We’ll be starting up another session of our discord reading group on May 3, 2021 (until June 14th) with reading and discussions of the book A World of Many Worlds (2018), edited by Marisol de la Cadena and Mario Blaser.

The book is an up-to-date(ish) look at the so-called “ontological turn” and its application in the social sciences. Through a combination of theory and fieldwork reporting, the contributors explore how divergent knowledges and practices make worlds.

Learn more here: https://www.dukeupress.edu/a-world-of-many-worlds
Get a free pdf version here: https://ca1lib.org/book/3644898/95d1f7

Reading Schedule:

May 3 – “Introduction. Pluriverse: Proposals for a World of Many Worlds,” by Mario Blaser and Marisol de la Cadena
May 10 – “Opening Up Relations,” by Marilyn Strathern
May 17 – “Spiderweb Anthropologies: Ecologies, Infrastructures, Entanglements,” by Alberto Corsín Jiménez
May 24 – “The Challenge of Ontological Politics,” by Isabelle Stengers
May 31 – “The Politics of Working Cosmologies Together While Keeping Them Separate,” by Helen Verran
June 7 – “Denaturalizing Nature,” by John Law and Marianne Lien
June 14 – “Humans and Terrans in the Gaia War,” by Eduardo Viveiros de Castro and Deborah Danowski

The ontological turn broadly relates to a development in a number of philosophical and academic disciplines that led to an increased focus on being. More specifically, the ontological turn refers to a change in theoretical orientation according to which difference are understood not in terms of a difference in world views, but a differences in worlds.

Publisher’s Description: A World of Many Worlds is a search into the possibilities that may emerge from conversations between indigenous collectives and the study of science’s philosophical production. The contributors explore how divergent knowledges and practices make worlds. They work with difference and sameness, recursion, divergence, political ontology, cosmopolitics, and relations, using them as concepts, methods, and analytics to open up possibilities for a pluriverse: a cosmos composed through divergent political practices that do not need to become the same.

Drop us a line here or on twitter if you want access to this session. All are welcome!