•  
  •  
 

Author Bio

Kaustuv Roy earned his Ph.D from Michigan State University, USA. He was faculty at Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge LA, for a number of years. He is currently Professor at the School of Liberal Arts & Sciences at Thapar University, India. Kaustuv’s recent works include Technohumanism & Global Crises (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2022) and Education and the Ontological Question: Addressing a Missing Dimension (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019).

Keywords

Ontological Inquiry, Phenomenology, Practice, Anamnesia, desubjectivisation, resubjectivisation

Abstract

Ontology is often reduced to epistemology, that is, to yet another conceptual category for discussion. We do this because historically we are comfortable with the mental and are habituated to reducing everything to mental representation. But ontology is not rational discussion of ‘what is’; it is, rather, the cultivation of contact with ‘what is.’ And that means practice. We shy away from practice as though it is some native witchcraft, and prefer instead to think about it. The present paper proposes that instead of merely thinking about ontology, we practice toward its realization. I call this phenomenological ontology. Ontological practice is not native voodoo-ism, nor New-Ageism, but has been part of every culture, historically submerged due to the dominance of epistemology and Kantianism. We need to get out of amnesia and rediscover ontological practice. Hence, this can also be called the practice of anamnesis, which forms a part of the discussion here. The essay outlines a 3-part ontological practice that, at the broadest level, can be derived from most source events of cultures—these are a) affective transfer, or a serious effort to connect thought and affect; b) resisting subjectification through objects; and c) recuperation of cultural memory.

Download

Share

COinS