- Victoria, British Columbia, Canada
Jarrad Reddekop
Camosun College, Indigenous Studies, Faculty Member
- Political Ontology, Political Theory, Indigenous Philosophy, Environmental Studies, Environmental Philosophy, Amerindian Perspectivism, and 40 moreQuichua, Kichwa, Relational Ontology, Michel Foucault, Martin Heidegger, Friedrich Nietzsche, Post-Colonialism, Modernity/coloniality/decoloniality, Modernity, Disenchantment, Nihilism, Max Weber, Comparative Philosophy, Critical Theory, Comparative Philosophy and Religion, Social and Political Thought, Ancient Greek Philosophy, History of Western Philosophy, Cultural Theory, Sovereignty, Governmentality, Neoliberalism, Ethnobotany, Ethnobotany in South America, Ethnobotany, Ethnobiology, Ethnoecology, Indigenous law, Amazonian Ecuador, Amazonian indigenous peoples, Political Ecology, Theology and Culture, Metaphysics, Philosophy of Nature, Amazonia, Social and Cultural Anthropology, Franz Boas, Human-Animal Relations, Human-Nonhuman Assemblages, Gilles Deleuze, Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, and Continental Philosophyedit
- In my work, I am especially interested in thinking through ways in which cross-cultural thinking can offer provocatio... moreIn my work, I am especially interested in thinking through ways in which cross-cultural thinking can offer provocations to the usual habits of Western philosophy and critical theory. In particular, I am interested in how conversations with Indigenous American traditions of thought can open up valuable philosophical and political viewpoints/imaginaries as we seek to grapple with the intersecting cultural, political, and environmental crises of our day. Much of my thinking in this regard tends to revolve around the possibility and consequences of thinking with/through alternate ontologies – most especially, relational ones.
I am especially interested in working these questions through in ways that make clear their relevance for the negotiation of everyday life, for our experiences of place and selfhood, and for how we engage problems of law, ethics, politics, colonialism, and environmentalism.edit - Regna Darnelledit
This article explores how emotional life is experienced, and practiced by traditional Kichwa people in the Ecuadorian Amazon. In particular, we focus on the centrality accorded to acts intended to elicit compassion in others (llakichina),... more
This article explores how emotional life is experienced, and practiced by traditional Kichwa people in the Ecuadorian Amazon. In particular, we focus on the centrality accorded to acts intended to elicit compassion in others (llakichina), and on the role these acts play in holding communities together. We argue that the importance given to the eliciting of compassion is tied to the Kichwa construal of the self as inherently relational and for this reason precarious. Further, we show how the emotional life of relatedness encompasses relationships with land and other species (particularly birds) in multi-layered ways. Drawing on interviews songs, and narratives, we show how an understanding of other species as transformed humans informs affective connections with the land and how these in turn mediate emotional relations. "When the sun is going down a toucan sings, 'Han, han, han!' You have heard it right? That is because somewhere a woman is singing to cause sadness/love. Her singing makes us hear (the toucan) and we feel sad."
Research Interests:
This article engages the Nietzschean problem of nihilism from a "cross-cultural", comparative vantage-point. In Nietzsche's diagnosis of the "sickness" of nihilism, the measure of that illness is taken with reference to a particular... more
This article engages the Nietzschean problem of nihilism from a "cross-cultural", comparative vantage-point. In Nietzsche's diagnosis of the "sickness" of nihilism, the measure of that illness is taken with reference to a particular conception of health -- rooted in Nietzsche's relational ontology of the will to power. Here, instead, I wish to take the possible nature and entailments of relationality as an open question to be pursued in conversation with Indigenous American and especially Amazonian Kichwa thinking. Doing so, I argue, allows for a distinctive kind of gloss on how we might think about what is impoverishing in nihilism, and also opens distinctive horizons for exploring what it might mean to live otherwise, to pursue health. To explore how this may be so, I focus on the question of power and how power is experienced as relating to the self -- both within nihilism and within Kichwa relational thought and practice. Drawing on classical and recent explorations of nihilism's symptoms, I try to show how orienting ourselves in conversation with Kichwa relationality yields a kind of medicine -- a possibility and an invitation for worlding otherwise -- that is adeptly suited to the illness we must grapple with today in the shadow of interrelated social and ecological breakdowns.
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Difference, a central concern to the study of international relations (IR), has not had its ontological foundations adequately disrupted. This forum explores how existential assumptions rooted in relational logics provide a significantly... more
Difference, a central concern to the study of international relations (IR), has not had its ontological foundations adequately disrupted. This forum explores how existential assumptions rooted in relational logics provide a significantly distinct set of tools that drive us to reorient how we perceive, interpret, and engage both similarity and difference. Taking their cues from cosmological commitments originating in the Andes, South Asia, East Asia, and the Middle East, the six contributions explore how our existential assumptions affect the ways in which we deal with difference as theorists, researchers, and teachers. This initial conversation pinpoints key content and foci of future relational work in IR.
Resumen: Las bases ontológicas de la diferencia, uno de los principales temas que se abordan en el estudio de las relaciones internacionales, no han sido cuestionadas lo suficiente. En este foro, exploramos cómo las pre-suposiciones existenciales arraigadas a la lógica relacional proveen un con-junto de herramientas completamente distinto que nos permite percibir, interpretar y relacionar la similitud y la diferencia de otra forma. Tomando como referencia las cosmovivencias encontradas en los Andes, Asia del Sur, Asia Oriental y Oriente Medio, en las seis colaboraciones se analiza cómo las hipótesis existenciales influyen en la forma en la que estudiamos la diferencia como teóricos, investigadores y docentes. En esta primera Trownsell, Tamara A. et al. (2021) Forum: Differing about Difference: Relational IR from around the World. International Studies Perspectives,
Resumen: Las bases ontológicas de la diferencia, uno de los principales temas que se abordan en el estudio de las relaciones internacionales, no han sido cuestionadas lo suficiente. En este foro, exploramos cómo las pre-suposiciones existenciales arraigadas a la lógica relacional proveen un con-junto de herramientas completamente distinto que nos permite percibir, interpretar y relacionar la similitud y la diferencia de otra forma. Tomando como referencia las cosmovivencias encontradas en los Andes, Asia del Sur, Asia Oriental y Oriente Medio, en las seis colaboraciones se analiza cómo las hipótesis existenciales influyen en la forma en la que estudiamos la diferencia como teóricos, investigadores y docentes. En esta primera Trownsell, Tamara A. et al. (2021) Forum: Differing about Difference: Relational IR from around the World. International Studies Perspectives,
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This article offers an experiment in theorising within or across a ‘space’ of ontological disagreement – which, as numerous authors have contended, characterises much that is at stake in relations between states and Indigenous peoples in... more
This article offers an experiment in theorising within or across a ‘space’ of ontological disagreement – which, as numerous authors have contended, characterises much that is at stake in relations between states and Indigenous peoples in the Americas. Such ontological disagreements, I argue, contain radical potential for disrupting globally dominant and anthropocentric patterns of thinking and relating, and for generating alternatives. I substantiate this point with reference to the relational ontologies informing different Indigenous ways of analysing and practicing existence. Drawing on Amazonian Kichwa thinking and Anishinaabe accounts of treaties, I show how these relational ontologies recast the problem of how it is possible to relate with difference, in such a way as to fold an inter-human ‘international’ into a continuum of relations that include human-nonhuman ones. Distinct normative horizons emerge. I argue that non-Indigenous people can draw a range of provocations here concerning our constitution as selves and the political space in which we understand ourselves to possibly participate. I also claim, however, that this more transformative potential is predominantly squandered through processes of what I call ontological capture, which troublingly re-entrench dominant construals of reality and forestall a more radical questioning and re-patterning of accompanying lifeways.
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Research Interests:
This study undertakes a cultural critique of dominant, modern relationships to “nature” through a cross-cultural philosophical engagement with certain Indigenous American traditions of thought. This is done through a focus on questions of... more
This study undertakes a cultural critique of dominant, modern relationships to “nature” through a cross-cultural philosophical engagement with certain Indigenous American traditions of thought. This is done through a focus on questions of ontology: what kind of ontological presuppositions inform our own dominant, modern philosophical heritage? What kinds of relations do these at once enable and foreclose? And what alternate possibilities for thinking and living might be opened through different ontologies? I argue that grappling with modernity’s legacy of anthropocentrism and ecologically disastrous relationships forces us to rethink an existential terrain set by an atomistic ontology that reflects a Christian interpretation of the world. In contrast to this dominant ontology and as a way of defamiliarizing ourselves from it, this study endeavours to think with and alongside what I argue are profoundly relational ontologies and styles of thinking expressed by different Indigenous philosophies and lifeways. It also poses the question: how might relational ontologies open up different ways of understanding and experiencing ourselves, of disclosing and relating to the nonhuman, of construing the nature of our ethical horizons?
As part of my exploration of this question, I bring Indigenous thought into conversation with two thinkers from the Western tradition who arrive, from their own directions, at somewhat analogously relational perspectives – namely, Friedrich Nietzsche and Martin Heidegger. I argue that the critical arsenal these thinkers offer Western theory gives valuable insights concerning the potential that relational thinking might have as a counterdiscourse vis à vis our dominant culture – but that Indigenous thought pushes us much farther still in this direction. Accordingly, I try to explore how lessons from Indigenous thought might lead us to rethink or recuperate on different terms certain elements of Nietzsche and Heidegger’s critiques. Rethinking counterdiscursive possibilities in this way, this study seeks to contribute towards a critical theorizing that is more consciously responsive to the intertwined legacies of colonialism, modern thought, and our present ecological crises; to connected political contours, tensions, and possibilities within our present; and also better attuned to possible points of productive consonance, conversation, and allegiance therein.
As part of my exploration of this question, I bring Indigenous thought into conversation with two thinkers from the Western tradition who arrive, from their own directions, at somewhat analogously relational perspectives – namely, Friedrich Nietzsche and Martin Heidegger. I argue that the critical arsenal these thinkers offer Western theory gives valuable insights concerning the potential that relational thinking might have as a counterdiscourse vis à vis our dominant culture – but that Indigenous thought pushes us much farther still in this direction. Accordingly, I try to explore how lessons from Indigenous thought might lead us to rethink or recuperate on different terms certain elements of Nietzsche and Heidegger’s critiques. Rethinking counterdiscursive possibilities in this way, this study seeks to contribute towards a critical theorizing that is more consciously responsive to the intertwined legacies of colonialism, modern thought, and our present ecological crises; to connected political contours, tensions, and possibilities within our present; and also better attuned to possible points of productive consonance, conversation, and allegiance therein.
Research Interests: Metaphysics, Environmental Philosophy, Comparative Philosophy, Space and Place, Cross-Cultural Studies, and 19 moreFriedrich Nietzsche, Martin Heidegger, Environmental Politics, Modernity, Sense of Place, Political Ontology, Critical and Cultural Theory, Animism, History of Western Philosophy, Ethnoecology, Amerindian Perspectivism, Dwelling, Relational Ontology, Cultural Politics of Nature and the Environment, Becoming Animal, Indigenous Philosophy, Modernity/coloniality/decoloniality, Cultural Views of Selfhood, and Quichua
This article investigates the ways in which South American shamanism might be analysed in terms of the Weberian concept of charisma, and to ask what is at stake in doing so. It is suggested that this problem might be more rigorously... more
This article investigates the ways in which South American shamanism might be analysed in terms of the Weberian concept of charisma, and to ask what is at stake in doing so. It is suggested that this problem might be more rigorously approached by way of a detour through Weber's account of disenchantment, which poses questions about the theological heritage with which our contemporary philosophical and methodological thought is interwoven, and about the particularity of that heritage. As a consequence, it is suggested that contemporary modulations of shamanism can productively problematise customary accounts of the meaning and structure of charisma and of the ways it must be thought to relate to politics in modernity.
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with Léna Balaud, Fionn Bennett, Hilan Bensusan, Antoine Chopot, Aha Else, Sofya Gevorkyan, Cédric Mong-Hy, Frédéric Neyrat, Elzahrã Osman, Jarrad Reddekop, Casey Rentmeester, Carlos A. Segovia, and Bronislaw Szerszynski This volume’s... more
with Léna Balaud, Fionn Bennett, Hilan Bensusan, Antoine Chopot, Aha Else, Sofya Gevorkyan, Cédric Mong-Hy, Frédéric Neyrat, Elzahrã Osman, Jarrad Reddekop, Casey Rentmeester, Carlos A. Segovia, and Bronislaw Szerszynski
This volume’s purpose is to examine new perspectives on worlding in light of what looks like a shift recently registered in the politics of theory, one which has led from the exploration of the possible into the subsequent investigation of the compossible, i.e. from the counter-capitalist drive towards deterritorialisation (whose flag capitalism hoists today to an unprecedented degree) into the post-capitalist reinvention of new existential territories (partly virtual, partly already real) at the interface of modern frustrations and the logics of the otherwise, thus encouraging (against despotic encodings and active nihilisms alike) a re-stitching of liberation (Dionysus) and dwelling (Apollo) on behalf of what might be labelled a cosmopolitics and a poetics of care.
It includes papers on questions of order, chaos, immanence, transcendence, singularity, and variation; post-foundational and meta-foundational axiomatics around notions like Grund, Abgrund, and multi-centricity; cosmopolitical pragmatics of alliance; the poetics of dwelling against the politics of devastation; the metaphysics of the others; the narratives of new complex existential niches; and extra-modern ontologies and cosmologies. Ultimately, then, it is dedicated to exploring the contours of the Otherwise on behalf of a non-minimalist philosophical paradigm: that of Worlding.
Tim Ingold speaks of drawing “lines” and making “knots,” Donna Haraway of “string figuring.” These and other similar expressions hint beyond today’s object-oriented fever and dystopian dismay. Yet by putting together this volume we want to move forward on their track in new, unhackneyed ways; for not only do we wish to picture specific modalities of be(com)ing with and their logics: we aim, too, at studying their conceptual backstage, memories, and margins.
The volume, on the other hand, divides into three sections: “Integrals” contains reflections out of which specific notional areas and volumes, but also problems, arise. “Derivatives,” in contrast, brings together drifts into the otherwise that make audible, and readable, some of the otherwise’s multiform voices. “Constellations,” finally, shakes the dust that forms the soil of what deserves to be thought, sensed, and experimented with.
Our gratitude to all those who have generously contributed a piece to the volume’s music.
Sofya Gevorkyan
Carlos A. Segovia
This volume’s purpose is to examine new perspectives on worlding in light of what looks like a shift recently registered in the politics of theory, one which has led from the exploration of the possible into the subsequent investigation of the compossible, i.e. from the counter-capitalist drive towards deterritorialisation (whose flag capitalism hoists today to an unprecedented degree) into the post-capitalist reinvention of new existential territories (partly virtual, partly already real) at the interface of modern frustrations and the logics of the otherwise, thus encouraging (against despotic encodings and active nihilisms alike) a re-stitching of liberation (Dionysus) and dwelling (Apollo) on behalf of what might be labelled a cosmopolitics and a poetics of care.
It includes papers on questions of order, chaos, immanence, transcendence, singularity, and variation; post-foundational and meta-foundational axiomatics around notions like Grund, Abgrund, and multi-centricity; cosmopolitical pragmatics of alliance; the poetics of dwelling against the politics of devastation; the metaphysics of the others; the narratives of new complex existential niches; and extra-modern ontologies and cosmologies. Ultimately, then, it is dedicated to exploring the contours of the Otherwise on behalf of a non-minimalist philosophical paradigm: that of Worlding.
Tim Ingold speaks of drawing “lines” and making “knots,” Donna Haraway of “string figuring.” These and other similar expressions hint beyond today’s object-oriented fever and dystopian dismay. Yet by putting together this volume we want to move forward on their track in new, unhackneyed ways; for not only do we wish to picture specific modalities of be(com)ing with and their logics: we aim, too, at studying their conceptual backstage, memories, and margins.
The volume, on the other hand, divides into three sections: “Integrals” contains reflections out of which specific notional areas and volumes, but also problems, arise. “Derivatives,” in contrast, brings together drifts into the otherwise that make audible, and readable, some of the otherwise’s multiform voices. “Constellations,” finally, shakes the dust that forms the soil of what deserves to be thought, sensed, and experimented with.
Our gratitude to all those who have generously contributed a piece to the volume’s music.
Sofya Gevorkyan
Carlos A. Segovia
Research Interests:
Based on a forum in International Studies Perspectives International Studies Perspectives and a forthcoming special issue in and a forthcoming special issue in Review of Review of International Studies International Studies, this online... more
Based on a forum in International Studies Perspectives International Studies Perspectives and a forthcoming special issue in and a forthcoming special issue in Review of Review of International Studies International Studies, this online panel addresses two challenges. First, what happens if we conceive of , this online panel addresses two challenges. First, what happens if we conceive of International Relations (IR) from a relational perspective by assuming relations as prior to the existence International Relations (IR) from a relational perspective by assuming relations as prior to the existence of entities. Second, it seeks to pluralize the sources of relational thinking in IR by showing how different of entities. Second, it seeks to pluralize the sources of relational thinking in IR by showing how different cosmological traditions view relationality, suggesting the possibility of a cosmological traditions view relationality, suggesting the possibility of a pluriversal pluriversal IR. Each participant IR. Each participant will be asked to speak to the challenges above when answering the following question: how are they will be asked to speak to the challenges above when answering the following question: how are they doing IR differently? doing IR differently?