Introduction
The different practices and multiple dimensions of people’s socio-economic approaches to life have frequently exacerbated the existence of multiple contexts to life that promote the ideology of pluriverse. Pluriverse strategically responds to universalism by advocating for multiversal ethics to apply across different contexts. Even they, scholars context the multiple dimension, with ontological turn providing compelling arguments. These ontological turns focus on various aspects of life, including science and technology, politics, culture, and critical geography. Therefore, pluriverse advocates for a careful ethical considerations that span culture and other obstacles to promote its universality. This study analyzes the past philosophical writings and scholarly works that study the pluriverse concept to promote its better understanding. The past studies offer insights into current relationships and multiversal existence to support pluriverse.
Investigating the Anthropological Context of Pluriverse
The concept of pluriverse has gained popularity in recent years among people supporting critical humanity strands associated with ontological turn. Scholars mention that pluriverse comprises loose networks that describe the multiple modes of being that people can embrace in different circumstances. Most of them contest that pluriverse is a highly controversial issue, making it self-contradictory and self-defeating, especially due to its reliance on an ontological representation. Nonetheless, they present strong cases of one world with various constructs that promote the pluriverse. For instance, Bruno Latour emphasizes that only one nature exists, but multiple cultures view it from different contexts to promote the pluriverse. On the other hand, Patrice Maniglier considers pluriverse as people’s diverse viewpoints on themselves and could differ depending on circumstances or the environment. Although philosophers and anthropologies disagree on the nature and context of pluriverse, they share insights into the exitance of separate, multiple entities regarding nature, people’s perspectives, and possible multiplicity of worlds as a metaphor to explain broad cultural connections and with being.
The Discourse of Pluriverse
Pluriverse discourses present it as a strategic response advocating for universal ethics based on the interrelationships strengthened by kinships, world multiplicity, and conventional practices due to globalization. They result from self-awareness to manifest their novelty and break away from the past interpretative models to emphasize their originality and dependence on social changes. Social-cultural anthropologists, such as Bruno Latour, reflect on the history of philosophy and anthropology to establish their interrelationship and break from traditions propagated by traditions and disciplines. Reletionships within an echo system are vital for attaining plurarity since they support commonality. Achieving commonality is a significant requirement for pluriverse in cosmopolitics to support the making of the same worlds. The notable interrelationships are between human beings and nature, human beings and their perceptions, and various worlds through multiplicity. These three constructs represent the major ideologies promoted by philosophers and anthropologists regarding pluriverse.
Pluriverse and Nature
A distinction exists between humanity and nature, which affirms the existence of multiple dimensions to support the concept of pluriverse. The western tradition particularly establishes this separation as an essential construct of society witnessed subjects versus objects, culture versus nature, and subconscious world versus reality. This analogy demonstrates the multiple cultural outlooks on one nature to promote plurality. According to Latour, the unique view of nature describes “the modern attitude” by giving it a language that describes a transcendent and pre-existing world. Humans envision languages and symbols as constituents of a real world to give it multiple dimensions. Nature does not exist in multiple forms due to its connection to the cosmos, and its inseparability illustrates its distinct attributes that cannot change unless people’s perceptions about themselves change. Even then, numerous cosmologies exist despite their incompatibility. Therefore, the epistemological view of the world presents it as one, but various ontologies resulting from cultural perspectives and human attitudes confirm the existence of multiple, incompatible worlds resulting from unique viewpoints.
The ontological making of worlds investigates pluriverse as an idea rather than a reality owing to its abstract existence. This concept results from the distinction of objects from subjects to represent imaginary beings and a natural force respectively.7 It also includes the interconnected agencies as human and non-human actors. Latour mentions that this approach involves nature “representing, symbolically and materially, the ultimate decentralization of the human.” Language becomes hugely influential in this construct since it permits alternative views with the objectivity supported by nature to remain fixed and facilitate the ideology of one world. These illustrations present pluriverse as a philosophical idea that people generate to understand their surroundings as a component of various phenomena. Latour supports this concept in his statement, “we are now faced with many different practical metaphysics, many different practical ontologies.” Evidently, many practical ontologies propagate the pluriverse, although it does not occur in nature, leaving it as an ideology to promote its discussion from anthropological and philosophical constructs.
Pluriverse in Anthropology and Philosophy
Anthropology and philosophy provide an approach to understanding pluriverse by comparing it with being. This view of pluriverse is based on the relationships between anthropology and philosophy with the understanding of human nature. According to Latour, the ontological perspectives define philosophy as “the science of being-as-being” and present anthropology as “the science of being-as-other.”10 The definitions affirm the effectiveness of philosophy and anthropology in investigating human beings’ perspectives on pluriverse. Specifically, Maniglier illustrates that anthropology is a formal ontology that propagates people’s consideration of themselves as variants. The consideration of people as variants supports pluriverse and alterity since nature exists in different dimensions for different people. Anthropology specifically embraces this ideology, which promotes the obsolesce multiple worlds. On the contrary, philosophy permits the bending of ideologies to support abstract concepts, leading to their presentation as wishful thinking. The same view is applied to Manigliers’ observation that people identify themselves as variants. The variations result from the multiple constructs that people adopt in different cultures and surroundings to adapt.
Additionally, the anthropological approach upholds the symmetry of multiple worlds to confirm pluriverse. The lack of symmetry encourages the concept of its existence as an ideology and not a physical manifestation. Maniglier refers to this concept as parallel ontologies or symmetric anthropology to affirm the need for coherence in both aspects. Ontological antagonism critiques pluriverse and focuses on the symmetry of nature as one world by demonstrating symmetry between presences and between the present worlds. The symmetric existence of present worlds makes provision for the immemorial or future worlds. Philosophically, worlds can exceed the horizon of all presents and delve into the future since it bases their arguments on perceptions, attitudes, and expectations. On the other hand, the anthropological understanding, supported by ontological antagonism, contradicts the existence of future worlds due to asymmetry between the present and the present worlds. Demystifying pluriverse involves understanding the world as symmetric and relatively homogeneous since it supports the articulation of a pluriverse ontology.
Translation Before Worlds
In some cases, researchers present pluriverse as a linguistic concept that varies depending on the context, which leads to its association with a metaphor. As mentioned earlier, pluriverse is a discourse and a trace, making it an ideology. The ontological turn encourages this analogy by propagating questions related to language and the symbols that support pluriverse. Therefore, when describing worlds, the scholars do not imply nature but outcomes and decisions that people make based on the presented scenarios. It uses the plural to justify the variations between phenomena to present different occurrences. The mystification of textual matters erases the question of translation and protects the ontological gesture against excessive singularity.
The concept of pluriverse is intended to convey hidden information than the surface meaning that propagates the existence of multiple worlds. The discourse implements ontological gestures of self-protection to ensure its proper usage in various contexts. Specifically, it protects anthropology, ontology, and logos of Western philosophy against the outrageous impossibility of a world or worlds beyond the present. More importantly, pluriverse protects itself from excessive heterogeneity before language, being, and world or worlds. It is worth noting that translatable heterogeneity cannot be accounted for by anthropology or ontology, even the most pluralistic of ontologies. Consequently, the philosophical investigations of pluriverse enable philosophers and anthropologists to compare it with attitudes and intentions. Additionally, the distinct use of language in specific scenarios to encourage pluriverse to dismiss its deconstruction based on the mispresentations of linguistics as avatars. Particularly, Latour attributes pluriverse to language use, giving it different meanings depending on contexts to convey specific information understood by a selected category. Even then, heterogeneity does not exist between language and the world and characterizes the slow progress of worlds through deconstruction as false.
In essence, deconstruction has always targeted linguistics to establish the uniqueness of language use based on contexts and disciplines to eliminate the confusion resulting from the translations. According to Maniglier, integrating linguistics involves ignoring texts and the irreducible heterogeneity of differential traces. As a result, people can have different interpretations of various occurrences to promote the ideology of pluriverse. Self-interruption demands translation, making it possible or challenging, depending on circumstances. Notably, a possibility becomes the condition for translating worlds. Further, uniqueness interrupts the world, language, and being. The understanding of pluriverse because of translation requires the proper integration of linguistics to establish the variations and distinction between the world and worlds.
Conclusion
Over the years, philosophers and anthropologists have illustrated various perspectives on pluriverse, with many parties confirming the exitance of separate, multiple entities regarding nature, people’s perspectives, and possible multiplicity of worlds as a metaphor. The existence of one nature and different perceptions and analogies support the existence pluriverse in abstract form. It majorly relies on the language people use and the contexts of their conversations. As a result, the multiplicity of worlds remains a metaphor that people understand based on the contexts. While anthropological perspectives are considerably different from the philosophical views, the two can share ideology to ascertain pluriverse. However, philosophical underpinnings by Maniglier give the best illustration of the existence of pluriverse as people’s variants to define different states.
References
Escobar, Arturo. 2018. Designs for the Pluriverse. London: Duke University Press.
Mercier, Thomas Clement. 2019. “Uses of ‘the Pluriverse’: Cosmos, interrupted – Or the others of humanity.” Ostium 15 (2): 1-15.