Multiple Ontologies and the Problem of the Body in History (original) (raw)
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Ontology matters in archaeology and anthropology. People, things and posthumanism
These “Thin Partitions”: Bridging the Growing Divide between Cultural Anthropology and Archaeology, 2017
The relations between archaeology and anthropology have been debated from time to time over the years. There has been both antagonism and repeated calls for collaboration and theoretical exchange between the two brothers in arms. From an outside point of view, the sometimes heated debate might seem curious since both fields share a similar goal: to understand human diversity and the ways in which people live and interact in different worlds. Yarrow (2010) and lucas (2010) have recently argued that the perception of fields of anthropology and archaeology has always centered on a lack in archaeology—the absent subject—which has created an asymmetry that is diffcult to bridge. indeed, working only with things and traces of action (archaeology) is not the same as working with things and people (anthropology). However, this distinction is based upon an ontology in which people and the material world are perceived as belonging to separate spheres (culture and nature). In recent years, we have witnessed the emergence of neomaterialism in the humanist and social sciences, which suggests a redistribution of action from the realm of the human to the material world. It is, however, not simply a question of associating agency with things and objects, but also a displacement of the human as a logical point of departure (anthropocentrism) to perceive the human and the nonhuman as ontologically inseparable. A question that arises is whether such a nonanthropocentric perspective that focuses more on the material world might marginalize the importance of interviews and observing social practice typical of traditional anthropological eldwork. Archaeology is also affected by such a turn of perspective because it includes a different view of the material as not only a product of culture but rather as a co-creator of culture. indeed, such a displacement of the human as a natural and given point of departure certainly has ramifications for both anthropology and archaeology. The question is, how far-reaching will the consequences of such a shift be? Will it bring anthropology and archaeology closer together, perhaps even conflating them, or will the two disciplines diverge even further? in either case, it will affect the way we study human societies, whether they are contemporary or in the past. In this chapter I explore this varied and heterogeneous body of material-oriented research and point out certain areas where the relations between archaeology and anthropology may be affected.
“Worlds Otherwise”: Archaeology, Anthropology, and Ontological Difference
Current Anthropology, 2011
The debate concerning ontology is heating up in the social sciences. How is this impacting anthropology and archaeology? What contributions can these disciplines make? Following a session at the 2010 Theoretical Archaeology Group conference at Brown University (“‘Worlds Otherwise’: Archaeology, Theory, and Ontological Difference,” convened by Ben Alberti and Yvonne Marshall), a group of archaeologists and anthropologists have continued to discuss the merits, possibilities, and problems of an ontologically oriented approach. The current paper is a portion of this larger conversation—a format we maintain here because, among other things, it permits a welcome level of candor and simplicity. In this forum we present two questions (written by Alberti and Witmore, along with the concluding comments) and the responses of five of the Theoretical Archaeology Group session participants. The first question asks why we think an ontological approach is important to our respective fields; the second, building upon the first set of responses, asks authors to consider the difference that pluralizing ontology might make and whether such a move is desirable given the aims of archaeology and anthropology. While several angles on ontology come through in the conversation, all share an interest in more immanent understandings that arise within specific situations and that are perhaps best described as thoroughly entangled rather than transcendent and/ or oppositional in any straightforward sense.
Anthropology and What There Is: Reflections on "Ontology"
The Cambridge Journal of Anthropology, 2012
This piece reflects on two 'ontological turns': the recent anthropological movement and that occasioned earlier in analytic philosophy by the work of W. V. O. Quine. I argue that the commitment entailed by 'ontology' is incompatible with the laudable aim of the 'ontological turn' in anthropology to take seriously radical difference and alterity.
Taming the Ontological Wolves: Learning from Iroquoian Effigy Objects (American Anthropologist 2019)
American Anthropologist, 2019
Currently on the rise in archaeology, ontological approaches promise new ways of engaging with alterity of various kinds-different people, different times, different forms, even different worlds. This work promises to aid in critical reflections on the arbitrary nature of the Western gaze and to recognize and incorporate non-Western knowledge in new manners. There are, however, several challenges to address. First, as noted by several leading thinkers in this area, the present range of ontological approaches include contrasting theoretical underpinnings. Second, these approaches are rarely considered in relation to the practical challenges of specific archaeological cases, particularly contexts of settler colonialism in which practitioners are attuned to the potential colonial nature of their work. I divide ontologically engaged archaeologies into three related but distinct groups and use a small museum assemblage of seventeenth-century Wendat materials from Ontario to help think through these three theories. In comparing approaches, I outline their respective strengths, weaknesses, and points in need of further clarification. I conclude that the ontological turns offer new and valuable angles of articulation with archaeological materials but that archaeologists must adopt them cautiously if they are to avoid repeating or continuing some of the darkest parts of our (colonial) disciplinary history. [ontology, archaeology, new materialism, archaeological theory, effigies, colonialism, Iroquoian archaeology, Ontario] RESUMEN Actualmente se estánest´están desarrollando en la arqueología, aproximaciones ontoí ogicas que prometen nuevas formas de comprometerse con la alteridad de varios tipos-personas diferentes, tiempos diferentes, formas diferentes, aun mundos diferentes. Este trabajo promete ayudar en reflexiones críticas sobre la naturaleza arbitraria de la mirada occidental y para reconocer e incorporar conocimiento no occidental en nuevas formas. Hay, sin embargo , varios retos para abordar. Primero, como señaladose˜señalado por varios pensadores destacados en está area, el rango actual de aproximaciones ontoí ogicas incluye fundamentos té oricos contrastantes. Segundo, estas aproximaciones son consideradas raramente en relací on con los retos prácticospr´prácticos de casos arqueoí ogicos específicos, particularmente los contextos del colonialismo de pobladores en los cuales los profesionales estánest´están sintonizados con la naturaleza colonial potencial de su trabajo. Divido las arqueologías comprometidas ontoí ogicamente en tres grupos relaciona-dos pero distintos y uso un ensamblaje pequeñopeque˜pequeño de museo de materiales de los hurones del siglo XVII de Ontario para ayudar a pensar a travéstrav´través de estas tres teorías. Comparando las aproximaciones, bosquejo sus debilidades, for-talezas respectivas, y puntos en necesidad de clarificací on adicional. Concluyo que los cambios ontoí ogicos ofrecen ´ angulos de articulací on nuevos y valiosos con materiales arqueoí ogicos, pero que los arqué ologos los deben adoptar con cautela si van a evitar repetir o continuar algunas de las partes m ´ as oscuras de nuestra historia disciplinaria
Encyclopedia of Global Archaeology, 2018
Back to Boas, Forth to Latour: An Anthropological Model for the Ontological Turn (Rodseth 2015)
Current Anthropology, 2015
How could Franz Boas, trained in physics and geography in Bismarck’s Germany, carry any weight for twenty-first century anthropology, given the theoretical upheavals of the past few decades? As early as 1887, I argue, Boas foreshadowed certain theoretical innovations of recent years, especially Bruno Latour’s ethnographic and philosophical analysis of science and modern society. My thesis is that Latourian and Boasian anthropologies are surprisingly alike, first in their rejection of “purified” high-modernist imagery, but more distinctively in their development of an ontologically “reckless” approach that traces the interwoven pathways of humans and nonhumans. Latour’s resonance with Boas has less to do with any direct Boasian influence on his thinking than with their parallel alignments against the same hegemonic rationalism, which reached its climax in the long century of high modernism (ca. 1880–1990). At the same time, I argue, Latour and Boas are sharply contrasting in their treatment of elite or esoteric doctrines as opposed to general or exoteric culture. This difference turns out to be instructive, as it suggests what a Latourian anthropology stands to gain from a neo-Boasian one and vice versa.
Cambridge Archaeological Journal, 2021
In this paper we discuss the universal selection of exceptional materials for tool making in prehistory. The interpretation suggested in the literature for these non-standard materials is usually limited to a general statement, considering possible aesthetic values or a general, mostly unexplained, symbolic meaning. We discuss the implications of viewing these materials as active agents and living vital beings in Palaeolithic archaeology as attested in indigenous hunter-gatherer communities all around the world. We suggest that the use of specific materials in the Palaeolithic was meaningful, and beyond its possible 'symbolic' meaning, it reflects deep familiarity and complex relations of early humans with the world surrounding them-humans and other-than-human persons (animals, plants, water and stones)-on which they were dependent. We discuss the perception of tools and the materials from which they are made as reflecting relationships, respectful behaviour and functionality from an ontological point of view. In this spirit, we suggest reviewing materials as reflecting social, cosmological and ontological world-views of Palaeolithic humans, and looking beyond their economic, functional aspects, as did, perhaps, our ancestors themselves.
Of Flesh and Flourishing: Toward an Expressive Ontology of the Body
This theoretical inquiry offers a critique of epistemologies of the body that originate in philosophy and in medicine as theorized and practiced in the West. With the support of Jonas’ biophilosophy of life, Levin’s invocation of the ontological body, and Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology of “flesh,” along with the life–mind continuity theory and participatory epistemologies, this dissertation proposes an expressive ontology of the body and posits that such an ontology may shift Western attitudes toward flourishing. An expressive body is an organismic whole, a living-lived interactive field of activity. Offered as a heuristic genealogy of the body through Western history of philosophy and medicine, this inquiry begins with exploration of the diverse influences that shape classical Greek views of the body, ultimately rendering an “anatomical” body. The inquiry moves to the context of the Modern turn and places particular emphasis on the content of Descartes’ metaphysics with its consequential “object” body. Upon exploring a plurality of paradoxes engendered from these epistemological layers, the dissertation turns to explication of the proposed ontology of an expressive body. Summarily, this dissertation points back toward the presupposition that life—not death—is the ontologically natural state. It is premised within an ethic of liberation from human and Other-than-human suffering and a biophilosophy of flourishing that declines an epistemic allegiance to virtue. Such an ontogeny is offered in the hope of liberating humankind from the constraints and estrangements of dualistic thinking. This dissertation is relevant for ontology discourse, philosophy of mind, philosophy of medicine, medical ethics, life–mind continuity and participatory epistemologies.