Political Ontology

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.