Ontology, ‘hauntology’ and the ‘turn’ that keeps anthropology turning

Argyrou, Vassos

Abstract

© 2016, © The Author(s) 2016. Twentieth-century anthropology has been operating with the assumption of one nature and many cultures, one reality experienced and lived in many different ways. Its primary job, therefore, has been to render the otherness of the other understandable, to demonstrate that although different it is also the same; in short, to show that although other, others are people like us. The latest theoretical paradigm, known as the ‘ontological turn’, appears to reverse this assumption and to posit many natures and one culture. Whether it does in fact reverse it and constitutes a meta-ontology, as critics have pointed out, or it is only a heuristic, methodological device, as some of the proponents of the ‘turn’ have recently argued, the contention of my article is the same: first, this move – the ontological – is made in the hope of doing a better job in redeeming otherness than earlier anthropological paradigms; second, it fails as they did – in the same way and for the same reasons.

Citation

Argyrou, V. (2017). Ontology, ‘hauntology’ and the ‘turn’ that keeps anthropology turning. History of the Human Sciences, 30(1), 50-65. https://doi.org/10.1177/0952695116684310

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Jul 14, 2016
• Online Publication Date: Dec 28, 2016
• Publication Date: Feb 1, 2017
• Deposit Date: Jul 20, 2016
• Publicly Available Date: Dec 28, 2016
• Journal: History of the human sciences
• Print ISSN: 0952-6951
• Electronic ISSN: 1461-720X
• Publisher: SAGE Publications
• Peer Reviewed: Not Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 30
• Issue: 1
• Pages: 50-65
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/0952695116684310
• Keywords: Anthropological theory, ‘Ontological turn’, ‘Hauntology’
• Public URL: https://hull-repository.worktribe.com/output/441415
• Publisher URL: http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0952695116684310
• Additional Information: Author's accepted manuscript of article published in: History of the human sciences, 2017, v.30, issue 1.