Continuing a Debate

This supplement contains Mario Blaser's response to the concepts of Political Ontology and Practical Ontology as discussed by Casper Bruun Jensen in his paper »Practical Ontologies Redux«. This article appeared in 2021 Berliner Blätter (issue 84), edited by Michaela Meurer and Kathrin Eitel. It also provides a response by Jensen to Blaser's critique.Not Reviewe

6. Founding Stone

Pietro Daniel Omodeo and Charles T. Wolfe discuss the latter’s book Lire le matérialisme (Lyon: ENS éditions, 2020, 292 p., ISBN 9791036202377 et 9791036202391, http://doi.org/10.4000/books.enseditions.15838) and the prospects of a cosmological and politico-epistemological, and above all, intelligent materialism

Violence, Self-authorship and the 'Death of God': The 'Traps' of the Messianic and the Tragic

Nietzsche’s heralding of the ‘Death of God’ announces and exposes the condition of foundationlessness underpinning (Western) modernity and provokes the crucial question of the goals and purposes of political life. Without the figure of the divine as sanction and guide, political society lacks a stable foundation upon which to identify and legitimate itself. This paper explores the respective responses of two traditions of critical thought which engage explicitly with the challenges this poses, namely the messianic and the tragic. The central aim is to trace a series of ‘traps’ in evidence in both messianic and tragic thought which lead them to (re)turn to particular forms of transcendentalism; both traditions, it is argued, turn towards the divine in their responses to the ‘Death of God’. However, the paper suggests that while the messianic is inextricably bound up in such a return to the divine, the tragic, as well as comprising several problematic violences, retains a particular salience in theorising subjectivity and the political under the condition of foundationlessness named by the ‘Death of God’

The Postmodern Anti-Realism of Value in Caputo and Butler, and its Phenomenological Grounding

In this essay, I expose what I take to be implicit phenomenological commitments of both John D. Caputo and Judith Butler’s anti-realist conception of value. As anti-realists and exemplars of what some might call the postmodern tradition of ethics, I can show how their views must presuppose the very phenomenology of moral experience these thinkers would deny, and thus anyone persuaded by the elements of these philosophers should embrace the value ontologies of what I call participatory realism rather than the uncritical and untenable assumptions of anti-realism that so many in the humanities embrace

Anarchism, anti-militarism, and the politics of security

This thesis seeks to conceptualise an anarchist response to the politics of security. Understanding security as a discourse of conceptual and political mastery, and as therefore resistant to incorporation within a framework of emancipation, it argues that anarchism offers theoretical and practical resources through which creative insurrections in the political-metaphysical fabric of security might be made. The thesis is built around an ethnography of UK-based anti-militarist activism, interpreting a variety of practices, tactics and strategies through a conception of anarchism which emphasises prefigurative direct action and a ceaseless resistance to relations and discourses of domination and hegemony. Three central interventions in the logics of security are identified. The first involves the subversion of the hegemonic ontology of agency which can be identified across both traditional and critical understandings of security; those anti-militarists under examination do not appeal to „the state‟ to redress their grievances and insecurities, preferring instead to „directly‟ engage in practices of security. The second intervention emphasises those forms of anti-militarism which can be seen to subvert the security/insecurity binaries themselves, and to open spaces and possibilities beyond the totalising frameworks which constitute our contemporary politics of security. The third examines those moments and movements where, as they subvert these binaries, anti-militarists prefigure forms of subjectivity which displace those forms of rationality and relationality which underpin the politics of security (and militarism). Together these three interventions destabilise the politics of security in ways which offer powerful opportunities for rethinking and resisting contemporary forms of political domination and violence. This also functions as an argument about the politics of resistance, which is conceptualised here not as a programmatic, strategic or confrontational posture, but a tactical, prefigurative and anarchic exploration of becoming otherwise

Friends of the Lake? The Megacolector Conflict and the Revindication of Tz’unun Ya’

There is growing recognition that radical ontological difference underlies Indigenous communities’ opposition to extractivist development within their territories, particularly as they increasingly turn to a ‘rights of nature’ discourse to articulate their resistance. Scholars writing from the perspectives of political ontology and decolonial theory excitedly posit the possibility of the pluriverse emerging from the ‘ontological openings’ (de la Cadena, 2015a) and ‘decolonial cracks’ (Walsh, 2018) that these struggles are forming in the project of modernity. While such accounts are useful in elucidating how such struggles are more than ‘mere resource conflicts’ (Coombes et al., 2012a), they also risk reifying ontological difference and losing sight of their pragmatic functions. More than just a matter of academic debate, over-stating the ontological difference of Indigenous opposition to extractivism is a ‘cosmopolitical risk’ (Cepek, 2016) that has the potential to limit Indigenous communities’ aspirations for self-determination. As a consequence, this research suggests a way forward can be found in ‘ontologizing political economy’ (Burman, 2016) whilst also paying closer attention to ontological ambiguities as evidenced by the concepts of ‘transmodernity’ (Dussel, 2012), ‘partial connections’ (de la Cadena, 2015a) and ‘ch’ixi’’ (Rivera Cusicanqui, 2012). This research fleshes out these concerns through an ethnographic engagement with the Guatemalan Tz’utujil community of San Pedro, and its opposition to a wastewater megaproject, the ‘megacolector’ being advanced by a local environmental NGO ‘Friends of the Lake’ as a solution to Lake Atitlán’s contamination. I apply a lens of political ontology and MCD to examine Pedrano community leaders’ objections to the megacolector, but also to cast an eye to the wider community, and the initiatives of artists, poets, rappers, educators, agronomists, and spiritual guides. In doing so I demonstrate that beyond being a resource conflict and an ontological conflict, Pedranos’ opposition is most significantly tied to a wider project of revindication, that is, efforts to reclaim San Pedro’s epistemic and political autonomy

Alterity, Religion, and the Metaphysics of Postmodernism

Available from British Library Document Supply Centre-DSC:DX212274 / BLDSC - British Library Document Supply CentreSIGLEGBUnited Kingdo