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POLITICAL ONTOLOGYMario Blaser

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To cite this Article Blaser, Mario(2009) 'POLITICAL ONTOLOGY', Cultural Studies, 23: 5, 873 — 896To link to this Article: DOI: 10.1080/09502380903208023URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09502380903208023

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Mario Blaser

POLITICAL ONTOLOGY

Cultural Studies without ‘cultures’?

In this article I seek to put into conversation two different but convergentintellectual/political projects, Lawrence Grossberg’s ‘radically contextualistcultural studies’ and ‘political ontology’, an emergent analytical frameworkbeing developed by a loosely connected network of scholars. Central to both projectsis the question of modernity, but while Grossberg’s cultural studies focuses on thepossibilities for multiple modernities immanent to the present conjuncture, thepolitical ontology project focuses on the status of the non-modern. I argue thatthe parallels and the divergences between these projects contain the promise for afruitful conversation resting on the understanding that the possibilities for multiplemodernities may well rest on the recognition of the non-modern on its own terms.For this we need to do away with the concept of ‘cultures’ as the key category tothink about differences.

Keywords ontology; ontological conflicts; multiple ontologies;modernity; non-modern; radical difference

Admittedly, this paper makes an intervention in a conversation I have not beendirectly engaged in before and about which I have little background knowledge:namely the place and prospect of cultural studies in the present conjuncture.Keeping this disclaimer in mind, I hope the reader will forgive the broad (andperhaps clumsy) strokes that shape the argument. I felt strongly drawn into thisconversation upon reading two articles by Lawrence Grossberg (2006, n.d.)that led me to conclude firstly, that I had been doing something very similar tothe project of cultural studies he was advocating for, and secondly, that someissues I had encountered in my own investigations could contribute somethinguseful to this project. In the mentioned articles, Grossberg seeks to recover theoriginal sense of cultural studies as a ‘project not only to construct a politicalhistory of the present, but to do so in a particular way, a radically contextualistway’ (2006, p. 2). This, Grossberg argues, involves a self-awareness of‘location within and an effort at the diagnosis of a conjuncture’ (p. 3). In themost recent, unpublished work, we are made aware that the politicalimportance of this diagnosis emerges from the purpose to produce:

Cultural Studies Vol. 23, Nos. 5�6 September�November 2009, pp. 873�896

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knowledge that illuminates and explores the possibilities of changing thecontext in which it operates and into which it is directed; thus, it alwayspresupposes a reconstitution of imagination in the context of its ownanalysis. It aims to give people an understanding of the contingency of thepresent. If the present context did not have to be this way, if it was notguaranteed in advance, then it could have been otherwise, and it can besomething different in the future. What then are the possibilities for thefuture disclosed in the present?

(n.d.)

In this perspective, the project of cultural studies involves diagnosing thepresent conjuncture and making available the imaginative elements that mightrender it something else, all in one move. This means that the potential futureswe can aspire to are closely related to the kind of diagnostic of the present weperform. Thus described, it seemed to me that the project of cultural studieswas very close to the kind of project I had been pursuing. In effect, for sometime now I have been concerned with understanding the meaning and scope ofIndigenous peoples’ mobilization and politics in the present conjuncture,precisely because I believe they make available imaginative elements that mightbe central to transform oppressive and deeply engrained aspects of thedominant modern social formation (see Blaser 2007, 2009, in press). LikeGrossberg, I also find that the kind of diagnosis of the present conjuncture thatone performs shapes to a large extent the possible futures we can aspire to, andthis is the point in which I want to put both projects into a conversation. Thus,in the first section I will present and contrast Grossberg’s project of culturalstudies and my own. In the second section I will focus on why it might beadvisable for any project that seeks to diagnose the present conjuncture to payclose attention both to the non-modern itself and to how we tend toconceptualize it. This will lead the discussion to the third section where I willaddress the positivity of the non-modern and how we must avoid a ‘conceptualtrap’ to really get to it. In the Conclusions I will briefly discuss how all thisrelates to a possible reading of the present conjuncture and the role that themodern and the non-modern play in our imagining of alternatives futures.

Diagnosing the present conjuncture, or, should CulturalStudies only search for modernities?

Drawing from a varied set of works, Grossberg advances the argument that thepresent conjuncture could be considered as a struggle, from both the right andthe left, against liberal modernity and the attempt to shape an alternativemodernity as the future. In light of this diagnosis, the key political question ofthe present conjuncture seems to be modernity itself, or better, the possibility

8 7 4 CULTURAL STUD I ES


of multiple modernities (n.d.). Now, it is important to stress that Grossberg’snotion of multiple modernities is critical of the dominant tropes about it, whichin one way or another remain profoundly Euro-centric. As I will discuss in moredetail later, Grossberg and I coincide on this point. For now it will suffice to saythat to counter the Euro-centrism of these dominant tropes of multiplemodernities Grossberg tackles the ‘moderness’ of contemporary socialformations thus,

One might, confronted with the claim of other modernities, ask why theyare called modern? Why do I want to credit them, at the very least, asstatements about modernity? Why engage in a struggle over thepossibilities of being modern? Why agree to call such other socialformations modern? Why not something else, perhaps alternatives to modernity(such alternatives most certainly do exist as well)? The answer is partly given bythe ‘origin’ of this investigation, insofar as I believe a useful way ofunderstanding the contemporary political conjuncture of the UnitedStates (at the very least) is in terms of a set of struggles over the comingAmerican modernity. But I think there is another reason, which Gaonkar[2001] describes as the ‘rage for modernity’ and which Rofel [1999]captures, describing her fieldwork conversations: ‘‘‘modernity’’ wassomething that many people from all walks of life felt passionately movedto talk about and debate.’ Similarly, Gyekye [1997] asserts that modernity‘has in fact assumed or rather gained a normative status, in that allsocieties in the world without exception aspire to become modern, toexhibit in their social, cultural and political lives features said tocharacterize modernity � whatever this notion means or those featuresare.’ But it is clear that such a comment is not meant to simply imply thatthe whole world is trying to become Europe; in fact, Gyekye similarlydescribes a number of writers in the Middle Ages: ‘In characterizingthemselves and their times as modern, both Arabic and Latin scholarswere expressing their sense of cultural difference from the ancients . . .But not only that: they must surely have considered their own times asadvanced (or more advanced) in most, if not all, spheres of humanendeavor.’ On what grounds do we deny such claims or judgments ofmodernity? Even Lefebvre [1995] acknowledges that the ‘‘‘modern’’ is aprestigious word, a talisman, an open sesame, and it comes with a lifelongguarantee.’ Thus, the answer to why I want to think through and with theconcept of a multiplicity of modernities as a discursive reality is becausethe contest over modernity is already being waged, because it has real consequences,and because we need to seek a new grounding of possibility and hope, and a newimagination for future ways of being modern. Cultural studies has alwaystaught that any successful struggle for political transformation has to startwhere people are; the choice of where to begin the discourses of change

POL IT I CAL ONTOLOGY 8 7 5


cannot be defined simply by the desires, or even the politics, ofintellectuals.

(n.d., emphasis added)

Considering the ‘contest over modernity’ as a central feature of the currentconjuncture, it is not surprising that Grossberg finds problematic the move ofanother intellectual project concerned with modernity, that of the modernity/coloniality group, and upon which I partly rely on my own project. Thisgroup, formed by a loosely connected network of Latin American intellectuals,has developed the notion of modernity/coloniality (M/C) which has among itsfundamental conceptual assumptions the idea that there is no modernitywithout coloniality. Or, in other words, that colonialism and the making of thecapitalist world system are constitutive of modernity (for an overview of M/Csee Escobar 2007b). For Grossberg, this assumption ‘seems to guarantee thatthe [M/C intellectuals] see their project, not as looking for other modernities,but rather, for alternatives to modernity,’ which is somehow problematic as itis not starting from ‘where people are.’ Thus, without necessarily contestingit, Grossberg prefers to circumscribe this characterization of modernity to aparticular kind, Euro-modernity, thereby allowing other (potentially morejust) kinds of modernities to exist, at least as a possibility inherent to some ofthose claims of modernity made by people who are not ‘trying to becomeEurope.’

While situating the drive toward speaking of contemporary socialformations as modern against the background of an overarching ‘contestover modernity,’ Grossberg is nevertheless aware that ‘we cannot avoid thequestion of how a particular configuration can be asserted to be modern’ and,thus:

[w]e must face the challenge of asking how we define modernity as achanging same or, adopting a phrase from Precarias a la Deriva [2004],a ‘singularity in common.’ One must distinguish not only between the modernand the non-modern, but also between, on the one hand, variations orhybridities within an assumed common modernity (e.g., French vs. Britishmodernity, or British vs. Indian modernity), and, on the other hand,distinct other modernities.

(n.d., emphasis added)

The desire to attend to diverse claims of modernity and the search for clearercriteria to define the modern are somehow in tension. The search for clearercriteria necessarily implies tracing a boundary between the modern and thenon-modern that will not necessarily coincide with claims of modernity thatmight rather tend toward ceaseless expansion. However, this tension issupposedly resolved by a ‘diagram of being modern’ in which multiple actualand virtual modernities may get actualized, but only as particular articulations



between four categories (‘Now/Event,’ ‘Change/Chronos,’ ‘Everyday Life,’and ‘Institutional Space’) that are central to various definitions of modernity. AsI will discuss later, the solution to the tension seems to work only partially. Fornow, I will conclude my very succinct, and undoubtedly sketchy, characteriza-tion of Grossberg’s project by indicating that the challenge of definingmodernity in such a way that opens up other possibilities of being modernremains at the center of his efforts, at least in the works I am referencing here.This being said I want now to turn to political ontology, the framework I amusing for my investigations, which I consider might be put into usefulconversation with these efforts.1

In order to explain what the political ontology framework entails, I mustfirst clarify what I mean by ‘ontology,’ as the term is often used in differentways and with diverse connotations. Three layers of meaning shape my workingdefinition of ontology. The first layer is a dictionary definition: ‘any way ofunderstanding the world must make assumptions (which may be implicit orexplicit) about what kinds of things do or can exist, and what might be theirconditions of existence, relations of dependency, and so on. Such an inventoryof kinds of being and their relations is an ontology’ (Scott & Marshall 2005).The second layer I borrow from the insights and language of science andtechnology studies, and in particular from Actor Network Theory: ontologiesdo not precede mundane practices, rather are shaped through the practices andinteractions of both human and non-humans (see Latour 1999; Law 2004; Mol1999).2 Hence, ontologies perform themselves into worlds � this is why, as youwill see, I use the terms ‘ontologies’ and ‘worlds’ as synonyms. The third layerbuilds on a voluminous ethnographic record that traces the connectionsbetween ‘myths’ and practices: ontologies also manifest as ‘stories’ in which theassumptions of what kinds of things and relations make up a given world readilygraspable � again, this warrants my use of the term ‘story’ to refer to a givenontology. Although stories are a good entry point to an ontology, attending onlyto their verbalized aspect and not to the way in which those stories areembodied and enacted only give us half the story. In other words, ontologiesmust be understood as total enactments involving discursive and non-discursiveaspects.

Having this definition in mind, let me advance that the term ‘politicalontology’ connotes two inter-related meanings. On the one hand, it refers tothe politics involved in the practices that shape a particular world or ontology.On the other hand, it refers to a field of study that focuses on the conflicts thatensue as different worlds or ontologies strive to sustain their own existence asthey interact and mingle with each other. Given its dominance, the modernontology figures prominently among the concerns of this analytical frameworkand, thus, comes close and intersects with what Grossberg considers a keypolitical question of the present conjuncture, that is, modernity itself or thepossibility of multiple modernities. Yet, for reasons that I now explain, from



a political ontology perspective, the notion of multiple modernities has beentreated with both skepticism and preoccupation. A couple of vignettes and a setof quotations will help me to foreground why this is so.

In 2006, Evo Morales becomes the first indigenous president of Boliviaafter a series of social mobilizations that started to shake the colonial, racist,and extremely unequal social fabric of that country. In an unprecedentedmove, an indigenous Andean ceremony at Tiawanaku � a pre-Columbianmonumental center � is added to the usual protocol by which the newpresident is invested with his authority.3 Far to the North-west, in theCanadian province of British Columbia, the Mowachat/Muchalaht First Nationclashes with the Department of Fisheries and environmentalists groups whowant to return Luna, a young lost orca whale, to its pod. The natives insist thatin Luna inhabits the spirit of their recently deceased chief, Ambrose Maquinna,and that his desire to stay with his people must be respected.4

These kinds of events are usually made to ‘make sense’ through familiarnotions such as ‘displays of ethnic symbolism’ and different ‘social construc-tions’ of the animal whale, all of which help to situate ‘differences’ within thematrix of a common ‘modern present’ � i.e. they are manifestations of thediverse modernities that exist nowadays. In effect, for reasons that I willdiscuss in more detail later, nowadays all differences have come to beconceived as being played out within a single ontological domain, which, as thefollowing quotations illustrate, is that of modernity.

The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.(Marx & Engels 1848/1992, p. 219)

Perhaps ‘ethnohistory’ has been so called to separate it from ‘real’history, the study of the supposedly civilized. Yet what is clear from thestudy of ethnohistory is that the subjects of the two kinds of history arethe same. The more ethnohistory we know, the more clearly ‘their’history and ‘our’ history emerge as the same history.

(Wolf 1982/1997, p. 19)

One of the characteristics of modernity has always been its autocentricpicture of itself as the expression of universal certainty . . . So its historyhas always claimed to be a universal one, in fact the only universal history.

(Mitchell 2000, p. xi)

Now, if one sets these quotations along other ‘claims’ of historicity, thecontours of the problem that political ontology is trying to address becomesapparent. For instance, consider the following assertion extracted from theMandate from the Original [Indigenous] Peoples and Nations to the World States,drafted in Cochabamba, Bolivia, on 12 October 2007,



A new age driven by the originary indigenous peoples is beginning, givingbirth to the times of change, the times of Pachakuti, in times when theFifth Sun is coming to an end.

Through their contrast, these quotations delineate a key problem of thepresent conjuncture, namely, the power dynamics implicit in the naturalizationof the story of modernity and the consequent and necessary conflicts andchallenges that this process generates when it encounters other stories thatcontest it. In effect, barring a great deal of distortion to force them into ‘our’notions of history, one must pause and wonder whether the Andean concept ofPachakuti and the Mesoamerican idea of the Fifth Sun are pointing out tosomething that escape modern categories (see de la Cadena 2009, for a similarpoint). Yet, to mention whether there is something that escapes moderncategorizations is nowadays a heresy. For instance, a reviewer of an article acolleague and I sent to a journal said:

To say that indigenous knowledge is ‘non-modern’ or exists ‘outside of’modernity seems in fact to reinstate a colonial legacy in which indigenouspeoples are said to be backwards, or islands of time untouched by history.This statement in fact flies in the face of most anthropological research(well, almost all) that tries to combat colonial representations ofindigenous peoples as not engaged in the modern world.

In short, then, the starting point of a conversation between the project ofcultural studies pursued by Grossberg and the project of political ontology is anaddendum to his diagnosis of the present conjuncture. Briefly stated, although itis undeniable that there is a contest over modernity and that this contest hasvery real consequences, the present conjuncture also involves a contest over,and with, the non-modern. Yet, in contrast to what happens with modernity,the contest over the non-modern is not mainly about definitions but about itsvery existence. In effect, the dominant assumption of a single ontological matrix(that of modernity) within which all social formations are contained � implicitin notions such as the ‘social construction of realities,’ ‘display of ethnicsymbolism,’ and a single historicity, downplays the extent to which the currentconjuncture is marked by ontological conflicts. These are conflicts that festerunder the assumption that parties to the conflict agree on what is at stake, whenactually that is not the case. In other words, what is at stake in these conflicts isprecisely the differing ‘things’ that are at stake. Luna is not a whale for theMowachat nation, it is Tsux’lit, a different entity that is not easily translatable asthe social construction of an animal. Evo Morales is not performing rituals tosymbolize the ethnic character of his politics, he is following a precise protocolto summon non-human forces to help him govern Bolivia. The Pachakuti andthe Fifth Sun are not the modern age; they imply another temporality thatcannot be subsumed by the former.



Because the contest with the non-modern manifests as ontological conflictsthere is a strong tendency to mis-recognize even the existence of this contest.In other words, the non-modern manifests itself as something that escapes the‘radar screen’ of modern categories. The dominant trope of multiplemodernities, as it stands with its drive toward incorporating all differenceswithin the ontological domain of modernity, makes it even more difficult toaccount for ontological conflicts as part of the present conjuncture. Hence, theskepticism and concern with which the notion of multiple modernities hasbeen treated from the political ontology perspective. However, preciselybecause Grossberg’s project seeks to bypass some of these problems with thedominant notion of multiple modernities, it opens unforeseen possibilities toconceive the relations between a potentially non-Euro-centered modernity andthe non-modern. Likewise, and precisely because the non-modern exceeds ourown questions � and the categories and concepts within which such questionsare thinkable � it opens up so far unforeseen possibilities to conceive non-Euro-centered modernities. In part, this is because, as I will try to show in thenext section, without the counterbalance of the non-modern, Euro-modernityremains a powerful (and perhaps inescapable) ‘gravitational force’ impingingon our diagnostics of the present conjuncture, and therefore of the potentialfutures we imagine.

The pull of Euro-modernity

As we have seen in the previous section, Grossberg’s and the political ontologyprojects intersect creating a potentially fruitful point of tension: his interest inopening the definition of the modernity to other, more just, ways of beingmodern and our interest in making sure that the definition of modernity does notexpand to the point that it occludes the existence of the non-modern. In theConclusions I will discuss what are the implications of non-Euro-centeredmodernities for political ontology. Here, and illuminated by the politicalontology concern, I want to focus on the two aspects of Grossberg’s project thatas I said before appear to be in tension: the desire to attend to diverse claims ofmodernity and the search for clearer criteria to define the modern. Although inthe works I mentioned he has not explored the implications it may have for hisproject of multiple modernities � and this paper is in part an invitation to do so �Grossberg recognizes the existence of something outside modernity; this iscertainly not the case with the dominant tropes of multiple modernities. Thus, aquick look into the context in which these tropes emerge will help us bettersituate how, and to what extent, Grossberg departs from them.

The implicit understanding that the existence of multiple modernities meansthat there is nothing outside of modernity is not the effect of unsophisticatedanalyses or theories; rather it is a symptom of the present conjuncture, insofar as



it expresses a particular trajectory of the concept of culture. In effect, that anargument about the existence of something outside modernity can be taken to beat best romanticism or at worse a colonizing gesture responds to the criticisms towhich earlier notions of culture as systemic, organic, and bounded weresubjected from the 1970s onwards. The main thrust of the criticism was thatdeploying such notions of culture, other (non-Western) peoples were removedfrom history, making the analysts blind to the actual consequences of their ownpolitics of representation. (see Hymes, 1974; Asad, 1973; Wolf, 1982/1997;Fabian, 1983; Clifford & Marcus, 1986; Fox, 1991). Showing that so-called‘traditional societies’ have never been isolated, unchanging, backward, and outof history � in short, that they have never been ‘traditional’ in the terms set bythe modern imagination � these critiques contested a key colonial argumentaccording to which ‘Others’ were amenable to be subordinated to the moderncolonial powers by virtue of their being traditional or primitive. However,rather than being simply eliminated, the original dichotomy between modernand traditional was replaced by another dichotomy, that between ‘unrealtraditions’ and ‘real and all-encompassing modernity.’ In effect, it seems that theconclusion derived from the critiques has been that, if there have not been reallyexisting traditional societies, then, we are all modern in one way or another. Butthis is profoundly problematic, not the least because it opens the door to aninsidious Euro-centrism that permeates the dominant tropes of multiplemodernities. Indeed, the only clear thread across diverse understandings ofwhat modernity is, in one way or another, connects the term to Europe. In otherwords, it seems that if all contemporary social formations are modern it isbecause they have had transformative interactions with Europe. The problem isthat this assumes that the encounter with Europeans is the single most importantconstitutive factor in the historical trajectory of any given social formation. Ineffect, if we agree that any given social formation is always the historical productof transformative interactions with other social formations, the question arises asto why we should call the present state of diverse social formations modern. The‘moderness’ that underlies the different contemporary social formations needsto be proved rather than axiomatically asserted, but in order to do so one wouldneed some criteria of what does it mean to be modern.

In part because the existing literature does not provide clear criteria todefine it, the dominant notions of multiple modernities remain diffuse and/orultimately lead us to Euro-modernity, which is the problem that Grossbergseeks to avoid by providing his ‘diagram of ways of being modern,’ a point towhich we will return soon. Nowadays, the assumption that all differences areencompassed within modernity is reinforced by the self-proclaimed ‘moder-ness’ of some of those who were previously defined as pre-modern and sufferedall the associated consequences of this status in terms of subordination to themodern. In principle for Grossberg these claims, rather than the putativecontent of a given social formation, do warrant the treatment of much



contemporary diversity as modern. However, it is worth taking a closer lookinto what might be a stake, both in the claims of modernity and the conclusionsthat some of the analysts Grossberg is building on derive from such claims. Aswe may recall from the extended quote above, Grossberg questioned on whatbasis could one challenge the claims to modernity made by people that, by suchclaims, certainly did not intend to become Europe. When I read the paragraphI was struck by the contrast with my own experience with some indigenouspeoples in Latin America, where rather than being challenged in their claims ofmodernity, it is their (implicit or explicit) claims of alternatives to modernitywhat is treated with contempt.

Indeed, in a recent interview and echoing the academic reviewer I quotedbefore, the Bolivian vice-president and Left intellectual Alvaro Garcia Lineraaccused sectors of the indigenous movement of being romantic because theyreclaim a role for indigenous cosmologies in shaping the Bolivian state. Pointingto the 500 years of interaction and mingling between them, he denied that suchcosmologies could be radically different from the dominant modern one: ‘En elfondo todos quieren ser modernos’ [‘Deep inside, everyone wants to be modern’](Garcia Linera, 2007, pp. 156�157). Notice how the same certainty about thedesirability of modernity that Gyekye (1997) attributes in Grossberg’s quote toall societies ‘without exception’ is used here to silence and sideline a potentiallydifferent agenda. The transmutation of the inherent hybridity of cultures intobarely veiled denials of differences is common and partakes of the strongtendency among scholars, commentators and policy makers (from Left andRight) to minimize or disregard the fact that the hasty unification of radicaldifferences under the banner of modernity betrays the original aim of thecritique of culture which was to foreground the problematic simultaneity ofdifferent ways of being (Fabian, 1983, p. 146) against the then dominanttendency to conceive these differences along an evolutionary and hierarchicalmatrix. The result has been that differences have been diluted to the point thatthey do not cut too deep before they find a common ground in a (hi)story that issupposed to involve everyone, that of modernity.

I am very much aware that claims of non-modernity are not very visible andremain relatively circumscribed when compared with the more visible claims of‘different moderness.’ This leads some analysts to consider the ‘terminologicalbattle’ already settled; as a prominent Bolivian intellectual told me in aconversation, ‘the modern now stands for the good, whatever this is, so we[social movements] have to introduce our notion of the good into the definitionof the modern.’ But expanding the meaning of the word modern is notnecessarily the best strategy or the only one; affirming the value (and presence)of the non-modern � in a similar fashion that Black peoples re-affirmed blacknessin the motto ‘black is beautiful’ � might be another quite valid (and perhapsbetter suited) strategy. Ultimately, the suitability of these strategies has to bedetermined in relation to specific contexts, which in the present conjuncture are



not fully accounted for by the seemingly minoritarian character of the claims foralternatives to modernity.5 Moreover, I believe that disregarding alternatives tomodernity (either by not fully accounting for them or by denying its existence)does not help to a good diagnosis of the current conjuncture, precisely becauseit contributes to make invisible ontological discrepancies and conflicts.

Now, recognizing that some sectors of the Indigenous movement eitherreclaim a difference that explicitly presents itself as not amenable to becontained within the bounds of modernity, or are so removed from theseconcerns that do not even have a stake on the contest over or with modernity,does not imply a denial that other sectors do frame their claims in terms ofmodernity. And yet one must consider that, even when explicit, claims ofmodernity are not transparent statements. Indeed, claims of being modernmight actually constitute a site of what Viveiros de Castro (2004, p. 8) callsuncontrolled equivocation, ‘a type of communicative disjuncture where theinterlocutors are not talking about the same thing, and do not know this.’Uncontrolled equivocation refers to a communicative disjuncture that takesplace not between those who share a common world but rather those whoseworlds or ontologies are different. In other words, these misunderstandingshappen not because there are different perspectives on the world but ratherbecause the interlocutors are unaware that different worlds are being enacted(and assumed) by each of them. These equivocations are prone to go unnoticedwhere, as it is the case of the relation between the modern and the non-modern,asymmetries permeate the discursive field.

In the context of the encounters between diverse social formations andEuro-modernity, which is the historical milieu from which most contemporaryclaims of modernity arise, ‘modernity’ implied, first and foremost, a languageof exclusion and, only then, a promise of inclusion � of course, alwaysdemanding that non-moderns reform themselves to be modern. In other words,the alternatives offered to the non-modern were in many cases, ‘convert and wewill not only give you the carrot (of modernity) but also will stop using thestick’, or ‘if you don’t pursue the carrot we will entice you to it with the stick.’At least in the case of indigenous peoples in the Americas, this form of‘inclusion’ has been historically very clear and makes me cautious aboutassuming that I understand what some of their public claims of modernity entail.In fact, these processes have contributed to make the non-modern part of whatJames Scott (1990) called the ‘hidden transcript.’6One way in which this worksis by dressing the values of the subordinated with the discursive garments of thedominant. A case in point is the conversion of aboriginal deities into Catholicsaints to the point that even the original name of the deity is lost. Yet, it wouldconstitute an equivocation to assume that a name shared by Catholics andIndigenous peoples refer to the same entity. The phrase from Lefebvre quotedby Grossberg above is somehow illuminating in this sense, if the ‘‘‘modern’’ isa prestigious word, a talisman, an open sesame’ it is precisely because the



discursive field has made the word ‘non-modern’ unprestigious, a heavy drag,and an incantation that closes doors. Hence, it is not unreasonable to expect thatat least some of what previously was referenced by the latter word is nowmobilized through the former word by making the latter plural. Not fullyattending to this dynamic in claims of modernity easily leads to the trap ofmaking modernity anything contemporary in general and nothing in particular.In other words, claims of modernity are not sufficient in themselves to help ustrace the line between what falls within the domain of modernity (ormodernities) and that which falls beyond it. This leads us back to the needfor clearer criteria to define the modern as distinct from the non-modern andhow Grossberg’s diagram of being modern fares on this account.

A concern that Grossberg had in building his diagram of the modern was to‘be careful not to allow the move to ontology to simply reproduce theEurocentrism of our understandings of the modern,’ and thus, the fourcategories that articulate with each other to give emergence to a variety of waysof being modern (i.e. ‘Now/Event,’ ‘Change/Chronos,’ ‘Everyday Life,’ and‘Institutional Space’) must remain somehow under-specified so as to allow forthis virtual multiplicity to become actualized. And the diagram certainly workswell in this account as it is open enough to allow a great deal of variation on whatit might mean to be modern. Yet, the diagram does not work as well incontaining the modern so that it does not come to engulf all ways of being. Ineffect, because the four categories according to which the modern getsarticulated in its multiplicity remain underspecified, it is hard to see how thediagram excludes, and therefore recognizes in its own terms, the non-modern.In fact, in the only passage in which the difference with the non-modern isconsidered in relation to these categories, Euro-modernity, rather than thevirtual multiplicity of the modern, emerges as the foil that helps to trace theboundary. Indeed speaking of the dynamic tension that exists in modernformations between ‘institutional spaces’ and the space of ‘everyday life,’Grossberg says: ‘the tension between these two spaces makes change not onlystructurally possible, but also even normal and perhaps necessary . . . In non-modern societies, only the institutional space exists � although we cannotproperly even call it that. Change comes primarily either from the outside or viaan explosive revolution’ (n.d.). Now, unless one takes Euro-modern instantia-tions of both ‘institutional spaces’ and ‘everyday life’ as referents, it is hard tosee how these can be said to be lacking in the non-modern. In other words, couldit not be the case that the non-modern expresses other forms of ‘institutionalspaces’ and ‘everyday life’ and relations between them? In addition, the idea thatnon-modern societies only change when moved from the outside or throughrevolutions reinstates the Euro-centric tendency to define the non-modern asthe inverse image of the modern rather than by its own properties. In short, ifwe were to totally relinquish Euro-modern instantiations of the articulationbetween the four categories, we would have a hard time to trace the boundary



between the modern and the non-modern in Grossberg’s diagram. And oncepulled by Euro-modernity and its ways of tracing boundaries the non-modernends up being defined as a lack or, in other words, simply as that which is . . .well, non-(Euro-)modern. One of the lines of inquiry of the political ontologyframework might help with this problem, that is, as long as we remain aware ofthe traps of the concept of Culture.

The positivity of the non-modern and the traps of culture

Other worlds or ontologies often serve as the ‘constitutive outside’ formodernity (Mitchell 2000) and thus get defined by their lacks in relation to it,but they do have their own positivity. It would be impossible to discuss herethe varied forms these worlds may acquire and that have been described bymany ethnographers. I will just briefly present a snapshot from a recent workby Philippe Descola (2005), which is to my knowledge the first one to try asystematic overview of this diversity. In this work he identifies four large kindsof ontologies, which I present schematically in figure 1.

The sketch does not pretend to be an exhaustive representation of theseontologies; it just seeks to highlight how each of them distributes ‘what exists,’

FIGURE 1 The four major ontologies of Descola.



and conceive of their relations, in very different ways. Euro-modernity, andI would like to argue even multiple modernities, fall within the spectrum of theNaturalist ontologies that distribute what exists between two large domains,Nature and Culture, which are sometimes (but not always) in relation with athird domain, that of the supra-human/supernatural, i.e. the domain of God(s).Animist ontologies correspond to what many also call relational ontologies inwhich each entity (represented in the sketch by a geometrical figure) is relatedto other entities as knots in a net. I have represented Analogism with the YingYang, which is a relatively familiar symbol and quickly conveys the idea that thiskind of ontology operates on the notion of some originating dynamic whichrepeats itself from the micro to the macro and permeates the entire cosmos.Totemism allocates a mix of humans and non-humans within ontologicallydistinct groups that originate from a common ancestor. I will not go further intothe details of these ontologies beyond raising the issue that Analogism andTotemism are, like Naturalism, prone to conceive of hierarchical relationsbetween the entities that populate the worlds they configure. The point isimportant to dispel the often unstated assumption that anything which is non-modern is better in terms of being more equalitarian and non-hierarchical. Thisis another good reason why we need to move as quickly as possible from thefigure of the non-modern, which as with the figure of the modern in thedominant tropes of multiple modernities contains too many things to be useful,either in analytical or political terms.

The work of Descola (2005) helps us situate modernity (multiple orotherwise) as one particular ontological formation among others. Theseontologies differ from modernity not because, as Euro-modernity would poseit, they lack what modernity has but because they distribute what exists andconceive their constitutive relations in a different way. This might give usa clue as to what might be added to Grossberg’s diagram of ways of beingmodern in order to make it less prone to extend (and gloss) over the non-modern, namely, the Nature/Culture divide and its various possible relations.In other words, it might be fruitful to investigate whether juxtaposingGrossberg’s diagram of ways of being modern with the general diagram ofnaturalist ontologies does not provide both the necessary flexibility to allow forthe possibility of multiple modernities and clearer criteria to distinguish whatfalls within the domain of the modern from what falls within the domain of otherontologies. But in order to grasp how this could help in distinguishing betweendifferent modernities we must first make clear that naturalist ontologies are notexactly synonymous with Euro-modern ontology. Although the latter iscontained within the former, the former far exceeds the particular instantiationof the Nature/Culture divide that is actualized by Euro-modernity. In this sense,it is interesting to note that Descola devotes a whole chapter of his book toanalyzing how conceptions of nature emerged progressively, starting from thephusis of the Greek and culminating in the mutual autonomy of nature and



culture of Euro-modernity. Grossberg, in turn, mentions that bio-power, as aparticular Euro-modern machinery of power, ‘not only separates nature andculture (since other diagrams have done that as well) but subsumes nature intoculture’ (n.d.). In other words, he is aware that the Nature/Culture divideoperates within Euro-modernity in a particular way. Now, because Euro-modernity appears to be the only currently actualized form of modernity thatreadily presents itself to the analysts for close scrutiny, its usage as a baseline forcomparison does not need to be problematic. That is, its usage does notcontradict the possibility of other non-Euro-centered modernities; rather, itsignals that much work remains to be done in terms of specifying throughconcrete examples how, while maintaining some resemblance with Euro-modernity, the ontological armatures of these other modernities are constitutedand operate differently. With this in mind, let’s now take a closer look at howthe naturalist ontological armature operates in Euro-modernity.

A good point to begin is Latour’s (1993) rendering of what he calls theinternal Great Divide between Nature and Culture. In Euro-modernity thisontological divide allocates the human, the subject, the fully agentive, and rep-resentation to the realm of Culture, and the non-human, the object, the agency-less, and the represented to the realm of Nature. This allocation of entities is afundamental assumption of Euro-modernity that can be traced at the basis of itsmost salient institutions and practices, from science to politics. Latour arguesthat this ontological armature is the result of practices of purification thatproduce and sustain the distinction between Nature and Culture while at thesame time producing hybrid entities that are neither. Thus, although the result ofEuro-modern practices contradicts the fundamental distinction established bythe story of modernity between Nature and Culture, it is undeniable that thedistinction fuels those very same practices. In this sense, as a particular actualizedontology, Euro-modernity is the result of these contradictory moves. Keepingthis in mind helps us to avoid understanding Euro-modernity as a sort of falseconsciousness.

Now, according to Latour:

the Internal Great Divide [between Nature and Culture] accounts for theExternal Great Divide [between Us and Them]: we [moderns] are the onlyones who differentiate absolutely between Nature and Culture whereas inour eyes all the others � whether they are Chinese or Amerindians, Azandeor Barouya � cannot really separate what is knowledge from what issociety, what is sign from what is thing, what comes from Nature as it isfrom what their cultures require.

(Latour 1993, p. 99)

Thus, what Mitchell calls modernity’s ‘autocentric picture of itself as theexpression of universal certainty’ is related to this claim of having a privileged



access to a domain which is not clouded by culture, and this access is premisedprecisely on recognizing the difference between what is Culture and what isNature; a distinction other ‘cultures’ do not have. This difference constit-utes the external Great Divide between modern and non-modern. Now, what isparticularly Euro-modern is that between the sixteenth and the eighteenthcenturies the two great divides were increasingly understood (by Europeansfirst, and by all kinds of Euro-moderns later) against the background of lineartime, thus making (Euro-)modernity not only different but also a superior wayof being, the spearhead of the evolving history of humanity (see Fabian 1983).7

In any case, what is missing from Latour’s (1993) picture is the extent towhich the divide between Nature and Culture and the divide between modernand non-modern are historically co-emergent in Euro-modernity. This isprecisely what the modernity/coloniality group foregrounds by indicating thatthis particular ontological armature emerged progressively in a series ofspecific locations in Western Europe along with the unfolding of the colonialexperience inaugurated by the Spanish conquest of the New World (see Dussel1492/1995; Mignolo 2000). But in Euro-modernity, internal and externaldivides are not only co-emerging, they are also co-sustaining. Thus, theperformance of a modern world in which the distinction between Nature andCulture constitutes the ontological bedrock of a system of hierarchies betweenthe modern and the non-modern necessarily involves keeping at bay the threatposed to it by the existence of worlds that operate on different ontologicalpremises, and this has been done by denying these worlds any real existence intheir own terms. Insofar as their radical difference can be tamed through theconcept of culture, for Euro-moderns these worlds just exist as ‘culturalperspectives’ based on errors, mere believes, or romantic yearnings. With thevisual help of Figure 2, let me briefly discuss how the concept of culture tamesradically different worlds.

In figure 2 we have side by side the sketches of the Euro-modern versionof a naturalist ontology and that of a relational ontology. As we can see, incomparison to the sketch that depicted the naturalist ontology among the otherontologies of Descola, there are a series of modification here. First, there is nodomain of the supra-human/supernatural, as in Euro-modernity this domainwas progressively evacuated from the ontological armature. Second, the realmof Culture and the realm of Nature are not side by side but rather the formerdomain is positioned above the latter, depicting a hierarchical relation. Third,the domain of Culture has been further sub-divided into several ‘cultures.’ Ineffect, in Euro-modernity, the concept of culture has two related yet differentmeanings, which I underscore by capitalizing one of them. As I have beenarguing, ‘Culture’ (with a capital C) is an ontological category that gains itsmeaning by its contrast to Nature, and together both constitute the centralcategories in the ontological armature of modernity (in its plurality). Incontrast, ‘culture’ is a sub-category subsumed within Culture and emerges



from the differences among human groups, that is, different human groupshave different cultures. Now, if you imagine the sketch of the relationalontology being shrunk or reduced to a small square, then labeled ‘culture,’ andthen re-positioned in the left side of the figure (i.e. in the sketch of Euro-modern ontology) alongside the other squares with the label culture, you get asense of how in this ontological armature Culture tames radical differences byconverting other ontologies into just another cultural perspective on Nature.Nevertheless, we must remain attentive to capture how different performancesare still bounded within the confines of this ontological armature. For instance,although relativism and universalism are opposite to each other, they share thesame ontological assumptions. In effect, in more or less explicit terms,relativism would claim that Nature (or reality out there) cannot be more than asort of mirror in which ‘cultures’ see themselves. Universalism would on thecontrary claim that, in spite of the difficulties, Nature does provide a commonground (a truth) that transcends ‘cultures.’ What is not contested by eitherposition is the initial assumption that there is Nature and there is ‘Culture.’The universalism of (Euro-)modernity, that is, the notion that modernity canproduce the most accurate, or perhaps only accurate, representation of thetruth (provided by Nature) has shifted from being explicit to being implicit viathe taming work that Culture accomplishes. In its most recent incarnation thisoperation is accomplished via the notion of social construction whereby it isassumed that the representations of the world are all equally sociallyconstructed. Yet the very distinction between the world (Nature) and itsrepresentation (Culture) continues to be affirmed as a universal.

FIGURE 2 Taming radical difference through culture.



It is important to highlight that, as a particularly modern ontological categorythat works in tandemwith Nature, Culture was not questioned by the critiques of‘culture’ of the 1970s and 1980s. Political ontology, being part of what Escobar(2007a) calls the ‘ontological turn’ (i.e. the increasing attention to issues ofontology) in social theory, opens the door to deepen the critique of culture to nowencompass Culture and thus avoid the traps that the category poses to our capacityto recognize other ontologies in their own terms.8 Thus, once we are able toidentify and protect ontological differences from this domesticating gesture, wecan get a better understanding ofmodernity (multiple and otherwise), for thenwecan fully recognize that there are other worlds � not cultures � that are differentfrom the modern one but certainly not traditional (i.e. simply the negativerendering of modernity’s self-images) and grasp the power dynamics and theproductivity of their mutual engagements in the present conjuncture.

In addition, to help us distinguish modernity from other ontologies, re-situating the former among the latter helps us to produce a relativelycircumscribed working definition or hypothesis of the currently actualizedmodern world or ontology that can provide a baseline for comparison withother possible modernities. In this case, this definition hinges upon a specificarrangement of three elements: an ontologically stark distinction betweenNature and Culture, a dominant tendency to conceive difference (including thedifference between Nature and Culture) in hierarchical terms, and a linearconception of time. Notice that I speak of an arrangement of these elements: itis not the Nature/Culture divide, linear time, and an understanding ofdifferences in hierarchical terms per se that makes this actualization ofmodernity specific; what constitutes the specificity of Euro-modernity is theparticular way in which these elements are narrated as being related to eachother, and the enactment of this story in a multiplicity of practices. Compare,for instance, this ontology (including its relation to radical difference) withLevantine society that, following Menocal, Grossberg describes as an exampleof an earlier and other modern society ‘without teleology or universality,a society of tolerance, of translators rather than proselytizers . . . a society, notof hybrids, but of the constant articulation among differences, a society thatembraces contradictions . . . (n.d.). In spite of the fact that from Grossberg’saccount, we know little about the ontological armature of Levantine modernity,I believe the image of a modern society of ‘translators rather than proselytizers’strongly contrasts with Euro-modernity and thus might helps us see both whatdifferentiates them as divergent forms of being modern and what conjoins themin contrast to other ontologies. Considering that the European re-discovery ofGreece (and by extension of phusis) was done through the philosophers of those‘societies of translators’ that bordered between Islam and Christendom, I wouldnot be surprised if a form of naturalist ontology is what emerges in commonbetween Levantine and Euro-modernity. But this must for now remain ahypothesis to investigate and we must move on to the conclusions.



Conclusions

Without necessarily agreeing with his particular taxonomy of ontologies,Descola’s (2005) work helps to give content to the idea that other ontologiesor worlds have their own positivity that is not over-determined by modernityin any of its possible forms. Now, although I cannot fully develop this pointhere (but see Blaser in press), I want to advance the argument that theconflictive relations between Euro-modernity and other ontologies havebecome particularly relevant nowadays in the context of three inter-relatedprocesses.

1 There is a vigorous push from capital and states to reach still‘undeveloped’ natural and cultural ‘resources.’ But what appears from amodernist perspective as ‘resources’ are entities to which indigenous andother place-based peoples are related in diverse ways. And I stress that therelations are diverse rather than assume that the notion of property canencompass those relations. This is what is manifested when, for example,indigenous peoples press the point that even if they have to fight for legalownership of the land, the proper way of understanding the relation istheir belonging to the land rather than the other way around.

2 A looming environmental crisis (intensified in part by the first set ofprocesses) has pushed ‘civil society’ and governments to design schemesfor environmental protection of areas considered ‘pristine,’ which againare also complex webs of interrelated entities within which indigenous andland-based peoples are enmeshed.

3 Evolving national and international frameworks increasingly recognize‘indigenous rights,’ thus creating some conditions for indigenous peoplesto defend the existing relations that constitute their worlds against theclaims of property laid upon them by other parties. Yet the rights areconceived from within the modern ontology as rights to their culturesand/or ‘beliefs’ (as in claims of religious or spiritual value of specificgeographical areas, or the desire to continue with certain ways of life suchas hunting). Thus, as I hinted at with the example of the legal ownership ofthe land, these rights have limitations insofar as the world being defendedhas to be reduced to a culture; that is, it is forced to fit into the modernworld.

These three processes, taken together, delineate a ‘state of affairs’ in whichconflicts are becoming very visible as ontological conflicts precisely becausethey hinge upon contestations of the two great divides of the Euro-modernconstitution and its associated notion of progress. In effect, mobilizationsagainst the social and environmental consequences of the internal Great Dividebetween Nature/Culture fuels moderns (of all stripes) to seek new ways ofrelating Nature and Culture � for example through notions of sustainable



development (see Blaser, 2009). The questioning of the Nature/Culture divideconjoins with the mobilizations through which the several ‘Others’ ofmodernity forcefully contest the colonial hierarchy (the external Great Divideof Euro-modernity) that places their worlds or ontologies in a subordinatedposition. The consequence is a situation in which modernity (in its multiplicity)starts to become visible as an ontology among others (hence the point I madebefore, about the ‘ontological turn’ being a symptom of the currentconjuncture). This, besides fueling a search for other forms of being modern,also allows (the various) moderns to consider as plausible and/or desirableother ontologies that before were taken to be ‘cultures’ whose insights wereirrelevant, mistaken, or unrealistic. And as ontological conflicts becomeincreasingly visible as such and proliferate, the privileges of the Euro-modernconstitution become based more and more on, to use Guha’s (1997) words,Dominance without Hegemony. This brings me to my concluding reflection: whatroles do the modern and the non-modern play nowadays in our imaginings ofpossible futures?

The crises of the modernity we know (that is, Euro-modernity) itsprogressive loss of hegemonic power (although not of dominance), leads manyof us who have been trained and raised within its ontological armature toconsider that there are no ‘modern solutions for modern problems’ (Santos2002, p. 13) and therefore that we must seek a solution outside of it. In somecases, but not always, this leads to a re-edition of the myth of the noble savage:in our desperation to find a way out we take whatever we consider ‘Other’ asthe panacea. But recognizing that this is a problematic move should not blindus to what is ‘Other’ and interpellates us demanding that, beyond and aboveour own search for solutions to our dilemmas with modernity, we relate tothem in non hierarchical ways. In general terms this means avoiding forcingthem into the ontological armature of modernity either by omission orcommission; in particular, this means not taming them with our category ofCulture. Now, Grossberg’s project reminds us that this might be possiblewithin modernity, if we allow for the possibility of its multiplicity. Moreimportantly for those of us concerned with the place and survival of radicallydifferent worlds is that, given its dominance, the emergence of a different kindof modernity (one concerned with translating rather than proselytizing) ismore likely than simply its total demise along with Euro-modernity.Conversely, for those concerned with the actualization of other, more just,non-Euro-centered modernities, addressing the question of how to relate toradical difference without taming it might provide an indirect route to achievetheir goal; after all, as the Levantine example indicates, a modernity that doesnot tame radical difference will indeed be something else than Euro-modernity.



Acknowledgements

I want to thank Lawrence Grossberg, Arturo Escobar, and John Pickles forinviting me to present some of these ideas in their graduate course at Universityof North Carolina, Chapel Hill. I am especially indebted to the first of them forallowing me to discuss and use in this paper his unpublished work. He hasinformed me that a revised version of this paper will appear in his forthcomingbook, For Cultural Studies (Duke University Press, 2010). Elena Yehia providedinsightful comments and critiques of an earlier version of this paper. Marisol de laCadena and Arturo Escobar have been very close ‘accomplices’ in theformulation of some of these ideas but I am responsible for the weaknesses inthis presentation.

Notes

1 The framework is being developed by a group of colleagues includingMarisol de la Cadena, Arturo Escobar, Harvey Feit, Justin Kenrick, BrianNoble and the Crabgrass Collective. However, I must make clear that thereare debates among ourselves on whether the term ‘political ontology’ is themost appropriate to label this emerging framework.

2 A central tenet of ANT is precisely that agency is not an exclusive attributeof humans.

3 See http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/in_pictures/4636044.stm4 See http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2004/06/16/orca_drums040616.

html; the story of Luna received a lot of media attention and besidesnews and blogs now there are two feature films about it: Spirit of the Whale,which is a dramatization, and Saving Luna, a documentary.

5 Bolivia, and the figure of Fausto Reinaga, provides a good example of why thisshould not be the case. Fausto Reinaga was an Indigenous intellectual who inthe 1970s gave voice to a then barely audible claim, that social transformationin Bolivia had to be based on reclaiming Indigenous identities and visionsof society against the projects pursued by the Euro-centric elites (from Leftand Right). In a context in which the dominant language of radical socialtransformation was the peasant revolution, Reinaga was considered a romanticand fundamentalist and therefore silenced and marginalized. Through theyears the conceptual shift that Reinaga was pushing for gained more traction(or becamemore visible), and 30 years down the road the re-assertion of Indige-nous identities and values became undeniably central to ideas of radical socialtransformation in Bolivia. For a discussion of Reinaga’s ideas see Lucero (2007).

6 Let’s recall that Scott distinguishes between a ‘public transcript’ (which isreadily available to any observer) where, given power asymmetries, the termsof the discourse are shaped by the dominant group. Thus, much of thesubordinated group critical discourse never appears in the ‘public transcript,’



http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/in_pictures/4636044.stm

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2004/06/16/orca_drums040616

rather it appears in the ‘hidden transcript,’ the space where the subordinatedgroups are secluded from the gaze of the dominant group.

7 The arrow of time was mainly understood as a progression, although it couldbe understood as a sort of regression as well, as the Romantics did. Notsurprise then that any contestation to dominant notions of progress are stilllabeled ‘romantic’ and often equated to a desire for the past. It is important tohighlight, however, that the groups that self-defined as modern (and thereforesuperior) have been historically variable albeit not arbitrary, the invariableelement has been that the story of modernity (in its Euro-modern version) isenacted through those human groups’ practices and institutions. Thus, Euro-modernity is not restricted to Europeans but rather exists/extends as far asone can trace that its version of the story of modernity is being enacted.

8 Of course, the ‘ontological turn’ is itself a symptom of certain occurrencesthat are key to understand the current conjuncture. I will expand on thispoint in the Conclusions.

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