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Cultural Studies
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POLITICAL ONTOLOGY
Mario Blaser
Published online: 10 Nov 2009.

To cite this article: Mario Blaser (2009) POLITICAL ONTOLOGY, Cultural Studies, 23:5-6,
873-896, DOI: 10.1080/09502380903208023

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 Mario Blaser

POLITICAL ONTOLOGY

Cultural Studies without ‘cultures’?

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In this article I seek to put into conversation two different but convergent
intellectual/political projects, Lawrence Grossberg’s ‘radically contextualist
cultural studies’ and ‘political ontology’, an emergent analytical framework
being developed by a loosely connected network of scholars. Central to both projects
is the question of modernity, but while Grossberg’s cultural studies focuses on the
possibilities for multiple modernities immanent to the present conjuncture, the
political ontology project focuses on the status of the non-modern. I argue that
the parallels and the divergences between these projects contain the promise for a
fruitful conversation resting on the understanding that the possibilities for multiple
modernities 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 to
think 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 been

directly 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 (and
perhaps clumsy) strokes that shape the argument. I felt strongly drawn into this
conversation upon reading two articles by Lawrence Grossberg (2006, n.d.)
that led me to conclude firstly, that I had been doing something very similar to
the project of cultural studies he was advocating for, and secondly, that some
issues I had encountered in my own investigations could contribute something
useful to this project. In the mentioned articles, Grossberg seeks to recover the
original sense of cultural studies as a ‘project not only to construct a political
history of the present, but to do so in a particular way, a radically contextualist
way’ (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 the
most recent, unpublished work, we are made aware that the political
importance of this diagnosis emerges from the purpose to produce:
Cultural Studies Vol. 23, Nos. 5
6 September
November 2009, pp. 873
896
ISSN 0950-2386 print/ISSN 1466-4348 online – 2009 Taylor & Francis
http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals DOI: 10.1080/09502380903208023
 874 C U LT U R A L S T U D I E S

knowledge that illuminates and explores the possibilities of changing the

context in which it operates and into which it is directed; thus, it always
presupposes a reconstitution of imagination in the context of its own
analysis. It aims to give people an understanding of the contingency of the
present. If the present context did not have to be this way, if it was not
guaranteed in advance, then it could have been otherwise, and it can be
something different in the future. What then are the possibilities for the
future disclosed in the present?
(n.d.)
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In this perspective, the project of cultural studies involves diagnosing the

present conjuncture and making available the imaginative elements that might
render it something else, all in one move. This means that the potential futures
we can aspire to are closely related to the kind of diagnostic of the present we
perform. Thus described, it seemed to me that the project of cultural studies
was very close to the kind of project I had been pursuing. In effect, for some
time now I have been concerned with understanding the meaning and scope of
Indigenous peoples’ mobilization and politics in the present conjuncture,
precisely because I believe they make available imaginative elements that might
be central to transform oppressive and deeply engrained aspects of the
dominant modern social formation (see Blaser 2007, 2009, in press). Like
Grossberg, I also find that the kind of diagnosis of the present conjuncture that
one performs shapes to a large extent the possible futures we can aspire to, and
this 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 cultural
studies and my own. In the second section I will focus on why it might be
advisable for any project that seeks to diagnose the present conjuncture to pay
close attention both to the non-modern itself and to how we tend to
conceptualize it. This will lead the discussion to the third section where I will
address the positivity of the non-modern and how we must avoid a ‘conceptual
trap’ to really get to it. In the Conclusions I will briefly discuss how all this
relates to a possible reading of the present conjuncture and the role that the
modern and the non-modern play in our imagining of alternatives futures.

Diagnosing the present conjuncture, or, should Cultural

Studies only search for modernities?
Drawing from a varied set of works, Grossberg advances the argument that the
present conjuncture could be considered as a struggle, from both the right and
the left, against liberal modernity and the attempt to shape an alternative
modernity as the future. In light of this diagnosis, the key political question of
the present conjuncture seems to be modernity itself, or better, the possibility
 POLITICAL ONTOLOGY 875

of multiple modernities (n.d.). Now, it is important to stress that Grossberg’s

notion of multiple modernities is critical of the dominant tropes about it, which
in one way or another remain profoundly Euro-centric. As I will discuss in more
detail later, Grossberg and I coincide on this point. For now it will suffice to say
that to counter the Euro-centrism of these dominant tropes of multiple
modernities Grossberg tackles the ‘moderness’ of contemporary social
formations thus,

One might, confronted with the claim of other modernities, ask why they
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are called modern? Why do I want to credit them, at the very least, as
statements about modernity? Why engage in a struggle over the
possibilities of being modern? Why agree to call such other social
formations modern? Why not something else, perhaps alternatives to modernity
(such alternatives most certainly do exist as well)? The answer is partly given by
the ‘origin’ of this investigation, insofar as I believe a useful way of
understanding the contemporary political conjuncture of the United
States (at the very least) is in terms of a set of struggles over the coming
American 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’’ was
something that many people from all walks of life felt passionately moved
to talk about and debate.’ Similarly, Gyekye [1997] asserts that modernity
‘has in fact assumed or rather gained a normative status, in that all
societies in the world without exception aspire to become modern, to
exhibit in their social, cultural and political lives features said to
characterize modernity
whatever this notion means or those features
are.’ But it is clear that such a comment is not meant to simply imply that
the whole world is trying to become Europe; in fact, Gyekye similarly
describes a number of writers in the Middle Ages: ‘In characterizing
themselves and their times as modern, both Arabic and Latin scholars
were expressing their sense of cultural difference from the ancients . . .
But not only that: they must surely have considered their own times as
advanced (or more advanced) in most, if not all, spheres of human
endeavor.’ On what grounds do we deny such claims or judgments of
modernity? Even Lefebvre [1995] acknowledges that the ‘‘‘modern’’ is a
prestigious word, a talisman, an open sesame, and it comes with a lifelong
guarantee.’ Thus, the answer to why I want to think through and with the
concept of a multiplicity of modernities as a discursive reality is because
the 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 new
imagination for future ways of being modern. Cultural studies has always
taught that any successful struggle for political transformation has to start
where people are; the choice of where to begin the discourses of change
 876 C U LT U R A L S T U D I E S

cannot be defined simply by the desires, or even the politics, of

intellectuals.
(n.d., emphasis added)

Considering the ‘contest over modernity’ as a central feature of the current

conjuncture, it is not surprising that Grossberg finds problematic the move of
another intellectual project concerned with modernity, that of the modernity/
coloniality group, and upon which I partly rely on my own project. This
group, formed by a loosely connected network of Latin American intellectuals,
has developed the notion of modernity/coloniality (M/C) which has among its
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fundamental conceptual assumptions the idea that there is no modernity

without coloniality. Or, in other words, that colonialism and the making of the
capitalist world system are constitutive of modernity (for an overview of M/C
see Escobar 2007b). For Grossberg, this assumption ‘seems to guarantee that
the [M/C intellectuals] see their project, not as looking for other modernities,
but rather, for alternatives to modernity,’ which is somehow problematic as it
is not starting from ‘where people are.’ Thus, without necessarily contesting
it, Grossberg prefers to circumscribe this characterization of modernity to a
particular kind, Euro-modernity, thereby allowing other (potentially more
just) kinds of modernities to exist, at least as a possibility inherent to some of
those claims of modernity made by people who are not ‘trying to become
Europe.’
While situating the drive toward speaking of contemporary social
formations as modern against the background of an overarching ‘contest
over modernity,’ Grossberg is nevertheless aware that ‘we cannot avoid the
question 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 a

changing same or, adopting a phrase from Precarias a la Deriva [2004],
a ‘singularity in common.’ One must distinguish not only between the modern
and the non-modern, but also between, on the one hand, variations or
hybridities within an assumed common modernity (e.g., French vs. British
modernity, 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 clearer
criteria to define the modern are somehow in tension. The search for clearer
criteria necessarily implies tracing a boundary between the modern and the
non-modern that will not necessarily coincide with claims of modernity that
might rather tend toward ceaseless expansion. However, this tension is
supposedly resolved by a ‘diagram of being modern’ in which multiple actual
and virtual modernities may get actualized, but only as particular articulations
 POLITICAL ONTOLOGY 877

between four categories (‘Now/Event,’ ‘Change/Chronos,’ ‘Everyday Life,’

and ‘Institutional Space’) that are central to various definitions of modernity. As
I will discuss later, the solution to the tension seems to work only partially. For
now, I will conclude my very succinct, and undoubtedly sketchy, characteriza-
tion of Grossberg’s project by indicating that the challenge of defining
modernity in such a way that opens up other possibilities of being modern
remains 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 am
using for my investigations, which I consider might be put into useful
conversation with these efforts.1
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In order to explain what the political ontology framework entails, I must

first clarify what I mean by ‘ontology,’ as the term is often used in different
ways and with diverse connotations. Three layers of meaning shape my working
definition of ontology. The first layer is a dictionary definition: ‘any way of
understanding the world must make assumptions (which may be implicit or
explicit) about what kinds of things do or can exist, and what might be their
conditions of existence, relations of dependency, and so on. Such an inventory
of kinds of being and their relations is an ontology’ (Scott & Marshall 2005).
The second layer I borrow from the insights and language of science and
technology studies, and in particular from Actor Network Theory: ontologies
do not precede mundane practices, rather are shaped through the practices and
interactions of both human and non-humans (see Latour 1999; Law 2004; Mol
1999).2 Hence, ontologies perform themselves into worlds
this is why, as you
will see, I use the terms ‘ontologies’ and ‘worlds’ as synonyms. The third layer
builds on a voluminous ethnographic record that traces the connections
between ‘myths’ and practices: ontologies also manifest as ‘stories’ in which the
assumptions of what kinds of things and relations make up a given world readily
graspable
again, this warrants my use of the term ‘story’ to refer to a given
ontology. Although stories are a good entry point to an ontology, attending only
to their verbalized aspect and not to the way in which those stories are
embodied and enacted only give us half the story. In other words, ontologies
must be understood as total enactments involving discursive and non-discursive
aspects.
Having this definition in mind, let me advance that the term ‘political
ontology’ connotes two inter-related meanings. On the one hand, it refers to
the 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 that
ensue as different worlds or ontologies strive to sustain their own existence as
they interact and mingle with each other. Given its dominance, the modern
ontology figures prominently among the concerns of this analytical framework
and, thus, comes close and intersects with what Grossberg considers a key
political question of the present conjuncture, that is, modernity itself or the
possibility of multiple modernities. Yet, for reasons that I now explain, from
 878 C U LT U R A L S T U D I E S

a political ontology perspective, the notion of multiple modernities has been

treated with both skepticism and preoccupation. A couple of vignettes and a set
of quotations will help me to foreground why this is so.
In 2006, Evo Morales becomes the first indigenous president of Bolivia
after a series of social mobilizations that started to shake the colonial, racist,
and extremely unequal social fabric of that country. In an unprecedented
move, an indigenous Andean ceremony at Tiawanaku
a pre-Columbian
monumental center
is added to the usual protocol by which the new
president is invested with his authority.3 Far to the North-west, in the
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Canadian province of British Columbia, the Mowachat/Muchalaht First Nation

clashes with the Department of Fisheries and environmentalists groups who
want to return Luna, a young lost orca whale, to its pod. The natives insist that
in 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 familiar
notions such as ‘displays of ethnic symbolism’ and different ‘social construc-
tions’ of the animal whale, all of which help to situate ‘differences’ within the
matrix of a common ‘modern present’
i.e. they are manifestations of the
diverse modernities that exist nowadays. In effect, for reasons that I will
discuss in more detail later, nowadays all differences have come to be
conceived as being played out within a single ontological domain, which, as the
following 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 the
study of ethnohistory is that the subjects of the two kinds of history are
the 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 autocentric

picture of itself as the expression of universal certainty . . . So its history
has 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, the
contours of the problem that political ontology is trying to address becomes
apparent. For instance, consider the following assertion extracted from the
Mandate from the Original [Indigenous] Peoples and Nations to the World States,
drafted in Cochabamba, Bolivia, on 12 October 2007,
 POLITICAL ONTOLOGY 879

A new age driven by the originary indigenous peoples is beginning, giving

birth to the times of change, the times of Pachakuti, in times when the
Fifth Sun is coming to an end.

Through their contrast, these quotations delineate a key problem of the

present conjuncture, namely, the power dynamics implicit in the naturalization
of the story of modernity and the consequent and necessary conflicts and
challenges that this process generates when it encounters other stories that
contest 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 of
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Pachakuti and the Mesoamerican idea of the Fifth Sun are pointing out to
something that escape modern categories (see de la Cadena 2009, for a similar
point). Yet, to mention whether there is something that escapes modern
categorizations is nowadays a heresy. For instance, a reviewer of an article a
colleague 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 indigenous
peoples 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 of
indigenous peoples as not engaged in the modern world.

In short, then, the starting point of a conversation between the project of

cultural studies pursued by Grossberg and the project of political ontology is an
addendum to his diagnosis of the present conjuncture. Briefly stated, although it
is undeniable that there is a contest over modernity and that this contest has
very 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 its
very existence. In effect, the dominant assumption of a single ontological matrix
(that of modernity) within which all social formations are contained
implicit
in notions such as the ‘social construction of realities,’ ‘display of ethnic
symbolism,’ and a single historicity, downplays the extent to which the current
conjuncture is marked by ontological conflicts. These are conflicts that fester
under the assumption that parties to the conflict agree on what is at stake, when
actually that is not the case. In other words, what is at stake in these conflicts is
precisely the differing ‘things’ that are at stake. Luna is not a whale for the
Mowachat nation, it is Tsux’lit, a different entity that is not easily translatable as
the social construction of an animal. Evo Morales is not performing rituals to
symbolize the ethnic character of his politics, he is following a precise protocol
to summon non-human forces to help him govern Bolivia. The Pachakuti and
the Fifth Sun are not the modern age; they imply another temporality that
cannot be subsumed by the former.
 880 C U LT U R A L S T U D I E S

Because the contest with the non-modern manifests as ontological conflicts

there 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 multiple
modernities, as it stands with its drive toward incorporating all differences
within the ontological domain of modernity, makes it even more difficult to
account for ontological conflicts as part of the present conjuncture. Hence, the
skepticism and concern with which the notion of multiple modernities has
been treated from the political ontology perspective. However, precisely
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because Grossberg’s project seeks to bypass some of these problems with the
dominant notion of multiple modernities, it opens unforeseen possibilities to
conceive the relations between a potentially non-Euro-centered modernity and
the non-modern. Likewise, and precisely because the non-modern exceeds our
own questions
and the categories and concepts within which such questions
are 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 the
next section, without the counterbalance of the non-modern, Euro-modernity
remains a powerful (and perhaps inescapable) ‘gravitational force’ impinging
on our diagnostics of the present conjuncture, and therefore of the potential
futures we imagine.

The pull of Euro-modernity

As we have seen in the previous section, Grossberg’s and the political ontology
projects intersect creating a potentially fruitful point of tension: his interest in
opening the definition of the modernity to other, more just, ways of being
modern and our interest in making sure that the definition of modernity does not
expand to the point that it occludes the existence of the non-modern. In the
Conclusions I will discuss what are the implications of non-Euro-centered
modernities for political ontology. Here, and illuminated by the political
ontology concern, I want to focus on the two aspects of Grossberg’s project that
as I said before appear to be in tension: the desire to attend to diverse claims of
modernity and the search for clearer criteria to define the modern. Although in
the works I mentioned he has not explored the implications it may have for his
project of multiple modernities
and this paper is in part an invitation to do so

Grossberg recognizes the existence of something outside modernity; this is
certainly not the case with the dominant tropes of multiple modernities. Thus, a
quick look into the context in which these tropes emerge will help us better
situate how, and to what extent, Grossberg departs from them.
The implicit understanding that the existence of multiple modernities means
that there is nothing outside of modernity is not the effect of unsophisticated
analyses or theories; rather it is a symptom of the present conjuncture, insofar as
 POLITICAL ONTOLOGY 881

it expresses a particular trajectory of the concept of culture. In effect, that an

argument about the existence of something outside modernity can be taken to be
at best romanticism or at worse a colonizing gesture responds to the criticisms to
which earlier notions of culture as systemic, organic, and bounded were
subjected from the 1970s onwards. The main thrust of the criticism was that
deploying such notions of culture, other (non-Western) peoples were removed
from history, making the analysts blind to the actual consequences of their own
politics of representation. (see Hymes, 1974; Asad, 1973; Wolf, 1982/1997;
Fabian, 1983; Clifford & Marcus, 1986; Fox, 1991). Showing that so-called
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‘traditional societies’ have never been isolated, unchanging, backward, and out
of history
in short, that they have never been ‘traditional’ in the terms set by
the modern imagination
these critiques contested a key colonial argument
according to which ‘Others’ were amenable to be subordinated to the modern
colonial powers by virtue of their being traditional or primitive. However,
rather than being simply eliminated, the original dichotomy between modern
and traditional was replaced by another dichotomy, that between ‘unreal
traditions’ and ‘real and all-encompassing modernity.’ In effect, it seems that the
conclusion derived from the critiques has been that, if there have not been really
existing traditional societies, then, we are all modern in one way or another. But
this is profoundly problematic, not the least because it opens the door to an
insidious Euro-centrism that permeates the dominant tropes of multiple
modernities. Indeed, the only clear thread across diverse understandings of
what modernity is, in one way or another, connects the term to Europe. In other
words, it seems that if all contemporary social formations are modern it is
because they have had transformative interactions with Europe. The problem is
that this assumes that the encounter with Europeans is the single most important
constitutive factor in the historical trajectory of any given social formation. In
effect, if we agree that any given social formation is always the historical product
of transformative interactions with other social formations, the question arises as
to why we should call the present state of diverse social formations modern. The
‘moderness’ that underlies the different contemporary social formations needs
to be proved rather than axiomatically asserted, but in order to do so one would
need some criteria of what does it mean to be modern.
In part because the existing literature does not provide clear criteria to
define it, the dominant notions of multiple modernities remain diffuse and/or
ultimately lead us to Euro-modernity, which is the problem that Grossberg
seeks to avoid by providing his ‘diagram of ways of being modern,’ a point to
which we will return soon. Nowadays, the assumption that all differences are
encompassed within modernity is reinforced by the self-proclaimed ‘moder-
ness’ of some of those who were previously defined as pre-modern and suffered
all the associated consequences of this status in terms of subordination to the
modern. In principle for Grossberg these claims, rather than the putative
content of a given social formation, do warrant the treatment of much
 882 C U LT U R A L S T U D I E S

contemporary diversity as modern. However, it is worth taking a closer look

into what might be a stake, both in the claims of modernity and the conclusions
that some of the analysts Grossberg is building on derive from such claims. As
we may recall from the extended quote above, Grossberg questioned on what
basis could one challenge the claims to modernity made by people that, by such
claims, certainly did not intend to become Europe. When I read the paragraph
I was struck by the contrast with my own experience with some indigenous
peoples in Latin America, where rather than being challenged in their claims of
modernity, it is their (implicit or explicit) claims of alternatives to modernity
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what is treated with contempt.

Indeed, in a recent interview and echoing the academic reviewer I quoted
before, the Bolivian vice-president and Left intellectual Alvaro Garcia Linera
accused sectors of the indigenous movement of being romantic because they
reclaim a role for indigenous cosmologies in shaping the Bolivian state. Pointing
to the 500 years of interaction and mingling between them, he denied that such
cosmologies could be radically different from the dominant modern one: ‘En el
fondo todos quieren ser modernos’ [‘Deep inside, everyone wants to be modern’]
(Garcia Linera, 2007, pp. 156
157). Notice how the same certainty about the
desirability of modernity that Gyekye (1997) attributes in Grossberg’s quote to
all societies ‘without exception’ is used here to silence and sideline a potentially
different agenda. The transmutation of the inherent hybridity of cultures into
barely veiled denials of differences is common and partakes of the strong
tendency among scholars, commentators and policy makers (from Left and
Right) to minimize or disregard the fact that the hasty unification of radical
differences under the banner of modernity betrays the original aim of the
critique of culture which was to foreground the problematic simultaneity of
different ways of being (Fabian, 1983, p. 146) against the then dominant
tendency to conceive these differences along an evolutionary and hierarchical
matrix. The result has been that differences have been diluted to the point that
they do not cut too deep before they find a common ground in a (hi)story that is
supposed to involve everyone, that of modernity.
I am very much aware that claims of non-modernity are not very visible and
remain relatively circumscribed when compared with the more visible claims of
‘different moderness.’ This leads some analysts to consider the ‘terminological
battle’ already settled; as a prominent Bolivian intellectual told me in a
conversation, ‘the modern now stands for the good, whatever this is, so we
[social movements] have to introduce our notion of the good into the definition
of the modern.’ But expanding the meaning of the word modern is not
necessarily 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 blackness
in the motto ‘black is beautiful’
might be another quite valid (and perhaps
better suited) strategy. Ultimately, the suitability of these strategies has to be
determined in relation to specific contexts, which in the present conjuncture are
 POLITICAL ONTOLOGY 883

not fully accounted for by the seemingly minoritarian character of the claims for
alternatives to modernity.5 Moreover, I believe that disregarding alternatives to
modernity (either by not fully accounting for them or by denying its existence)
does not help to a good diagnosis of the current conjuncture, precisely because
it contributes to make invisible ontological discrepancies and conflicts.
Now, recognizing that some sectors of the Indigenous movement either
reclaim a difference that explicitly presents itself as not amenable to be
contained within the bounds of modernity, or are so removed from these
concerns that do not even have a stake on the contest over or with modernity,
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does not imply a denial that other sectors do frame their claims in terms of
modernity. And yet one must consider that, even when explicit, claims of
modernity are not transparent statements. Indeed, claims of being modern
might actually constitute a site of what Viveiros de Castro (2004, p. 8) calls
uncontrolled equivocation, ‘a type of communicative disjuncture where the
interlocutors are not talking about the same thing, and do not know this.’
Uncontrolled equivocation refers to a communicative disjuncture that takes
place not between those who share a common world but rather those whose
worlds or ontologies are different. In other words, these misunderstandings
happen not because there are different perspectives on the world but rather
because the interlocutors are unaware that different worlds are being enacted
(and assumed) by each of them. These equivocations are prone to go unnoticed
where, 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 and
Euro-modernity, which is the historical milieu from which most contemporary
claims of modernity arise, ‘modernity’ implied, first and foremost, a language
of exclusion and, only then, a promise of inclusion
of course, always
demanding that non-moderns reform themselves to be modern. In other words,
the alternatives offered to the non-modern were in many cases, ‘convert and we
will not only give you the carrot (of modernity) but also will stop using the
stick’, 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 about
assuming 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 what
James Scott (1990) called the ‘hidden transcript.’6 One way in which this works
is by dressing the values of the subordinated with the discursive garments of the
dominant. A case in point is the conversion of aboriginal deities into Catholic
saints to the point that even the original name of the deity is lost. Yet, it would
constitute an equivocation to assume that a name shared by Catholics and
Indigenous peoples refer to the same entity. The phrase from Lefebvre quoted
by Grossberg above is somehow illuminating in this sense, if the ‘‘‘modern’’ is
a prestigious word, a talisman, an open sesame’ it is precisely because the
 884 C U LT U R A L S T U D I E S

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 that
at least some of what previously was referenced by the latter word is now
mobilized through the former word by making the latter plural. Not fully
attending to this dynamic in claims of modernity easily leads to the trap of
making modernity anything contemporary in general and nothing in particular.
In other words, claims of modernity are not sufficient in themselves to help us
trace the line between what falls within the domain of modernity (or
modernities) and that which falls beyond it. This leads us back to the need
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for clearer criteria to define the modern as distinct from the non-modern and
how 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 the
Eurocentrism of our understandings of the modern,’ and thus, the four
categories that articulate with each other to give emergence to a variety of ways
of being modern (i.e. ‘Now/Event,’ ‘Change/Chronos,’ ‘Everyday Life,’ and
‘Institutional Space’) must remain somehow under-specified so as to allow for
this virtual multiplicity to become actualized. And the diagram certainly works
well in this account as it is open enough to allow a great deal of variation on what
it might mean to be modern. Yet, the diagram does not work as well in
containing the modern so that it does not come to engulf all ways of being. In
effect, because the four categories according to which the modern gets
articulated in its multiplicity remain underspecified, it is hard to see how the
diagram 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 is
considered in relation to these categories, Euro-modernity, rather than the
virtual multiplicity of the modern, emerges as the foil that helps to trace the
boundary. Indeed speaking of the dynamic tension that exists in modern
formations between ‘institutional spaces’ and the space of ‘everyday life,’
Grossberg says: ‘the tension between these two spaces makes change not only
structurally possible, but also even normal and perhaps necessary . . . In non-
modern societies, only the institutional space exists
although we cannot
properly even call it that. Change comes primarily either from the outside or via
an explosive revolution’ (n.d.). Now, unless one takes Euro-modern instantia-
tions of both ‘institutional spaces’ and ‘everyday life’ as referents, it is hard to
see how these can be said to be lacking in the non-modern. In other words, could
it not be the case that the non-modern expresses other forms of ‘institutional
spaces’ and ‘everyday life’ and relations between them? In addition, the idea that
non-modern societies only change when moved from the outside or through
revolutions reinstates the Euro-centric tendency to define the non-modern as
the inverse image of the modern rather than by its own properties. In short, if
we were to totally relinquish Euro-modern instantiations of the articulation
between the four categories, we would have a hard time to trace the boundary
 POLITICAL ONTOLOGY 885

between the modern and the non-modern in Grossberg’s diagram. And once
pulled by Euro-modernity and its ways of tracing boundaries the non-modern
ends 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 ontology
framework might help with this problem, that is, as long as we remain aware of
the traps of the concept of Culture.

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

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Other worlds or ontologies often serve as the ‘constitutive outside’ for

modernity (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 here
the varied forms these worlds may acquire and that have been described by
many ethnographers. I will just briefly present a snapshot from a recent work
by Philippe Descola (2005), which is to my knowledge the first one to try a
systematic overview of this diversity. In this work he identifies four large kinds
of ontologies, which I present schematically in figure 1.
The sketch does not pretend to be an exhaustive representation of these
ontologies; it just seeks to highlight how each of them distributes ‘what exists,’

FIGURE 1 The four major ontologies of Descola.

 886 C U LT U R A L S T U D I E S

and conceive of their relations, in very different ways. Euro-modernity, and

I would like to argue even multiple modernities, fall within the spectrum of the
Naturalist ontologies that distribute what exists between two large domains,
Nature and Culture, which are sometimes (but not always) in relation with a
third domain, that of the supra-human/supernatural, i.e. the domain of God(s).
Animist ontologies correspond to what many also call relational ontologies in
which each entity (represented in the sketch by a geometrical figure) is related
to other entities as knots in a net. I have represented Analogism with the Ying
Yang, which is a relatively familiar symbol and quickly conveys the idea that this
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kind of ontology operates on the notion of some originating dynamic which

repeats itself from the micro to the macro and permeates the entire cosmos.
Totemism allocates a mix of humans and non-humans within ontologically
distinct groups that originate from a common ancestor. I will not go further into
the details of these ontologies beyond raising the issue that Analogism and
Totemism are, like Naturalism, prone to conceive of hierarchical relations
between the entities that populate the worlds they configure. The point is
important to dispel the often unstated assumption that anything which is non-
modern is better in terms of being more equalitarian and non-hierarchical. This
is another good reason why we need to move as quickly as possible from the
figure of the non-modern, which as with the figure of the modern in the
dominant 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 or
otherwise) as one particular ontological formation among others. These
ontologies differ from modernity not because, as Euro-modernity would pose
it, they lack what modernity has but because they distribute what exists and
conceive their constitutive relations in a different way. This might give us
a clue as to what might be added to Grossberg’s diagram of ways of being
modern 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 juxtaposing
Grossberg’s diagram of ways of being modern with the general diagram of
naturalist ontologies does not provide both the necessary flexibility to allow for
the possibility of multiple modernities and clearer criteria to distinguish what
falls within the domain of the modern from what falls within the domain of other
ontologies. But in order to grasp how this could help in distinguishing between
different modernities we must first make clear that naturalist ontologies are not
exactly synonymous with Euro-modern ontology. Although the latter is
contained within the former, the former far exceeds the particular instantiation
of 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 to
analyzing how conceptions of nature emerged progressively, starting from the
phusis of the Greek and culminating in the mutual autonomy of nature and
 POLITICAL ONTOLOGY 887

culture of Euro-modernity. Grossberg, in turn, mentions that bio-power, as a

particular Euro-modern machinery of power, ‘not only separates nature and
culture (since other diagrams have done that as well) but subsumes nature into
culture’ (n.d.). In other words, he is aware that the Nature/Culture divide
operates within Euro-modernity in a particular way. Now, because Euro-
modernity appears to be the only currently actualized form of modernity that
readily presents itself to the analysts for close scrutiny, its usage as a baseline for
comparison does not need to be problematic. That is, its usage does not
contradict the possibility of other non-Euro-centered modernities; rather, it
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signals that much work remains to be done in terms of specifying through

concrete examples how, while maintaining some resemblance with Euro-
modernity, the ontological armatures of these other modernities are constituted
and operate differently. With this in mind, let’s now take a closer look at how
the naturalist ontological armature operates in Euro-modernity.
A good point to begin is Latour’s (1993) rendering of what he calls the
internal Great Divide between Nature and Culture. In Euro-modernity this
ontological 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 a
fundamental assumption of Euro-modernity that can be traced at the basis of its
most salient institutions and practices, from science to politics. Latour argues
that this ontological armature is the result of practices of purification that
produce and sustain the distinction between Nature and Culture while at the
same time producing hybrid entities that are neither. Thus, although the result of
Euro-modern practices contradicts the fundamental distinction established by
the story of modernity between Nature and Culture, it is undeniable that the
distinction fuels those very same practices. In this sense, as a particular actualized
ontology, Euro-modernity is the result of these contradictory moves. Keeping
this in mind helps us to avoid understanding Euro-modernity as a sort of false
consciousness.
Now, according to Latour:

the Internal Great Divide [between Nature and Culture] accounts for the
External Great Divide [between Us and Them]: we [moderns] are the only
ones who differentiate absolutely between Nature and Culture whereas in
our eyes all the others
whether they are Chinese or Amerindians, Azande
or Barouya
cannot really separate what is knowledge from what is
society, what is sign from what is thing, what comes from Nature as it is
from what their cultures require.
(Latour 1993, p. 99)

Thus, what Mitchell calls modernity’s ‘autocentric picture of itself as the

expression of universal certainty’ is related to this claim of having a privileged
 888 C U LT U R A L S T U D I E S

access to a domain which is not clouded by culture, and this access is premised
precisely on recognizing the difference between what is Culture and what is
Nature; a distinction other ‘cultures’ do not have. This difference constit-
utes the external Great Divide between modern and non-modern. Now, what is
particularly Euro-modern is that between the sixteenth and the eighteenth
centuries the two great divides were increasingly understood (by Europeans
first, and by all kinds of Euro-moderns later) against the background of linear
time, thus making (Euro-)modernity not only different but also a superior way
of being, the spearhead of the evolving history of humanity (see Fabian 1983).7
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In any case, what is missing from Latour’s (1993) picture is the extent to
which the divide between Nature and Culture and the divide between modern
and non-modern are historically co-emergent in Euro-modernity. This is
precisely what the modernity/coloniality group foregrounds by indicating that
this particular ontological armature emerged progressively in a series of
specific locations in Western Europe along with the unfolding of the colonial
experience inaugurated by the Spanish conquest of the New World (see Dussel
1492/1995; Mignolo 2000). But in Euro-modernity, internal and external
divides are not only co-emerging, they are also co-sustaining. Thus, the
performance of a modern world in which the distinction between Nature and
Culture constitutes the ontological bedrock of a system of hierarchies between
the modern and the non-modern necessarily involves keeping at bay the threat
posed to it by the existence of worlds that operate on different ontological
premises, and this has been done by denying these worlds any real existence in
their own terms. Insofar as their radical difference can be tamed through the
concept of culture, for Euro-moderns these worlds just exist as ‘cultural
perspectives’ based on errors, mere believes, or romantic yearnings. With the
visual help of Figure 2, let me briefly discuss how the concept of culture tames
radically different worlds.
In figure 2 we have side by side the sketches of the Euro-modern version
of a naturalist ontology and that of a relational ontology. As we can see, in
comparison to the sketch that depicted the naturalist ontology among the other
ontologies of Descola, there are a series of modification here. First, there is no
domain of the supra-human/supernatural, as in Euro-modernity this domain
was progressively evacuated from the ontological armature. Second, the realm
of Culture and the realm of Nature are not side by side but rather the former
domain is positioned above the latter, depicting a hierarchical relation. Third,
the domain of Culture has been further sub-divided into several ‘cultures.’ In
effect, in Euro-modernity, the concept of culture has two related yet different
meanings, which I underscore by capitalizing one of them. As I have been
arguing, ‘Culture’ (with a capital C) is an ontological category that gains its
meaning by its contrast to Nature, and together both constitute the central
categories in the ontological armature of modernity (in its plurality). In
contrast, ‘culture’ is a sub-category subsumed within Culture and emerges
 POLITICAL ONTOLOGY 889
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FIGURE 2 Taming radical difference through culture.

from the differences among human groups, that is, different human groups
have different cultures. Now, if you imagine the sketch of the relational
ontology being shrunk or reduced to a small square, then labeled ‘culture,’ and
then 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 a
sense of how in this ontological armature Culture tames radical differences by
converting other ontologies into just another cultural perspective on Nature.
Nevertheless, we must remain attentive to capture how different performances
are still bounded within the confines of this ontological armature. For instance,
although relativism and universalism are opposite to each other, they share the
same ontological assumptions. In effect, in more or less explicit terms,
relativism would claim that Nature (or reality out there) cannot be more than a
sort of mirror in which ‘cultures’ see themselves. Universalism would on the
contrary claim that, in spite of the difficulties, Nature does provide a common
ground (a truth) that transcends ‘cultures.’ What is not contested by either
position is the initial assumption that there is Nature and there is ‘Culture.’
The universalism of (Euro-)modernity, that is, the notion that modernity can
produce the most accurate, or perhaps only accurate, representation of the
truth (provided by Nature) has shifted from being explicit to being implicit via
the taming work that Culture accomplishes. In its most recent incarnation this
operation is accomplished via the notion of social construction whereby it is
assumed that the representations of the world are all equally socially
constructed. Yet the very distinction between the world (Nature) and its
representation (Culture) continues to be affirmed as a universal.
 890 C U LT U R A L S T U D I E S

It is important to highlight that, as a particularly modern ontological category

that works in tandem with 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 of
ontology) in social theory, opens the door to deepen the critique of culture to now
encompass Culture and thus avoid the traps that the category poses to our capacity
to recognize other ontologies in their own terms.8 Thus, once we are able to
identify and protect ontological differences from this domesticating gesture, we
can get a better understanding of modernity (multiple and otherwise), for then we
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can fully recognize that there are other worlds
not cultures
that are different
from the modern one but certainly not traditional (i.e. simply the negative
rendering of modernity’s self-images) and grasp the power dynamics and the
productivity 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 relatively
circumscribed working definition or hypothesis of the currently actualized
modern world or ontology that can provide a baseline for comparison with
other possible modernities. In this case, this definition hinges upon a specific
arrangement of three elements: an ontologically stark distinction between
Nature and Culture, a dominant tendency to conceive difference (including the
difference between Nature and Culture) in hierarchical terms, and a linear
conception of time. Notice that I speak of an arrangement of these elements: it
is not the Nature/Culture divide, linear time, and an understanding of
differences in hierarchical terms per se that makes this actualization of
modernity specific; what constitutes the specificity of Euro-modernity is the
particular way in which these elements are narrated as being related to each
other, and the enactment of this story in a multiplicity of practices. Compare,
for instance, this ontology (including its relation to radical difference) with
Levantine society that, following Menocal, Grossberg describes as an example
of an earlier and other modern society ‘without teleology or universality,
a society of tolerance, of translators rather than proselytizers . . . a society, not
of hybrids, but of the constant articulation among differences, a society that
embraces contradictions . . . (n.d.). In spite of the fact that from Grossberg’s
account, 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 what
differentiates them as divergent forms of being modern and what conjoins them
in contrast to other ontologies. Considering that the European re-discovery of
Greece (and by extension of phusis) was done through the philosophers of those
‘societies of translators’ that bordered between Islam and Christendom, I would
not be surprised if a form of naturalist ontology is what emerges in common
between Levantine and Euro-modernity. But this must for now remain a
hypothesis to investigate and we must move on to the conclusions.
 POLITICAL ONTOLOGY 891

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

1 There is a vigorous push from capital and states to reach still

‘undeveloped’ natural and cultural ‘resources.’ But what appears from a
modernist perspective as ‘resources’ are entities to which indigenous and
other place-based peoples are related in diverse ways. And I stress that the
relations are diverse rather than assume that the notion of property can
encompass those relations. This is what is manifested when, for example,
indigenous peoples press the point that even if they have to fight for legal
ownership of the land, the proper way of understanding the relation is
their belonging to the land rather than the other way around.
2 A looming environmental crisis (intensified in part by the first set of
processes) has pushed ‘civil society’ and governments to design schemes
for environmental protection of areas considered ‘pristine,’ which again
are also complex webs of interrelated entities within which indigenous and
land-based peoples are enmeshed.
3 Evolving national and international frameworks increasingly recognize
‘indigenous rights,’ thus creating some conditions for indigenous peoples
to defend the existing relations that constitute their worlds against the
claims of property laid upon them by other parties. Yet the rights are
conceived from within the modern ontology as rights to their cultures
and/or ‘beliefs’ (as in claims of religious or spiritual value of specific
geographical areas, or the desire to continue with certain ways of life such
as hunting). Thus, as I hinted at with the example of the legal ownership of
the land, these rights have limitations insofar as the world being defended
has to be reduced to a culture; that is, it is forced to fit into the modern
world.

These three processes, taken together, delineate a ‘state of affairs’ in which

conflicts are becoming very visible as ontological conflicts precisely because
they hinge upon contestations of the two great divides of the Euro-modern
constitution and its associated notion of progress. In effect, mobilizations
against the social and environmental consequences of the internal Great Divide
between Nature/Culture fuels moderns (of all stripes) to seek new ways of
relating Nature and Culture
for example through notions of sustainable
 892 C U LT U R A L S T U D I E S

development (see Blaser, 2009). The questioning of the Nature/Culture divide

conjoins with the mobilizations through which the several ‘Others’ of
modernity forcefully contest the colonial hierarchy (the external Great Divide
of Euro-modernity) that places their worlds or ontologies in a subordinated
position. The consequence is a situation in which modernity (in its multiplicity)
starts to become visible as an ontology among others (hence the point I made
before, about the ‘ontological turn’ being a symptom of the current
conjuncture). This, besides fueling a search for other forms of being modern,
also allows (the various) moderns to consider as plausible and/or desirable
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other ontologies that before were taken to be ‘cultures’ whose insights were
irrelevant, mistaken, or unrealistic. And as ontological conflicts become
increasingly visible as such and proliferate, the privileges of the Euro-modern
constitution become based more and more on, to use Guha’s (1997) words,
Dominance without Hegemony. This brings me to my concluding reflection: what
roles do the modern and the non-modern play nowadays in our imaginings of
possible futures?
The crises of the modernity we know (that is, Euro-modernity) its
progressive loss of hegemonic power (although not of dominance), leads many
of us who have been trained and raised within its ontological armature to
consider that there are no ‘modern solutions for modern problems’ (Santos
2002, p. 13) and therefore that we must seek a solution outside of it. In some
cases, 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’ as
the panacea. But recognizing that this is a problematic move should not blind
us to what is ‘Other’ and interpellates us demanding that, beyond and above
our own search for solutions to our dilemmas with modernity, we relate to
them in non hierarchical ways. In general terms this means avoiding forcing
them into the ontological armature of modernity either by omission or
commission; in particular, this means not taming them with our category of
Culture. Now, Grossberg’s project reminds us that this might be possible
within modernity, if we allow for the possibility of its multiplicity. More
importantly for those of us concerned with the place and survival of radically
different worlds is that, given its dominance, the emergence of a different kind
of modernity (one concerned with translating rather than proselytizing) is
more 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 to
radical difference without taming it might provide an indirect route to achieve
their goal; after all, as the Levantine example indicates, a modernity that does
not tame radical difference will indeed be something else than Euro-
modernity.
 POLITICAL ONTOLOGY 893

Acknowledgements

I want to thank Lawrence Grossberg, Arturo Escobar, and John Pickles for
inviting me to present some of these ideas in their graduate course at University
of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. I am especially indebted to the first of them for
allowing me to discuss and use in this paper his unpublished work. He has
informed me that a revised version of this paper will appear in his forthcoming
book, For Cultural Studies (Duke University Press, 2010). Elena Yehia provided
insightful comments and critiques of an earlier version of this paper. Marisol de la
Cadena and Arturo Escobar have been very close ‘accomplices’ in the
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formulation of some of these ideas but I am responsible for the weaknesses in

this presentation.

Notes
1 The framework is being developed by a group of colleagues including
Marisol de la Cadena, Arturo Escobar, Harvey Feit, Justin Kenrick, Brian
Noble and the Crabgrass Collective. However, I must make clear that there
are debates among ourselves on whether the term ‘political ontology’ is the
most appropriate to label this emerging framework.
2 A central tenet of ANT is precisely that agency is not an exclusive attribute
of humans.
3 See http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/in_pictures/4636044.stm
4 See http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2004/06/16/orca_drums040616.
html; the story of Luna received a lot of media attention and besides
news 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 this
should not be the case. Fausto Reinaga was an Indigenous intellectual who in
the 1970s gave voice to a then barely audible claim, that social transformation
in Bolivia had to be based on reclaiming Indigenous identities and visions
of society against the projects pursued by the Euro-centric elites (from Left
and Right). In a context in which the dominant language of radical social
transformation was the peasant revolution, Reinaga was considered a romantic
and fundamentalist and therefore silenced and marginalized. Through the
years the conceptual shift that Reinaga was pushing for gained more traction
(or became more visible), and 30 years down the road the re-assertion of Indige-
nous identities and values became undeniably central to ideas of radical social
transformation in Bolivia. For a discussion of Reinaga’s ideas see Lucero (2007).
6 Let’s recall that Scott distinguishes between a ‘public transcript’ (which is
readily available to any observer) where, given power asymmetries, the terms
of the discourse are shaped by the dominant group. Thus, much of the
subordinated group critical discourse never appears in the ‘public transcript,’
 894 C U LT U R A L S T U D I E S

rather it appears in the ‘hidden transcript,’ the space where the subordinated
groups are secluded from the gaze of the dominant group.
7 The arrow of time was mainly understood as a progression, although it could
be understood as a sort of regression as well, as the Romantics did. Not
surprise then that any contestation to dominant notions of progress are still
labeled ‘romantic’ and often equated to a desire for the past. It is important to
highlight, however, that the groups that self-defined as modern (and therefore
superior) have been historically variable albeit not arbitrary, the invariable
element has been that the story of modernity (in its Euro-modern version) is
enacted through those human groups’ practices and institutions. Thus, Euro-
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modernity is not restricted to Europeans but rather exists/extends as far as

one 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 occurrences
that are key to understand the current conjuncture. I will expand on this
point in the Conclusions.

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