Ontological Politics - Annemarie Mol

"These have to do with ontological politics. They have to do with the way in which 'the real' is implicated in the political and vice versa.(...) Ontological Politics is a composite term. It talks of ontology - which in standart philosophical parlance defines what belongs to the real, the conditions of possibility we live with. If the term 'ontology' is combined with that of 'politics' then this suggests that the conditions of possibility are not given. That reality does not precede the mundane practices in which we interact with it, but is rather shaped within this practices. So the term politics works to underline this active mode, this process of shaping, and the fact that its character is both open and contested. To be sure, is has always been assumed that 'reality' is not entirely immutable. Such was the point of technology - and indeed politics. These worked on the assumption that the world might be mastered, changed, controlled. So within the conventions of technology and politics the question of how to shape reality was open: at some point in the future it might be otherwise. But along with this it was assumed that the building blocks of reality were permanent: they could be uncovered by means of sound scientific investigation. Over the last two decades, however, they have been undermined, these neat divisions between present and future; between that which is well-set and that which is still-to-be-formed; between the building blocks that are given and the modes by which they might be differently adjusted.

This work - of which actor network theory  did quite a bit but that it by no means did alone - has robbed the elements that make up reality - reality in its ontological dimension - of its alleged stable, given, universal character. It has argued, instead, that reality is historically, culturally and materially located. Located where? The answer depends on the field in which it is given. In social studies of science it was the laboratory that was rediscribed as a sociomaterial practice where reality is transformed and where news ways of doing reality are crafted. From there they are exported, not so much in the form of theory but rather - or at least as much - in the shape of vaccinations, microchips, valves, combustion engines, telephones, genetically manipulated mice and other objects - objects that carry new realities, new ontologies, with them.


Ontologies: note that. Now the word needs to go in the plural. For, and this is a crucial move, if reality is done, if it is historically, culturally and materially located, then ir is also multiple. Realities have become multiple".

Ontological  Politics  (ANT and After) - Annemarie Mol