An aquatic space: relational ontology among black communities on Colombia’s Pacific Coast and the pluriverse

• In Event: Race, Ethnicity, Citizenship and Human Rights

Abstract

Recent debates in assemblage thinking in the social sciences have stressed relational ontologies as a way of conceptualizing the complex ways in which humans and the non-human interact. The politicization of these relations has sometimes been expressed through the notion of political ontology. In this paper, I examine how such an approach is useful to the study of the social movement of black communities in Colombia. In particular, I show how what I call the “aquatic space” – an assemblage of relations resulting from human entanglements with an aquatic environment characterized by intricate river networks, significant tidal ranges, and labyrinthine mangrove swamps – has shaped the political organization of black communities in Colombia’s Pacific coast region. The aquatic space, I argue, constitutes a relational ontology on the Pacific coast that may be seen as challenging Euro-Americanist frameworks of “development”-thinking. The concept may thus be seen as a contribution to thinking towards and imagining the pluriverse, or a world of many worlds.

Author

• Ulrich Oslender, Florida International University