Ontological Conflicts and the Stories of Peoples in Spite of Europe: Toward a Conversation on Political Ontology

Abstract

Ontological conflicts (conflicts involving different assumptions about “what exists”) are gaining unprecedented visibility because the hegemony of modern ontological assumptions is undergoing a crisis. Such crisis provides the context and rationale for political ontology, a “project” that, emerging from the convergence of indigenous studies, science and technology studies (STS), posthumanism, and political ecology, tackles ontological conflicts as a politicoconceptual (one word) problem. Why? First, because in order to even consider ontological conflicts as a possibility, one must question some of the most profoundly established assumptions in the social sciences, for instance, the assumptions that we are all modern and that the differences that exist are between cultural perspectives on one single reality “out there.” This rules out the possibility of multiple ontologies and what is properly an ontological conflict (i.e., a conflict between different realities). Second, because ontological conflicts pose the challenge of how to account for them without reiterating (and reenacting) the ontological assumption of a reality “out there” being described. To tackle this politicoconceptual problem, I discuss the notion of an all-encompassing modernity and its effects, present the political ontology project, and offer a story of the present moment where the project makes sense.