From essence back to existence: Anthropology beyond the ontological turn

Introduction

Over the last decade or so, the notion of ontology has gained new prominence within anthropology and related disciplines. In an amalgamation of in vogue theorists, such as Labour, Deleuze, and Viveiros de Castro, a body of theory has emerged that has made it fashionable to positively argue for distinct and incommensurable worlds, and for the merit of reintroducing ideas of radical alterity and essentialism into anthropology (cf. Henare et al., 2007: 2; Holbraad, 2012: 18ff.; Pedersen, 2012: 4). Within this ‘ontological turn’, people, perspectives, ideas and entities are, we are told, not to be understood as merely culturally or socially differentiated from one another, but also different-in-being; not alter as in alternative but as in radical alter – ontologically different in core and kind. By focusing on ontology, the turn thus proposes a ‘multi-realist’ perspective, which, ideally, will allow anthropologists the possibility of understanding otherness without privileging an occidental (‘Euro-American’ ontological) perspective. The ontological turn strives, thus, to grasp difference in a manner that truly recognizes – i.e. both perceives and accepts – alterity and thereby manages to do it ethnographic justice.

The ontological turn is, in this respect, intriguing. Not only does it forcefully argue for the existence of ‘real’, distinct otherness, somehow waiting to be found, it also privileges anthropology as a discipline that holds the key to understanding the world in all its multiplicity, and positions the anthropologist as the very intellectual that is able to access and move between these many incommensurable realities and theorize the insights gained. The perspective is, accordingly, not only presented as an innovative analytical position but also as a counterweight to the last 20 years of nervous post-modern reflexivity and epistemological uncertainty within anthropology, as it bestows ontological certitude upon a discipline otherwise characterized by a radical lack of it.

By being simultaneously ethnographically grounded, theoretically playful and inter-disciplinarily potent, the ontological turn has appealed to and been embraced by significant parts of the anthropological community. It has led to some interesting monographs (see Pedersen, 2011; Holbraad, 2012; Kohn, 2013, as the most obvious examples), and ontology is quickly becoming one of the more popular terms within the discipline, used to designate everything from ideas, to concepts, things, groups and peoples. ¹ Yet, despite its popularity, there is a woeful lack of critical scrutiny of the ontological turn. ² The advocates of the concept are full of praise for its merits, but surprisingly few people have focused more fully on its pros and cons. This article aims to fill this gap by querying the current popularity of the ontological turn within anthropology and reflecting on its positive and negative consequences.

Immanence and effect

Though this article constitutes a critique of the ontological turn and its implications, it stays loyal to its ‘spirit’ by making use of the turn’s analytical modus operandi. By conflating the ontic and the ontological, ‘the turn’ positions itself as anti-logocentric. What ‘is’ has no external point of reference, which means that its meaning should not be sought outside itself but essentially in the thing itself.

In order to do the ontological turn justice we will, then, seek to understand the ontological turn in precisely the same way that the theory proposes that anthropologists should conduct their analyses in general. This means, first of all, taking what is stated at face value: ‘Things are what they are’, the proponents of the ontological turn state (Henare et al., 2007: 7). This ontic, rather than ontological, premise is meant to be recursive, and not merely tautological. It is used to specify that we need to approach our ethnographical data without presuming that they signify, represent, or stand for something other than what they purport to be, i.e. to see them as immanence rather than transcendence. Secondly, the article envisages the consequences that the ontological turn’s ideas have for the discipline, as well as the world that they enter into. Mirroring the turn’s Latourian tendencies we will look at the effects that the ontological turn generates rather than the (undoubtedly noble) intentions behind it (cf. Leach, 2007: 169).

It should be made clear from the start that our criticism is not directed at the ontological turn’s focus on non-human beings, things or concepts but rather at its concomitant view of people. There is, as we shall see, a common conceptual slippage within the ontological turn, whereby the perceived ontological nature of things is transferred implicitly or explicitly onto groups and people, consequently flattening social worlds. The article does not, in other words, offer a general critique of the notion of ontology. It does not engage in a ‘for or against’ debate of the concept, which strikes us as being slightly absurd, but looks at the so-called ‘ontological turn’ as a specific body of theory that seeks to describe what ontologies are and how ‘being’ should be studied. In doing so, the article dwells on the significance of ‘the turn’ within the discipline of anthropology and, not least, its wider effects and potential consequences. More specifically, the article progresses by looking at the primary theoretical points of departure within the ontological turn; the disciplinary ambitions and methodological complications that define it; and, as said, its academic and political implications. While we admire the intellectual ambition and disciplinary enthusiasm of its proponents, we are less enthusiastic about its methodological and theoretical arguments and their ramifications.

Anthropology, ontology and post-humanism

Ontology and the study of ‘being’ have a long history within anthropology. Ideas of what is and how to be have constituted valuable fields of investigation. Most notably, Kapferer’s work on Australian and Sinhalese nationalism (1988) and Jackson’s work on ‘social being’ (1989) stand as fruitful and enlightening examples of the contribution that the perspective on ‘being’ has made. Though theorizing and illuminating ‘ontology’, both of the above works have, however, a humanistic anchoring which distinguishes them from the current ontological turn. The notion of social being is, in Jackson’s work, approached with clear emphases on the relational, inter-subjective and interactional, and grounded in an encompassing humanism. Similarly, working with a ‘soft’ post-Heiddeggerian notion of ontology (see Keane, 2013), Kapferer uses the concept to illuminate politically, historically and socially situated being. Both authors, thus, beautifully describe and explain the manifold of being-in-the-world as humans seek to grasp and anchor the way they are thrown into existence.

The humanism of these earlier debates and perspectives stands in direct opposition to the current ontological turn. Where the former captures difference within a common humanity, the latter moves toward a post-human and post-social investigation of separate worlds and realities. There is, in the ontological turn, not one nature (human) and many cultures (people), but many worlds of separate and incommensurable ontologies, or ‘multiple natures’, as Viveiros de Castro terms it (1998, 2003, 2011). Arguing against a notion of shared humanity, the ontological turn can thus be seen as part of a larger trend in non-representational theory and philosophical post-humanism (Hinchliffe, 1999; Miah, 2007; Whatmore, 2004; Haraway, 2004; Latour, 2007). It inscribes itself into a body of theory that is focused on rethinking ‘the human’ as well as ‘the social’ within the social sciences, and challenges the assumptions that empirical material can or should be understood in relation to ulterior causes, hidden forces or related to overarching spheres of commonality – such as, for example, ‘humanity’.

What defines ‘the turn’, proclaimed in ‘the ontological turn’, is, accordingly, not the use of the concept of ontology, with its insistence on ‘taking the field seriously’ (as if others do not), its focus on things/materiality, animals, spirits and other non-human forms, and its desire to study people through their own conceptual universe. In fact, all of the above are common aspects of anthropology and go back to the beginnings of the discipline. The main propositions within the ontological turn are classical anthropological virtues. What sets ‘the turn’ apart is its fondness for the adjective ‘radical’ and its ensuing call for radical essentialism and post-humanism. ³ Just as concepts and things cannot be understood through reference to ulterior spheres of meaning, but should be researched in terms of what they are in situ, so people and their endeavours, the ontological turn advocates, should not be understood through an underlying, generic notion of what it is to be human or through reference to social parameters; thus, it mirrors Haraway’s Latourian paraphrase ‘we have never been human’ (2004: 2). The ‘after’, in the post-human dimensions, is a move away from human differences as sociocultural variations of a common humanity, and toward a focus on radical alterity; from different worldviews to different worlds altogether.

Worlds apart

Exactly the question of whether we inhabit ontologically different worlds or not has recently been the focus of a range of different publications, panel debates, symposiums and seminars. In publications entitled ‘Ontology Is Just Another Word for Culture’ (Venkatesan, 2010), ‘Worlds Otherwise’ (Alberti et al., 2011) and ‘Comparative Relativism’ (Jensen et al., 2011), the proponents of the ontological turn propose that anthropology abandon its humanist anchoring and replace it with a post-social/post-human focus on ontology. Besides the obvious Latourianism of the motion, the anthropological anchoring of the idea is primarily found in Viveiros de Castro’s work on ‘perspectivism’, building on his ethnographic work in the Amazon (1998), in which he states:

Anthropology faces a double task. First, it must construct a concept of seriousness (a way of taking things seriously) that is not tied to the notion of belief or of any other ‘propositional attitudes’ that have representations as their object. The anthropologist’s idea of seriousness must not be tied to the hermeneutics of allegorical meanings or to the immediative illusion of discursive echolalia. Anthropologists must allow that ‘visions’ are not beliefs, not consensual views, but rather worlds seen objectively: not worldviews, but worlds of vision. (Viveiros de Castro, 2011: 133)

The main idea in Viveiros de Castro’s work is intriguing. Focusing on shamans in the Amazonian jungle, he points out that we need to shift from an understanding of a shared human nature generating many cultures, to an idea of a common Culture generating many natures. Culture becomes the common denominator whereas nature is the differentiator. This is, as Viveiros de Castro promotes it, an inversion of the Occidental philosophical bias wherein the human species (Nature) is the common potentia behind our specific human presentia (culture). Some may object to the differentiation and ask if this is not simply a shamanistic ideal, an occult inversion, and thus a specific perspective that is purposefully differentiated from the perceptions of the majority, non-shaman population. ⁴ Or argue, on a meta-level, that the focus already exists within the Culture/cultures divide (i.e. Culture as shared and cultures as differentiated). In any case, Viveiros de Castro’s work on Amazonian shamanism has, within the ontological turn, been elevated to a general anthropological perspective. ⁵ It is taken, in a process of reverse ethnocentrism, to be applicable to the world at large, with the important difference being that the ontological turn appears to be less interested in the monistic Culture, the virtual affinity, which Viveiros de Castro mentions as encompassing various perspectives (and which we so desperately need to have properly explained and unfolded in more than isolated sentences), and more preoccupied with the naturalization of difference that is made possible within his perspective on perspectives.

Viveiros de Castro’s lead was, in any case, followed by the influential introduction to Thinking through Things (Henare et al., 2007), an introduction which is often promoted as the very point of departure of the ontological turn, in which the three editors (Henare, Holbraad, and Wastel) in identical manner argue that:

[T]he presumption of natural unity and cultural difference – epitomised in the anthropos – is no longer tenable. If we are to take others seriously, instead of reducing their articulations to mere ‘cultural perspectives’ or ‘beliefs’ (i.e. worldviews), we can conceive them as enunciations of different ‘worlds’ or ‘natures’. (Henare et al., 2007: 10, emphasis in original)

Perspectivism is, in other words, hailed as an analytical point of departure that is seen to provide the possibility for fully understanding different realities in all their alterity (2007: 10). Where anthropology has traditionally argued for multiple realities by focusing on different ‘cultural worlds’, such a view of ‘variance within unity’ is not seen as radical enough for the ontological turn’s idea of different worlds, and is thus criticized for understanding cultures ‘merely’ as versions of a predefined shared human substance. Such ideas of cultural worlds are seen as figured on a background of preconceived similarity, i.e. Culture, and the approach is therefore only capable of creating knowledge of others’ knowledge, rather than delving properly into describing essentially different worlds and being:

The assumption … has always been that anthropology is an episteme – indeed, the episteme of others’ episteme, which we call cultures … [Anthropologists] assume that both anthropology and its object are epistemic in character. If we are all living in the same world … then the task left to social scientists is to elucidate the various systemic formulations of knowledge (epistemologies) that offer different accounts of that one world. [Because of this, anthropology] cannot but be a study of the different ways the world (the one world of Nature) is represented by different people [i.e. worldviews]. (Henare et al., 2007: 9, emphasis in original)

The plurality of ‘post’

This ambition of the unmediated view, where we may perceive difference without a predefined idea of commonality, becomes even clearer if we look at some of the other theoretical bedfellows of the ontological turn. Where Viveiros de Castro’s multi-naturalist perspectivism stands as a cornerstone in the development of the perspective, the intellectual baggage of the French sociologist Bruno Latour features no less evidently.

Although polemic, and tiresomely focused on disregarding the intellectual merit of his predecessors, Latour’s objections to classical sociology are anthropologically interesting as they build on micro-sociological and often core anthropological insights. His work generally echoes through the ontological turn, yet perhaps most visibly stands his attempt to counteract what he defines as a problematic sociological tendency; namely, that sociology, or what he terms ‘sociologist[s] of the social’, have predefined their empirical object of study and work with and through an a priori idea of the concept. ‘The social’ is, he says, an object of interest, which has been constructed and defined before sociologists actually enter into the field (Latour, 2007). Instead of allowing them to be caught by surprise and approach the field eyes-wide-open, so to speak, sociologists engage in the field seeking to illuminate variations of predetermined ideas about sociality and society. They approach the empirical already knowing what they are looking for, subsequently using their material to exhume predetermined sociological variables such as race, gender, class, etc., and pondering, in their analysis, the particular ways in which these core variables relate to each other. The advance is, in Latour’s eyes, partial, teleological, and tautological. We should instead dare, he says, commit ourselves to the field without believing that we know what is at stake at all, thereby letting the field become the principal raconteur (Latour, 2007).

If we as anthropologists think that this sounds like something we have heard before we are of course completely right. In Latour’s own words:

Anthropologists, who had to deal with pre-moderns and were not requested as much to imitate natural sciences, were more fortunate and allowed their actors to deploy a much richer world. In many ways, ANT [actor-network theory] is simply an attempt to allow the members of contemporary society to have as much leeway in defining themselves as that offered by ethnographers [… whereby] sociology could finally become as good as anthropology. (Latour, 2007: 41)

In relation to the ontological turn the connection should, however, be clear. Where Latour argues against ‘the social’ as a predefined, shared condition, the ontological turn argues, in identical ways, against ‘the human’, in what we may call paraphrasing Latour himself, a translation without transformation. In both cases the argument boils down to a classical anthropological ambition – viz. to secure that the knowledge one gains from the field does not merely reflect one’s implicit presumptions. This is, of course, a pivotal anthropological point of departure and accordingly not where the ontological turn separates itself from ‘ordinary’ anthropology. It does so in its idea of the degree of the Other and otherness: by not being ‘merely’ a study of alterity, but of radical alterity.

However, the question remains, what is won or lost with this re-emergent focus on radical essentialism and radical alterity? The ideas may, at first, appear fruitful and the focus on different realities or worlds alluring, yet, as we shall see, a range of methodological and political complications emerge when undertaking an analysis that is both post-social and post-human – led via notions of exotic, essentialist and radical difference and filtered through non-representational theory. Where the methodological problems centre on the very possibility of carrying out the project proposed, the political problems are of a more potential nature, focused on the possible effects of radically post-human anthropology. Both are, however, heightened by the ontological turn’s fetishization of otherness and lack of reflexivity.

Incommensurability and methodological aporia

First and foremost, the anthropological project, dressed in new ontological garments, appears to run into a number of methodological problems. The radicalizing of differences, rather than the more encompassing ‘difference that makes a difference’, as Gregory Bateson would have phrased it (2000: 459), forces the ontological turn down a methodological dead end. It leads us to a problem of translation or what we may, in broader Batesonian terms, call communication. Being both post-human and post-social, the other is, as said, ‘radically’ so within the ontological turn. It is of another world and kind, making somewhat difficult any act of inter-ontological translation or interpretation. If we are to accept the claim that the worlds we study are of an ontological and incommensurable nature, then we need a convincing description of the ‘trans-specific similarity’ (Viveiros de Castro, 2012: 114) that will enable us to mediate them, and allow us to engage ethnographically in these radically singular realms at all.

The problem is that the difficult discussion of what we actually share (as well as when and how we share it) is dwarfed in both Viveiros de Castro's and the ontological turn’s highlighting of difference. It is mentioned in passing, yet generally left out of the picture as radical difference is granted theoretical and analytical primacy. While the main idea behind the ontological turn may, thus, be fascinating, and the focus on radically other realities or worlds enticing, it appears, upon closer inspection, to pose a range of methodological and analytical problems that actually rob us of the possibility of grasping radical, post-humanist otherness at all. The turn provokes one to ask: with what register can we anthropologically perceive and describe such difference when we have rejected any notions of commonality? In Jackson’s words (1989: 5), ⁷ how does one ‘connect’ with these ontologically distinct and separate worlds? ‘By diminishing the possibility of a shared ontology’ the proponents of the turn, Geismar rightly states, ‘diminish the possibility of equal cross-cultural exegetical exchange’ (2011: 7). Rather than doing the field justice, which is one of the declared goals of the turn, such a theoretical point of departure appears to negate the necessary element of mutuality that is a premise for doing ethnography at all, making the ontological endeavour fundamentally a tale about the observing anthropologist postulating a radical alterity he/she has no possibility of grasping. In short, where it becomes tremendously hard to take their idea about ‘taking the field seriously’ seriously is in the very difficulties in carrying out a radical essentialist, post-social and post-humanist ethnography.

How the proponents of the ontological turn are able to connect to incommensurable worlds, and translate them into understandable anthropological text, remains a mystery. The ‘anthropological proponents of strong ontology’ seem unproblematically to understand the radical alterity they describe just as ‘their readers [seem] unsurprised at this’ (Keane, 2012: 188), yet how does anthropology connect, how and why did we acquire the ability and, not least, why do all ontologies apparently converge in and resonate with the theories of Deleuze – the turn’s philosopher par excellence? The idea of multiple worlds instead of world-views obviously and purposely negates the notion of common humanity, yet is a certain commonality not a methodological precondition for our research? ⁸

If a lion could speak

How will anthropology study ‘the radical other’, if the ontological turn’s post-humanism and post-social radical essentialism is to be taken at face value? The possibility of doing so is not clearly explained within the body of work that constitutes the theoretical movement, as the ontological turn merely touches upon mutuality and commonality in passing (Viveiros de Castro, 2012: 114). What ‘connects’ ontologies is relegated to the shadows of the theory’s focus on difference. It figures as a theoretical position rather than something that merits theoretical elaboration.

The most common answer, when posing the question directly to the spokesmen for the ontological turn, is ‘via classical ethnographic, participatory observational-based fieldwork’ (cf. Holbraad in Alberti et al., 2011: 908). But there are quite a few problems in the idea that one can turn to classical ethnography when studying radical alterity in a post-humanist manner. Fieldwork builds precisely upon the idea that we can approach each other, communicate our differences and understand them (more or less successfully) in a way that enable us to meaningfully comprehend Otherness – thus, that we at the end of the road do share a communicative register or empathic nexus of some kind by which we are able to connect. It does not seem very post-human to think that our possibility of understanding the ontologically different can be found in a shared communicative ability – in language, the bedrock of humanism. And even if we share a communicative ability would we not then, if we take the ontological turn’s analytical claims seriously, quickly land at Wittgenstein’s famous assertion that ‘if a Lion could talk, we would not understand him’ (1953: II: xi, 223)?

Viveiros de Castro seems to be aware of the difficulty and engages directly with the Wittgensteinian problem (2012: 3). The solution to it lies, for Viveiros de Castro, in a Deleuzian installation of a common monist culture from where different perspectives arise, and which the anthropologist, just like the shaman, is able to move within. The turn then places the anthropologist on a par with shamans (whom they also study) as the type of ‘people’ who are able to mediate and translate different perspectives and ontologies. Though this may at first strike us as flattering, and at second thought as somewhat presumptuous, the connection logically rests on an underlying idea of similitude rather than incommensurability. Yet sadly this dimension of mutuality is, as said, the part of Viveiros de Castro’s work that is relatively unexplored within the ontological turn, and directly negated in its post-humanist argument.

The difficult argument has, as such, been left unmade. By forcefully emphasizing dissimilarity, without articulating commonality, the ontological turn leaves a range of questions unanswered. Indeed, radical difference, of the very ontological kind, is difficult to imagine as shared, and if it can be shared, it does not seem all that radically different, nor post-humanist, but perhaps ‘just’ different … ? It appears difficult to have it both ways. The perspective’s representatives are themselves aware of the possible problem; however, they do not, we think, succeed in solving the puzzle:

An ontological turn in anthropological analysis … [and its] mysterious-sounding notion of ‘many worlds’ is so dissimilar to the familiar idea of a plurality of worldviews precisely because it turns on the humble … admission that our concepts (not our ‘representations’) must, by definition, be inadequate to translate different ones. (Henare et al., 2007: 12)

Ontography and the dearth of reflexivity

In spite – or perhaps because – of this key problematic, Holbraad has actually tailored a methodological toolbox to fit the perspective, although one is forced to do a bit of ‘digging’ in order to unearth it. What is most striking about it is its different take on the ethnographic project, which becomes, once again, ‘radically particularist’ (Boas without Bastian?). It is called ‘ontography’ (cf. Viveiros de Castro, 2003; Holbraad in Alberti et al., 2011, 2012), and in it, the focus is no longer on ‘people’, ethnos, or ‘humans’, anthropos (Holbraad in Alberti et al., 2011: 908) – even though every proponent of the ontological turn mentioned so far unproblematically talks about people, both individuals and groups, when doing their [ethno]graphies and going about their [anthropo]logies. The focus is instead strictly on ontology. According to Holbraad, such a study should be carried out in the following fashion (which we have shortened):

Step 1. Describe your ethnographic and archaeological material as well as you can, using all the concepts at your disposal to represent it as accurately as possible.

First of all, we may ask what a true representation is and what defines the underlying logic that the method apparently works through. Who does the talking and description, and what does it say about radical alterity or the Other with a capital ‘O’? In many ways the ontological turn, and its ontic claim that ‘things are what they are’, seems almost like positivist empiricism, supposing that ontologies are out there to be grasped in their proper state. Second, this becomes clearer still when we note that what appears to be sacrificed at the altar of the ontological turn is the issue of reflexivity and the methodological nuance that followed in the wake of the reflexive turn. Granted, the focus on reflexivity at times became a bit narcissistic, if not solipsistic, focusing more on the ethnographer than the informants. Yet the move toward ontology, as presented in the ontological turn, leads us back to a notion of empirical material as pre-existing entities for the ethnographer to discover via fieldwork and expeditions (Bunkenborg and Pedersen, 2012). The ontological turn, thus, drifts into a pre-quantum theory empiricism where the many insights of the reflexive turn are omitted and more nuance is lost than found ⁹ – a loss that is not only methodologically problematic but also politically so, which we will return to later in the article. The notion of some representations being ‘true’ seems as problematic as the idea of eliminating contradiction.

Doubt?

The underlying idea of truth and certainty (see also Holbraad, 2012) leads us to another area of unease with the theoretical premises of the ontological turn. The recursive point of departure is, as mentioned, founded upon the idea that what people tell us about their world and its constitution should not be interpreted with reference to other spheres of meaning but accepted as stated. The ontological turn becomes an argument for pure indexicality with an almost one-to-one relationship between signifiés and signifiants – or rather, between what is meant and what is expressed. This is difficult to imagine, and probably even more difficult to find empirically, if only because uncertainty and ambivalence are such common parts of life exactly because language is not exhaustive of reality (Grue, 2012: 9; Wittgenstein, 1999) – and thus, that things are never only what they are stated to be. The turn’s ontic argument, that ‘things are what they are’ and that they can be conceptually grasped without the need for representational mediation, appears fundamentally undermined by people’s frequently expressed doubt and ambivalence about the nature of the real they inhabit. ¹⁰ Stating ‘what is’ may, on the contrary, be seen as an imposition of singularity, an act of power defining the state of what is, which is why such speech acts are so often contested and debated. The ontic argument that ‘things are what they are’ amounts in the ontological turn to a fallacy of misplaced concreteness leaving little room for such common sentiments as doubt, ambivalence and ambiguity. Yet are exactly these phenomena not common companions of articulation of faith, singularity, and certainty (cf. Kierkegaard, 1895), as attempts to define ‘what is’ are commonly haunted by ‘what if’, extrapolated into its multitude potentialities, negotiated and contested from without or within, introspectly or extrospectly, via our imagination (Vigh, 2006a, 2006b)?

Statements and definitions of ‘what is’ are not met with blind faith in our own work (Vigh, 2011). Rather, such impositions of meaning are questioned, called into doubt and investigated for hidden intentions and interests. They are interpreted (!) as a calling into being that is judged in relation to the fields of interest that they are seen to stem from – investigated for the intentions within them. This, consequently, brings perspectives back to the etymology of the concept as per specere, looking through or into – rather than Viveiro de Castro’s version of tunnel vision. Perspectives, in our fieldwork, thus, commonly take the form of ‘suspicion’ (literally ‘looking underneath’), ‘probes’ (a searching and wandering vision), and ‘inspection’, as what is stated or defined are regularly seen as attempts at ontologizing rather than accepted as ontologies. We may, in other words, object to the recursive credo of things being what they are by pointing out that such worlds of pure iconicity would leave little room for skepticism and ambiguity, and seem to nullify the need for tropes, metaphor and metonymy.

Furthermore, the methodological modus operandi, described above, solves none of the problems of connecting that can be found in the belief in a radically post-humanist anthropology, but rather seems to reaffirm them. It does, however, reveal another general characteristic of the ontological turn; a trait that is directly relatable to our next objection to the ‘ontographic’ anthropological project, namely the aim of the anthropological endeavour. It becomes clear, when reading through the works of the proponents of the ontological turn, that the epitome of ‘taking the field seriously’ seems primarily to amount to using the field as a conceptual trampoline in order to generate new theory. The ontological turn has, without doubt, spurred an abundance of interesting theoretical perceptions and the body of theory is ripe with examples of how ethnographic material can be used to further our philosophical insights, yet it is also clear that exactly this is what drives empirical engagement. The empirical material serves a theoretical purpose, and claiming that we live in many separate worlds enables the proponents of the ontological turn to approach the field in a classical Strathernian manner, which takes the field seriously as a theoretical/conceptual arsenal: a pool of alternative ideas for building theory. ‘Taking the field seriously’ is not directed toward the world around us, or the needs of the people we study, but to the academic needs of ontographers (cf. Geismar, 2011).

Within the ontological turn difference is used as a theoretical font, a potential source of creative theorizing that serves as an instrument for destabilizing our own ways of thinking. Ethnography primarily performs, it seems, the task of strengthening our theory building. As Casper Bruun Jensen states, in his embrace of the ontological turn, what its proponents search for is an ethnographical ‘golden event’ from which innovative thinking can arise (Jensen et al., 2011: 4). The ethnographic ‘epiphany’ that Jensen argues for, is – once again – a classical anthropological endeavour. Building on Lévi-Strauss, we may approach ‘the Other’ or ‘alterity’ as a possibility of discovering conceptual insights; allowing emic ideas, concepts and definitions to unfold themselves enables the empirical material to serve as a point of departure for destabilizing the philosophical ground that we stand on. The ambition is not specific to the ontological turn, but characterizes the way that anthropology has traditionally furthered its analytical apparatus and developed its theoretical tool-box. To a certain extent, we all search for golden ethnographical events, and wish to make the most of them when we find them. Yet, in much anthropology these ethnographic insights are put to more use as they feed back into our surroundings in various ways. The point is that the way we, as anthropologists, use ethnographic material matters as it enters back into the larger world that we are part of. Is our only aspiration to cry out ‘Eureka!’ to other anthropologists, or do we aspire to have a wider field of intervention and use(fulness)? Whichever way we choose to answer the question, anthropology engages in and is engaged by the surrounding world and becomes part of our surroundings in intended or unintended ways, which means that we need, perhaps, to take our empirical material and fields more seriously than merely seeing them as vehicles for advancing theoretical innovation.

Ontology, othering and political practice

It should be clear by now that although we recognize the theoretical ambitions of the ontological turn, we are wary of its theoretical premises, practicalities and consequences. What we propose to do in the rest of the article is to further explore the turn’s positivist inclinations and ponder its effects in terms of politics, power, and reflexivity. By flattening social reality, bounding and rendering worlds internally commensurate yet externally incommensurable, the turn raises a number of concerns that we have struggled with before in anthropology, some of which are more than merely theoretical or methodological but also potentially political.

While we may question the theory’s premises, it appears equally important to question its possible effects. First of all, we may note that it is puzzling that such a large part of our discipline is currently theoretically arguing for ‘worlds apart’, when the political world, relating to the global distribution of ideas, resources and power, is becoming increasingly interconnected. However, it is even more perplexing that radical essentialism and radical alterity are treated as neutral analytical perspectives and techniques despite their history as socio-political phenomena, and their devastating effect within a shared political world. From a historical perspective essentialism, radical alterity and exotification are not benign theoretical stances. They constitute, on the contrary, some of the primary ways that anthropology has been put to use outside of the academy for all the wrong reasons and in all the wrong ways.

Reading through the turn, ontologies, of whatever kind, are somewhat vaguely described as specks of being configured from a Deleuzian soup of virtuality, a non-hierarchized plane of pure possibility. Yet though we may argue, speculatively, ¹¹ that being and essence sprout from a plane of virtuality, our academically sanctified and empowered constructions of Others and ontologies enter into social reality with sometimes unfortunate and destructive effect. The flattening of social worlds that is achieved by the removal of intentionality and transcendence causes the ontological turn to lose sight of the power – routinized, habituated or directly imposed – at play in defining what ‘is’. Yet it equally seems to leave them blind to how anthropological constructions of essential being and otherness – in themselves definitions of what ‘is’ – are constantly at risk of adding to radical othering, exoticism and essentialization. For political anthropologists some of the key conceptual elements within the ontological turn do not evoke images of intellectual gain and theoretical play but of well-worn and oft-used political technologies.

Arguing for essential difference and naturalized worlds has troublesome political histories, as ‘being’ rarely just ‘is’, but is part of a larger struggle to define. In other words, the ontological turn may assist us in taking seriously the political ideas and claims of people, but doing so by emphasizing immanence and essence puts it at risk of contributing to, rather than solving, processes of ontologizing and othering. This, however, does not seem to worry the ontographers; partly because the focus on ontology is seen as a specific way of gaining theoretical insight, and partly because such potentially negative effects are related to the shared human world, which the perspective struggles to deconstruct in its theoretical constitution. Either way, it seems important to recognize that the knowledge we as anthropologists produce (even if it is seen to refer to different realities, natures or worlds) enters into our world(s) in unintended and uncontrollable ways. In other words, while naturalizing difference may playfully further our anthropological theories, and we can rejoice at the analytical potential that notions of radical alterity may bring about, we may add that academically striving to define something as ‘exotic’ (Holbraad in Venkatesan, 2010: 185), can forcefully introduce distance into a world shared by the very people deemed ontologically and incommensurably different.

We often lament the lack of influence that anthropology has in the world, yet, at a closer look, exactly this creation of distance and otherness is one of the most forceful ways that anthropology has been put to political use – in ways we do not necessarily wish to support. If we look at colonialism, racism, and xenophobic culturalism, anthropology has been, and still has the potential to be, tremendously influential. As Rapport and Overing phrase it:

Exoticism plays into the politician’s hand by reinforcing and contributing to … antipathies toward other peoples of the world. Culture and difference have become the most powerful political paradigms fuelling action, such as ‘terrorism’ and ‘counter-terrorism’, in the modern world. We know all to well the dangers of these notions of ethnic purity and ethnic separation, where a common strategy of nation-states and anti-state movements alike is the fixing of ethnic identities … within territorial and other categorical boundaries. (Rapport and Overing, 2000: 118, emphasis in original)

Ontologically dumped

The ontological turn, it seems, runs the risk of doing the work of the culturalism that its proponents claim it wishes to be distinguished from. Where the concept of culture was originally presented as a way to describe differences between people, with a shared human cultural faculty as its cornerstone, we have over the last 20 years of ‘culturalism’ seen how cultures have become naturalized and understood as distinct and incompatible worlds in themselves, thus designating more than ‘mere’ representations. Putting it differently, culture has gone from epistemology to ontology. It has become ‘ontologically dumped’ (cf. Hastrup, 2004: 11) changed from its relativistic, epistemological starting point to being a way of positioning difference between people and groups as naturally, geographically or religiously bounded entities (cf. Malkki, 1992).

The ontological turn can, in this perspective, be seen as the most recent stage in a longer process of the ontologization of culture. Though ontology, as is glides from defining things, concepts and ideas to denoting people, groups and entire civilizations, is not necessarily articulated as rooted and territorialized (Pedersen, 2013), it is nonetheless theoretically constructed as naturalized and essentialized, internally coherent and bounded, as incommensurable worlds. In this perspective the current turn seems to be an academic example of exactly the process Hastrup described a few years ago. It is not a move away from this process, but an intensification of it. Ontology may not be ‘just another word for culture’ (Venkatesan, 2010), yet all the critical questions raised in relation to the reified concept of culture seem to be pertinent and unanswered in relation to the ontographer’s use of the concept.

Most obviously, stands the critique of reified culture as incommensurable, bounded, essential and undifferentiated, all of which happen to be part and parcel of the very definition of ontology within the turn. However, the more nuanced questions of power, posed to the reified concept of culture, can equally be posed to the turn's understanding of ontology (cf. Ortner, 1984; Nader, 1997; Wright, 1998). The turn, as a theory that flattens social reality and renders it internally consistent and transparent, runs, as said, the risk of being blind to the political nature of what ‘is’ and overlooking its unvoiced or silenced contestations. ¹² Perspectivism and ontologies may, as Viveiros de Castro argues, be aimed at ‘working to create the conditions for the … ontological self-determination of people’ (2003: 3) and strive to let people themselves articulate and determine their being (once again a traditional anthropological project dressed in ontological garments). Yet who defines ‘the people’ or the given perspective or ontology, and how are such definitions socially differentiated, distributed and legitimated; in short, what are the power issues in such definitional practices?

The answers are not easily found within the turn itself. Perhaps because power is, in itself, an ontology within the turn’s perspective, or perhaps because just what an ontology is, is generally loosely defined (or even undefined), leaving us with very little insight into its constitution. Pedersen, for instance, defines ‘ontology’, in a great book squarely focused on the term, in a footnote, as ‘any theories or concepts of what exists’ (2011: 35). One could ask what the distinctive difference between worldviews and views-of-being is, in this perspective, as the definition appears to pull ontology toward something it wants not to be by defining it as that which is recognized as existing by a given ‘theory’. However, the definition goes on to declare that it is ‘crucial’ not to see these ontologies as ‘simply linguistic or mental (ideational) phenomena’ (p. 35), as they also constitute concrete sizes – things, shapes, and practices ‘in their own right’ (p. 35). The movement from non-human to humans, things to thoughts, concepts to communities, within the turn’s use of the concept of ontology, leaves us in doubt about the concept’s boundaries and applicability. While the expansive significance of the concept may be seen as a sign of its capability by the proponents of the turn, such totality of meaning somewhat causes the concept to lose its analytical potency, as it diminishes its ability to differentiate and discriminate, and, once again like the reified concept of culture, puts it at risk of imploding under the weight of its omnisignificance (cf. Baumann, 1996).

The problem with the definition is that it becomes tremendously unclear what the concept covers, as it is stretched along a gamut including things, practices, concepts, ideas, perspectives and, not least, the relations between them, as well as being constantly evoked when referring to the various people who ‘think’ all of these. Much as with the reified concept of culture, there seems to be a conceptual slippage at play where ontology glides from denoting non-humans, things and concepts to denoting groups or people such as, for example, shamans, magicians, protesters and migrants, etc., who are seen to have a unique perspective on the world, and thus a certain ontology, to ever larger groups, such as religious and ethnic communities and strange, and strangely unproblematized, wider regional delineations such as ‘Euro-American’ and ‘Amerindian’. ¹³ The latter appears, in Tylorian ways, to delineate ‘civilizational’ ways of being: delineations that mostly seem to exist inside the ontographer’s worldview, yet which are articulated as empirical entities in their own right. This is vividly portrayed in Viveiros de Castro’s notion of the Amerindian (a term which leaves us uncertain about the aspect of ontological self-determination that is proclaimed as central to his work), used to refer to both a people and a way of thought. And it is just as clear in the ever-present Euro-American background, which seems to provide the contra-identificatory ontological bedrock from where alterity is figured within the ontological turn.¹⁴ The notion of ‘the Euro-American’ appears to be essential for the ontological turn as it frames the ontographer’s object of study by providing the background against which ontology and alterity can be defined.

Closure

Though we recognize and admire the disciplinary ambitions and aspirations of the ontological turn, this article has raised a number of critical questions in regards to the turn’s theoretical points of departure, methodological possibilities and analytical consequences. We have, over the course of the article, strived to illuminate the ontological turn in a way that does it justice, by staying loyal to its own analytical modus operandi, taking its statements at face value and looking at the effects it produces rather than the intentions behind it. The article, nonetheless, falls short of encompassing the nuance of the work that can be labelled under its banner. This may be indicative of the flawed nature of the premises that define the turn. It is not, in any event, the product of any ill-will, but of two primary reasons. First of all, it becomes clear, when reading through the work that aligns itself with the theory, that its theoretical points of departure and analytical guidelines stand as trajectories that are not fully travelled by its creators or followers, making it difficult to describe their analytical merit and potential. Second, proponents of the theory seem to nuance their theoretical positions in ways that, at times, contradict their initial positions and perspectives – what Heywood and Laidlaw have termed ‘the ontological u-turn’ (2013) – making it difficult to encompass the (at times contradictory) complexity of the turn within the scope of an article.

Despite having voiced a number of concerns of a more philosophical nature, it should be clear by now that our discomfort with the ontological turn is primarily related to the theory’s essentialist bend and slide into a radically post-human study of groups and peoples. While we may appreciate the common anthropological aim to learn from alterity, we are weary of the way that social reality is reduced to ontology – be it in the shape of people, groups, ideas, concept-objects or things – within the turn, and of the specific version of post-humanism that this reduction helps promote. We do not think that the merit of anthropology lies in translating ethnography into arcane philosophy, but in crafting accounts that are able to describe, make sense of, and educe themes from a world that is multiple, entangled, yet shared. The constant installation of ‘radical’, as a distancing mechanism between various perspectives and beings, leaves us uncertain about the analytical applicability and consequences of the ontological standpoint.

By re-articulating many of the traditional strengths of anthropology, the ontological turn carries with it many well-worn yet wonderful insights. However, its insistence on ‘radicalizing’ the same standard anthropological perspectives seems to foundationally distort them in negative ways. As we have aimed to show, an approach that sees difference as radical, whilst deconstructing human commonality, runs, first of all, into methodological problems; second, into the problem of silencing issues of disagreement, dominance, and doubt in both the academic and emic definitions of being; and thirdly, into a range of negative unintended consequences when entering into the surrounding world.

Perhaps we worry too much. However, though ontologizing human difference can be used analytically, we need to ponder at what risk and cost? Our difficulties with the ontological turn are, thus, not related to their view on, and interest in, non-human matters such as ‘things’, which can be ontologized indefinitely: we do not doubt that people can ‘think through things’ (Henare et al., 2007), as material culture studies have capably demonstrated, and we are full of respect for the way that the proponents of the ontological turn show how they do so. Yet anthropology seems currently, with theoretical arsenal from Latour’s call for a ‘flat analysis’, to slip into seeing things as people and people as things. The focus on ‘things being what they are’, immanence not transcendence, allows the turn to deal with being in its specific articulation, understood literally as its spoken definition. Such articulations are, subsequently, extrapolated into different worlds and incommensurable ontologies, in a fallacy of treating a part or moment as a whole. The consequence is that the turn flattens and bounds social reality in a manner that obscures the doubt, ambiguity and contestation of the articulations of truth and impositions of being that it evokes, and this is both methodologically and politically problematic.

Finally, it seems that proponents of the ontological turn are able to highlight difference only by implicitly framing it in relation to overarching entities such as Euro-American cosmologies, ontologies or ways of thought, as they constitute the backdrop on which alter is postulated and difference identified. In this way, it seems that the radical alterity it wishes to capture is a self-created nebula somewhat similar to a spot on the cornea.