie Thomasson’s Easy Ontology rests on a vicious circularity that is highly damaging. Easy Ontology invokes the idea of application conditions that give rise to analytic entailments. Such entailments can be used to answer ontological questions easily. I argue that the application conditions for basic terms are only circularly specifiable showing that Thomasson misses her self-set goal of preventing such a circularity. Using this circularity, I go on to show that Easy Ontology as a whole collapses.

Assemblage Theory and Its Potentialities for Dis/ability Research in the Global South

In this article, we present some potentialities of researching dis/ability in the global South from a new materialist and posthuman approach. We recognize that Southern disabled bodies are constituted in much more complex ways than those represented by globalized models of disability. Deleuze and Guattari’s assemblage theory can be a powerful tool to both demodel dis/ability and map the geopolitical and biosocial forces that produce it. With this theory, we map the production of dis/ability in neoliberal Chile, connecting the 2019 Chilean protests, the sex education policies for children and youth with disabilities, and the neocolonial intensities of neoliberal-ableism. Through this analysis, we show how discursive-material practices of ablement and disablement are legitimized as civilizing technologies by global discourses of inclusion and economic productivity. The return to ontological questions is presented as an opportunity for Disability Studies in the global South to move towards decolonization.

The Art of Being Ordinary: Cups of Tea and Catching the Bus in Contemporary British YA

<p class="first-line-indent">Young adult novels are full of ordinary things and everyday actions, and these “reality effects”, to use Roland Barthes’ term, can help to build the meaningful connective tissue against which textual adolescents exist. This article examines contemporary British realist YA in order to understand the cultural work it does in creating ordinary worlds its readers can recognise. It shows how narratives produce a shared backdrop of lived experience that can nonetheless reveal certain socio-economic and ethnic differences. Paying attention to the mundane and routine is also posited as a method for locating YA fiction within a much broader literary and cultural context than usual. Existing YA scholarship has tended to focus on ontological questions about extraordinary fictional teenagers and how they are constructed according to universal frameworks of ‘normal’. This article instead demonstrates how textual teenagers are also situated by the common realities of everyday life in ways that need to be understood as specifically inflected by national conditions. It examines two tropes of ‘ordinariness’ – cups of tea and bus journeys – in a range of British YA standalone novels from the last decade, including work by Holly Bourne, Ally Kennen, Muhammad Khan, Patrice Lawrence, Nikesh Shukla, and Lisa Williamson. In doing so, it unpacks the rich cultural meanings and functions that are at play via these apparently non-symbolic textual features, and argues that, although tea and buses often act as reassuring markers of the ordinary, in some cases they represent a narrative mode that can actually question the status quo.

A relação trabalho e educação: transição no trabalho e na formação humana no contexto do toyotismo

O presente artigo busca analisar a dependência e autonomia da educação ao trabalho, destacando o contexto histórico do modo de produção capitalista no atual modelo de organização do trabalho: o toyotismo. O artigo foi elencado em quatro partes: a primeira, o trabalho como fundamento, em que é analisado como o ser humano salta do ser orgânico para tornar-se um ser social, posteriormente analisa-se a interferência do trabalho no atual modelo de educação flexibilizada, em seguida, discorremos sobre formação humana. E por fim, apresentamos nas considerações finais uma discussão sobre o que é velado pela educação flexibilizada. Nossa análise tem como método o materialista histórico dialético, por compreendermos que é o método que mais nos aproximada análise do real concreto. Para compor a discussão, conta-se com os seguintes teóricos: Antunes, Kuenzer, Lukács, Marx, Saviani e Tonet . São autores de grande relevo no meio acadêmico, quando se refere à questão ontológica do trabalho, que apresenta continuidades e descontinuidades de um modo de produção para o outro.

Mathematics and Ethics

In the philosophy of mathematics, ontological and epistemological questions have been discussed for centuries. These two set of questions span out a two-dimensional philosophy of mathematics. I find it important to establish a four dimensional philosophy of mathematics by adding two more dimensions, namely a sociological and an ethical dimension. The sociological dimension addresses the social formation of mathematics, while the ethical dimension addresses the mathematical formation of the social. In this article, I concentrate on exploring the ethical dimension by showing the broad range of social implications set in motion through bringing mathematics into action. These implications I illustrate in terms of quantifying, digitalising, serialising, categorising, and imagining. By the banality of mathematical expertise, I refer to the phenomenon that the formation of this expertise takes place in an ethical vacuum. To me this is a devastating feature of mathematical research and application practices. It is important that a philosophy of mathematics brings mathematics out of this vacuum. Keywords: Four-dimensional philosophy of mathematics; Ethics; Mathematics in action; Quantification; Digitalization.

The Eleatics and the Projects of Ontology

Parmenides provides the earliest surviving Greek example of a thematic reflection on to eon , being or what-is; and on mē eon , not-being or what-is-not. His work was crucial to the framing of ontological questions and statements in later work. Zeno and Melissus made what-is or being ( to on or to eon ) a central focus and engaged directly with Parmenides’ reasoning and concerns. Within philosophy, the term ‘ontology’ may signify a study of the nature of being, or of what it is to be. Another important use of ‘ontology’ signifies a set of claims about the nature and number of being or what is, a kind of cataloguing. How best can we characterize what the Eleatics’ work has to do with ontology? In what if any ways, and in what if any contexts, can Parmenides, Zeno, or Melissus be said to study the nature of being or of what is? In what if any senses can Parmenides, Zeno, or Melissus be said to provide an account of the nature or number of being or of what is? Does any of the three espouse such an account; or do they engage with that kind of account in some other way? I will argue that we find in the Eleatics three distinct approaches to ontological questions. I will suggest that Parmenides and Zeno, and likely Melissus, investigated the possibility of research into the nature and number of being as a problem; and cautioned against espousing direct unconditional accounts of the nature of what-is.

Reply to Cartwright, Pemberton, Wieten: \u201cmechanisms, laws and explanation\u201d

Cartwright et al. in European Journal for Philosophy of Science, 10(3) (2020) and the new mechanists agree that regular behaviors described in cp laws are generated by mechanisms. However, there is disagreement with regard to the two questions that Cartwright at al. ask: the epistemological question (“What kind of explanation is involved?”) and the ontological question (“What is going on in the world?”). Most importantly, Cartwright et al. argue that the explanation involved is a CL-explanation, while the new mechanists insist that mechanistic explanation and CL-explanation are competitors. In this reply, I will highlight some worries regarding Cartwright et al.’s analysis of the relationship between mechanisms and cp laws and I will provide alternative answers to the two questions in line with the new mechanistic approach.

Indigeneity and political economy: Class and ethnicity of the Guarani-Kaiowa

Ontological and identitary questions affecting indigenous peoples are discussed through an assessment of the socio-spatial trajectory of the Guarani-Kaiowa of South America, employing an analytical framework centred around land, labour and ethnicity. These enhanced politico-economic categories provide important entry points for understanding the violence and exploitation perpetrated against indigenous groups, as well as their capacity to reclaim ancestral territory lost to development. Evidence indicates that ethnicity is integral to class-based processes, given that the advance of capitalist relations both presumes and produces difference and subordination. The case study in the Brazilian state of Mato Grosso do Sul demonstrates that the Guarani-Kaiowa became refugees in their own land due to ethnic differences, but at the same time their labour has underpinned the regional economy to a considerable extent through interrelated mechanisms of peasantification and proleterianisation. Trends of exploitation and alienation have intensified in recent decades due to racism and socio-spatial segregation, but the action/reaction of subordinate groups has also been reinforced through references to their ethnicity.

Pure Politics and Religion and the Potentiality Not-To-Be

ABSTRACT The religious dimension is increasingly at the centre of political claims from individual citizens and collective actors and puts pressure on liberal democracies asserting the separation of politics and religion. The liberal principle of neutrality allows tracing ontological and normative differences between what is and ought to be properly political and religious. Politics would have the potentiality not-to-be religious and keep itself in a space of indifference to what religious. Better understanding the implications of such political theory in which the political man is called to actuate a (pure) politics raises ontological questions. Mainly, does (pure) politics provide a neutral third position in respect to religion where politics is not subject to any exclusive-inclusive logic such as in the exception? This question is addressed through the notion of potentiality as respectively treated by Agamben and Derrida and placed in the context of the political decision in Schmitt’s theory of sovereignty.

The Cosmic &amp; The Corporeal

Under the Skin is a film deeply preoccupied with the human experience. Our protagonist is ‘Laura,’ an alien in disguise who stalks Glasgow in search of male prey. We are entirely situated with her throughout — seeing the streets through her eyes, sitting with her in the van during each hunt. Our proximity to her complicates the ontological question beyond a blunt dichotomy of Laura and the human subjects. Rather, it’s a dynamic continuum whereby Laura might glean empathy while ordinary people are estranged. The article argues that audiovision is the primary channel through which entanglements between the cosmic and the corporeal are explored in the film. Through director Jonathan Glazer and composer Mica Levy’s maintaining of the ‘alien lens’ (as well as an alien audition) the subject of humanity is ravelled.

Selling Women’s History: Packaging Feminism in Twentieth-Century American Popular CultureTwenty-First-Century Feminisms in Children’s and Adolescent Literature

Selling Women’s History: Packaging Feminism in Twentieth-Century American Popular CultureTwenty-First-Century Feminisms in Children’s and Adolescent Literature

Is Stand-Up Comedy Art?

ABSTRACT Stand-up so closely resembles-and is meant to resemble-the styles and expectations of everyday speech that the idea of technique and technical mastery we typically associate with art is almost rendered invisible. Technique and technical mastery is as much about the understanding and development of audiences as collaborators as it is the generation of material. Doing so requires encountering audiences in places that by custom or design encourage ludic and vernacular talk-social spaces and third spaces such as bars, coffee houses, and clubs. Cultivating uncultivated speech and cultivating real audiences in found settings form the background of developing the stand-up comedian, neither of which lend themselves to the conservatory tradition we think of when we think of the development of artists. This article addresses two areas of the overall question of stand-up as art, starting with the ontological question of stand-up comedy: if it is an art where is it located, and what we may mean by “artworks” and “artworld” in stand-up comedy? Then I consider whether stand-up comedy as practiced can be reconciled with several recent definitions for art and note some of the special conditions and contexts for stand-up.

Crisis Cultures: The Rise of Finance in Mexico and Brazil

Crisis Cultures: The Rise of Finance in Mexico and Brazil

What Kind of “Real World” Makes South Korea's Middle Power Categorization Necessary?*

The fundamental dilemma in the middle power study is the repeated epistemic fallacies that attempt to answer an ontological question of middle powers with epistemic features. With the common epistemic belief that middle powers are significant actors that play some constructive roles, South Korea is automatically designated as a middle power as long as the agent (researcher or practitioner) finds comparable middle power‐like characteristics in South Korea's material attributes and foreign policy behaviors. However, this research adopted a critical realist research design that addresses the epistemic fallacy and finds the “real world” that makes South Korea's middle power categorization necessary. It analyzed South Korea's middle power rhetoric in South Korean presidents' and foreign ministers' foreign policy discourses, and ultimately uncovered that the “real world” behind South Korea's middle power rhetoric has been its environment comprised of the dominant and less dominant countries. As the less dominant country, South Korea has utilized the middle power title to balance and neutralize the asymmetrical power relations and create an environment more conducive to South Korea's national interests. This includes the removal of South Korea's deeply ingrained victim mindset. Yet, it should be emphasized that such a conclusion is valid only because of the critical realist research design, committed to ontological realism, epistemological relativism, and judgmental rationalism. If not, South Korea's unequal power environment would be viewed as merely an additional condition that a “middle power” South Korea must deal with.

Resisting easy inferences1

AbstractAmie Thomasson has articulated a novel conception of ontological debates, defending an easy approach to ontological questions as part of the articulation of a deflationary metaphysical view (Thomasson, 2015). After raising some concerns to the approach, we sketch a neutralist alternative to her ontological framework, offering an even easier way of conducting ontological debates.

From Ontology to Anthropotechnics: Humanism, Media and Domestication of Being

In this essay, we intend to approach how Peter Sloterdijk relates to the thinking of Martin Heidegger when questioning the humanist definition of man and proposing the notion of Anthropotechnics. To this end, the article begins by exposing Heidegger's conception of Technique and Humanism, and Ernst Jünger's influence on this issue. Then, when dealing with the question of being and ontological difference, the peculiar treatment that Sloterdijk offers to the ontological question is presented by articulating the history of being with a kind of genealogy of the clearing, bringing to the foreground certain intuitions of Friedrich Nietzsche about the beginnings of the human species. To conclude, Sloterdijk's thinking is developed, culminating in what he calls onto-anthropology, a notion presented in the work La Domestication de l’Être, and possible applications to issues related to biotechnology and contemporary media -which allows us to think a machinic history of being under the doubly complex bias of anthropology and ontology.

Affect Theory with Literature and Art: Between and Beyond Representation.

This paper maps the intersection of affect theory with literature and art through the revision of the question of representation and its crisis, which has been central in theorizing literary and art concerns. I propose that affect theory reinvigorates the problematic of representation by turning it into a debate about mediation, producing two main gestures in criticism when it gets in contact with literary and art works. On the one hand, some scholarship has stayed “between representation” by looking at affect as excessive of cognitive processes to analyze and expand how affect influences our representations of these processes, both when reading and doing literary criticism, and when elaborating epistemological paradigms. On the other, criticism has also attempted to step “beyond representation” by looking at affect as an autonomous third entity in mediation with capacities to affect and surpass human cognition. In treating affect as a new capacious entity when approaching the issue of representation, the critical concerns informing this gesture revolve around ontological questions, and they prioritize what affect is and does to bodies more than what it means.

Translating the body-land union in Natalie Diaz’s poetry

ABSTRACT This article explores Natalie Diaz’s translingual use of the Mojave language to address ongoing ecological crises, particularly regarding the Colorado River, and her understanding of language as ‘touch’. First, I discuss how her poem ‘The First Water is the Body’ engages with the Mojave endonym, translating a ‘pre-verbal’ understanding that the body and river are ontologically and linguistically inseparable. I explore how she condemns extractivism with ontological questions, a hybrid form and a kinetic approach to language. I also examine Diaz’s translingual poems ‘How the Milky Way Was Made’, which synchronises the sensuous movements between the river, the cosmos and a lover’s body, and ‘The Red Blues’, which expresses the complexities of the female relationship with inherited ecological, colonial trauma. Diaz’s poetics address a contemporary eco-awareness through Mojave perspectives, challenging the comfort zone of the human-nature binary.

3New Materialisms

Abstract This review considers work in the field of new materialisms, bearing in mind the wide range of approaches that make up the broader ‘material turn’ in critical and cultural theory but focusing in particular on the feminist new materialist conversation that draws on the work of Jane Bennett, Karen Barad, Samantha Frost, Rosi Braidotti, and others. It notes the new materialisms’ continued heterogeneity and describes a turn to method in the field, one that enables a vibrant dialogue between applied and theoretical scholarship. The pieces reviewed share an engagement with that trend. They also illustrate two important problems that the field has engaged with in 2019. The first question concerns the new materialisms’ politics of citation, and the need for a decolonial practice that engages with indigenous and non-western thought. The second is the question of a new materialist ontology: how to reconcile the tension between ‘flat’ and differentiated, subject-oriented accounts of agency, significance, and value. The new materialists this review follows seek a middle ground, one that allows them to emphasize the political stakes of human and more-than-human relations. Following the introduction, sections are: 1. New Materialist Practice, Feminist Ends; 2. Indigeneity and the New Materialisms; 3. Sensation in a Material World; 4. A Cartography of the New Materialisms; 5. Reading's Situation; 6. Exclusion and Activist New Materialism; and 7. The Things We Imagine.