In the afternoon of October the 6th (2025) accessing the Dept of History and Cultures of the University of Bologna to reach the Aula Prodi where the “David Graeber between anthropology and philosophy”, organized by Sive Natura, 1st day of discussions was held, we are greated by a lively and heartwarming scene of conviviality around an anarchic theatrical expression of support for the resistance and the defence of human rights and pluralities, everywhere and in Middle East (Gazan flags could be seen well exposed).
The discussants anchored their reflection on the writings of Graeber himself, and especially DOI: 10.14318/hau5.2.003 in which the author extensively offers an authograph analysis of his own standing in the debate about reality and pluralities, by answering a criticism by the purported father of the ontological turn aimed at Graeber’s own comment about magical beliefs among the malgashi people, which read as <<Of course it would also be going too far to say that the fetishistic view is simply true: Lunkanka cannot really tie anyone’s intestines into knots; Ravololona cannot really prevent hail from falling on anyone’s crops.>> and was seen by Viveiros de Castro as <<an essay at reconciling one explicit Western ontology (to wit, dialectical materialism) with the Merina’s implicit one, rather than an effort to problematize our own assumptions, does not end up, more than simply leaving untouched, reinforcing our own ontological framework>>.
Graeber writes an extensive rebuttal, offering his own reflections about the anthropological method, about what taking an informant seriously a’-la Ontological Turn should and shouldn’t mean, offering us a window to his own epistemological stance.
Citing the Sophist Gorgias of Leontin, as an example to clarify what he means as ontology, he stresses his sympathy for the traditional meaning of the term, not as a synonym for being, way of being, or mode of existence, but referring instead to a discourse (logos) about the nature of being. Thus, Graeber declares that nothing exists is an ontological statement, just as if it did exist, it could not be known is an epistemological statement, as epistemology is not knowledge of the world but rather, a discourse concerning the nature and possibility of knowledge about the world. Such statements carry value through hermeneutics, it is to say for the reflections descending by the speculation on the circumstances that would make such statements hold, and their consequences, rather than because of their literal meaning, which per se are rather nihilist and allow no new comprehension of reality.
He invites us to take one step back. a’-la Heidegger [Heidegger, M. (1957). The Onto-theo-logical Constitution of Metaphysics], when sharing that <<Arguments about the efficacy of one or another sort of fanafody, or of fanafody in general, were, in fact, so common I would even call them a popular form of entertainment>>, which would imply that we should also investigate and take seriously the critical reflection of our informants, shaping our own path of interpretation of what is told and shared.
Furthermore he follows by inviting to a second step back (should we refer to Badiou’s 1989 Manifesto for philosophy] offering an argument about the identity of human groups <<not a single person I encountered during my field- work ever referred to him- or herself as “Merina.”>> resonating with the physics of scale and emergence. We have to remind ourselves that, when taking seriously our informants, we should also understand the impact our way of enquiry and organization of the information has on the emerging meaning and how fluid the identity of our informants might be in our hands.
Graeber comes out as proponent of a contemporary science epistemological argument about anthropology when stating that <<“Natural” science is dedicated to unveiling the uniform laws that govern that undifferentiated reality; “social” science is the study of different ways different people think about or represent it>> and <<It makes much better sense to define “reality” as precisely that which we can never know completely; which will never be entirely encompassed in our theoretical descriptions. The only things about which we can have absolute and comprehensive knowledge are things we have made up.>>. Isn’t it science (past Popper, past Kuhn [Thomas Kuhn (1962). The structure of scientific revolutions], and past Feyerabend [Paul Feyerabend (1975). Against method) assuming we can only make false statements about the world, and setting up a value criteria estimating how interesting each statement is when failing forward to hold together our investigation of the world?
Doesn’t knowing that we all share one common, impossible to fully know, reality make the Ontological Turn blossom in all its worth, not by offering n monadic world realities, but rather by tooling us for radical introspection and shared meaning building?
Interestingly, the question time with the public was heavily dominated by questions about reconciliation of conflicting world views, of conflicting morals, and ultimately about violence.
After a brief excursus about moral and ethics (the first being a set of beliefs about values and rules of conduct; the second being the pragmatic continuing evaluation and learning about the implications of conducts for the acting and affected groups… as to explore a game theoretical space) the conversation focused firmly on violence.
There is a shared understanding that the trap of violence is its “simplifying power”, as in Arendt’s critics [H. Arendt (1969) On violence.], causing an entropic impossibility to resolve it outside of a violence play.
To prevent excalation, it could be proposed, once violence is at the table and no other ontological/epistemological negotiation is effective, a dynamics based on a multitude of interests, something that has been historically at the backing of the League of Nations and the UN, and which has a rationale in the dark forest hypothesis [Ausubel, Lawrence M.; Cramton, Peter; Deneckere, Raymond J. (2002). "Bargaining with incomplete information". In Aumann, Robert; Hart, Sergiu (eds.)]
It has been noted that recourses to violence tend to be anticipated by depictions of of the alterity as something completely different and impossible to reconcile from the “self”, and that often this dehumanize the target group making it somehow tolerable to witness the ensuing cruelty. It could be argued, thus, that a seat at the table is built for violence by infringing on the reflections about ontology and epistemology that Graeber, among else, have proposed, and that have been discussed today/above.
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