Ontology as ideology

In the past decade, political philosophers have increasingly deployed the concepts of interdependency, equality, and vulnerability to critique contemporary society.1 Widely popular both within and beyond academia, these concepts offer normative anchors enabling the critique of neoliberal ideals of individuality, independence, and resilience in the name of a more egalitarian society. Consequently, although many scholars denounce violence in existing society, they abstain from denouncing human beings' interdependency, equality, vulnerability, and precariousness.2 To the contrary, these concepts are treated as grasping our fundamental, ontological condition. Indeed, their capacity to resist neoliberal illusions of atomistic independence purportedly arises from their ability to reveal the hidden truth that neoliberalism otherwise conceals: that human beings are ontologically interdependent and equal. This truth, then, is said to carry its own ethical principle, demanding the realization of equality through political action. The use of these concepts today thus mobilizes more than an ontology; it also offers an interpretation of existing society—as deviating from and concealing ontology—and a politics that seeks to organize society in accordance with ontology. Among the many voices taking up this position, Judith Butler's is perhaps the most prominent, particularly in the ontological theory of precariousness they articulate in their late work.3 Hence, this article offers a critical engagement with Butler's ontology and the politics they derive therefrom. Butler's work, of course, has not been without criticism. However, the existing debate on their work focuses overwhelmingly on their so-called "ethical turn," as well as their accounts of vulnerability and responsibility.4 Important in their own right, these debates have tended to accept or leave unchallenged the basic structure of Butler's ontology.5 Although critics have scrutinized the critical potential and limits of aspects of Butler's ontology, especially her account of vulnerability (e.g., Gilson, 2011), they have left two of its most central features relatively unexamined: interdependency and equality. In doing so, even those critical of Butler's work maintain Butler's presumption that interdependency and equality are ontological features that inherently oppose neoliberal individualism, independence, resilience, and inequality.6 In this article, by contrast, I critique Butler's ontology by submitting these two otherwise-accepted concepts to historical materialist analysis. My aim in this regard is to reveal the ideological underpinnings of Butler's ontology, with attention to its capitulations to capitalist society. In doing so, this article reveals the limitations of Butler's ontology and politics. Their theory, it shows, cannot adequately grasp the sources of capitalist violence and domination and thus fails to provide an emancipatory politics. To that end, this article develops two central claims: first, that Butler's ontological theory is transhistorical; second, that this theory is the ontologization of capitalist society. Section one sets the stage for this critique, by outlining Butler's ontological critique of neoliberalism. Section two, then, argues that Butler operates with a transhistorical account of interdependency. Drawing on Karl Marx's analysis of capitalist interdependency as personal independence founded on objective dependence, I show that Butler overlooks the historical specificity of interdependency. Contra Butler, this section reveals that interdependency is not a veiled ontological condition to be realized through politics, but rather one that capitalist society has already realized. In section three, I turn to Theodor Adorno to show that Butler ontologizes features and relations of capitalist society. I contend that the central feature of Butler's ontology—that we are equal by virtue of our interdependence—is uniquely capitalist. In precapitalist societies, interdependency was characterized by inequality. By contrast, it is only with the emergence of capitalism that interdependency comes to presuppose equality. Finally, in section four and in the conclusion, I explore the detrimental political stakes of Butler's ontologization of historically specific features of capitalist society. In section four, I analyze Butler's account of genocide to show that their ontology elides the violence of equality in capitalist society. And to conclude, I explore the limitations of Butler's ontological approach for theorizing emancipatory politics. Before turning to these arguments, however, I wish to clarify this article's central aims. This article does not offer a critique of ontological theorization as such. It also does not attempt to somehow claim that human beings are not interdependent, equal, vulnerable, or precarious. And it does not, I must stress, attempt to provide a new ontology or an alternative to Butler's. Rather, my goal is to highlight the dangers of ontology-centered critiques for questions of social justice and emancipatory theory and praxis. Thus, in exposing the ideological underpinnings of Butler's ontology, my central aspiration is twofold. First, I hope to turn our attention not merely to neoliberal ideologies but to capitalism itself as a distinct form of society. Second, and in so doing, I hope to spur further critical reflection on the ontological claims at play in contemporary philosophy. In pursuing these ends through a historical materialist approach, this article builds on a long tradition of philosophy that seeks to expose the ideological features of hegemonic ontological claims. Critiques of universal claims and theories about human nature are no novelty for philosophers. Here, Marx's critique of Adam Smith's naturalization of exchange, R. C. Lewontin's critique Charles Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection, and C. B. Macpherson's reading of Thomas Hobbes' account of the state of nature come to mind.7 As these theorists and others have shown, truth claims are not valid for all times and places; they are rather reflections of the dominant ideas, values, and structures of the societies from which they emerge. The contributions of feminist thinkers—and amongst them Butler themself—have likewise been invaluable in this vein. Feminists have exposed the ideological components of ontology by interrogating the fabrication of the so-called human nature, and, moreover, critiqued these components for naturalizing and legitimizing existing social inequalities.8 Critiques targeting obvious cases, such as Darwinism and biological determinism, abound. Yet contemporary philosophy, too, replicates the tendency to naturalize social relations—albeit in more subtle ways. Butler's ontology, as this article shows, is an important example in this regard. In subjecting Butler's ontology to a historical materialist critique, one can anticipate at least three primary resistances. First, Butler's early work pioneered the critique of naturalistic conceptions of the body. It could thus appear as a flagrant misreading to accuse their later work of replicating the very tendencies they once vehemently opposed (e.g., Butler, 1993). However, as I shall discuss further, their later work manifestly deploys a nature/society dichotomy, as evidenced by their precariousness/precarity distinction (Lloyd, 2015). Second, we should recall that Butler's later work purports to mobilize a nontraditional ontology, one they refer to as a "social ontology" (Butler, 2009).9 Social ontology, Butler maintains, is not a "claim to a description of fundamental structures"; rather, they hold, it uniquely refers to the "'being' of the body" as "exposed to social crafting and form" (p. 3). Sophisticated as Butler's social ontology may be, however, it is nonetheless ontology. It is so, as we see Butler themself express, because the "social" of social ontology in fact merely denotes a fundamental structure of the human condition: the body's inherent capacity to be affected and formed. Social ontology, thus, simply incorporates that which is supposed to be ontology's other—the social, historical, or contingent—into ontology itself. Indeed, as I show in this article, especially in section three, the social features that Butler ontologizes are those of their own society. Social ontology, like the naturalisms of Darwin or Hobbes, thus, is eminently of its time. Finally, there is also a common-sense objection to my argument: "But isn't Butler simply right? Human beings have always been precarious, vulnerable, and interdependent. Surely, then, these are part of our ontology." The goal of this article is not to argue to the contrary. Instead, my aim in what follows is to show that in Butler's ontological account, society enters through the backdoor: therein, features of capitalist society masquerade as universal, ontological truths. That is, although I grant that interdependency, vulnerability, and precariousness appear in all human societies, I contend that Butler fails to grasp them because they mistake their capitalist forms for universals. However, this fundamental misstep, as this article reveals, traps Butler's theory within the terms of the very society it seeks to critique. Butler engages in an ontological critique of neoliberalism. Opposing the ontological condition of precarious, interdependent subjects to the neoliberal conception of the autonomous and independent individual, they argue that the independent individual is fictitious and denies an ontological condition of equality and interdependency. Thus, as this section shows, Butler derives both their critique of neoliberalism and their egalitarian politics from an ontological account of precariousness. For Butler, precariousness denotes the ontological condition of interdependency, vulnerability, and bodily exposure to socioeconomic and political forces (Butler, 2009). Precariousness, Butler writes, is an inescapable feature of the human condition because it is "coextensive with birth" (p. 14). Indeed, as they also write, it follows "from our social existence as bodily beings who depend upon one another for shelter and sustenance and who, therefore, are at risk of statelessness, homelessness, and destitution under unjust and unequal political conditions" (Butler, 2015). Implied in the condition of interdependency, Butler argues, is yet a further ontological structure: equality. "Interdependency," they write, "though accounting for differentials of independence and dependence, implies social equality: each is dependent, or formed and sustained in relations of depending upon, and being depended upon" (Butler, 2021). We are all equal, for Butler, because no one is fully independent. Thus, precariousness is a state of natural equal interdependence. Butler, however, contrasts the equality of precariousness with the inequality of our social condition. Although vulnerability marks everyone's very existence, they emphasize, particular populations are marked by differential vulnerability (Butler, 2009). To capture this unequal distribution of precariousness, Butler introduces the concept of "precarity" (pp. 3, 25–26). They describe precarity as "a more specifically political notion," (p. 3) one naming the "politically induced condition of maximized precariousness" (p. 26). Specifically, Butler maintains, "precarity" is the "differential distribution of precariousness" where "certain populations suffer from failing social and economic networks of support and become differentially exposed to injury, violence, and death" (p. 26). Precarity, for Butler, names our failure to realize socially the ontological condition of equal interdependence. It thus captures how neoliberal policies, arbitrary state violence, police violence, incarceration, war, and genocide subject certain populations to increased precariousness (pp. 26, 115, 147; 2015, p. 11). The sororal concepts of precarity and precariousness are foundational for Butler's politics. As Moya Lloyd points out, they allow Butler to distinguish "primary vulnerability, the ontological condition of being given over to others shared by all" from the "concrete, particular, historical conditions of insecurity and liability faced by some" (Butler, 2015). The distinction enables Butler to critique aspects of precariousness, qua precarity, while affirming precariousness as such, and rendering it the ground for a new ethics of responsibility. "The recognition of shared precariousness," Butler holds, "introduces strong normative commitments of equality and invites a more robust universalizing of rights that seeks to address basic human needs for food, shelter, and other conditions for persisting and flourishing" (Butler, 2009). By deriving ethical obligations from the ontological condition of shared vulnerability and interdependency, Butler thus posits that we are obligated to preserve the lives of others because we cannot survive independently (p. 113). More precisely, as precarity is the differential distribution of precariousness, the ethical demand, for Butler, becomes the nondifferential, or equal, distribution of precariousness (p. 25). They "call for an equally livable life" that "requires the egalitarian distribution of public goods" (2015, p. 69). Butler's politics, thus, is the normative demand for egalitarian distribution. Here, however, Butler's egalitarianism is predicated on a peculiar understanding of equality. Because their egalitarianism is derived from an ontological interdependency, Butler describes equality as "non-individualist," or beyond the equality of individuals (Butler, 2021). This ontological equality, Butler maintains, "cannot be reduced to a calculus that accords each abstract person the same value" (p. 16). Thus, the form of equality implied by ontology is not, Butler tells us, a liberal equality of "singular and distinct" individuals; rather, it is an equality of singularities "defined and sustained by virtue of their interrelationality" (p. 16). Ontologically we are equal in a condition of never being "fully individuated" (p. 46). Butler's account of ontological nonindividualist equality grounds their critique of capitalism. By contrasting ontological equality with social inequality, Butler portrays capitalism as denying interdependency and equality (Butler, 2009, 2015). Under "contemporary conditions," they write, "there is a war on the idea of interdependency" and "the social network of hands that seek to minimize the unlivability of lives" (p. 67). For Butler, moreover, capitalist ideologies of liberalism and neoliberalism promote the falsehood of an independent and self-sufficient individual (Butler, 2009, 2021). Capitalism and its neoliberal illusion of individualism veil, violate, and deny global interdependency, thus producing precarity (Butler, 2021). Neoliberal individualism, Butler claims, depicts precariousness as a threat to be eradicated. Doing so, it propagates the fantasy that life can be protected, thereby justifying the very governmental mechanisms that foster precarity. By contrast, Butler holds that politics that aims to combat inequality by abolishing precariousness is futile, because our ontology cannot be eliminated. The ethical–political task, they write, is "not to overcome dependency in order to achieve self-sufficiency, but to accept interdependency as a condition of equality" (p. 47). needs to understand precariousness as a shared condition, and precarity as the politically induced condition that would deny equal exposure through the radically unequal distribution of wealth and the differential ways of exposing certain populations, racially and nationally conceptualized, to greater violence. (2009, p. 28) By contrast, they hold, ontology helps us combat precarity by offering "equality" as "a principle that organizes the social organization of health, food, shelter, employment, sexual life, and civic life" (Butler, 2021).11 Thus, Butler seeks to institute equal interdependency on egalitarian terms: minimize precarity and establish "equally livable life" through an egalitarian distribution of public goods (Butler, 2015). In so doing, Butler's politics of equality would eradicate precarity by fully realizing precariousness. As Janell Watson (2012) puts it, Butler's egalitarian solution to unequally imposed neoliberal precarity is "precariousness for all." In opposing precariousness to neoliberalism, Butler simultaneously holds that individual independence exists only in fiction and that we are denied our ontological state of equal interdependence. But is it true that the independent individual is merely an illusion, or does it have an objective reality in existing society? Is interdependency a veiled and as yet unrealized ontological condition or are different societies characterized by different forms of interdependency? Butler, I will show in what follows, is incorrect to describe capitalism as a society somehow lacking or opposed to interdependency. Rather, the emergence of capitalism does not mark the transition from an interdependent society to an individualistic one; it constitutes a transition from one form of interdependency to another. In theorizing these changing forms, this section offers a non-ontological account of interdependency. This account, in turn, reveals the transhistorical character of Butler's ontology. In offering such an account, to clarify, I am not denying that interdependency has been a feature of every society. However, to accept the persistence of certain features across distinct human societies is not to immediately engage in transhistorical theorization. When Marx, for instance, states that all hitherto existing societies have been class societies, the implication is not that class is an inescapable feature of ontology—in fact, his conclusion is precisely the opposite (Marx & Engels, [1848] 2010). Thus, Marx's claim that all hitherto existing societies have been class societies is a historical, rather than a transhistorical claim. Following Marx, the historical account of interdependency I offer articulates the specific forms it assumes in the different societies in which it exists. This reveals Butler's transhistoricism: their tendency to elide historical specificity and thus reduce interdependency to a static, unchanging ontological feature true for all times and all places. To analyze interdependency historically, we can begin by examining its shape in capitalism. Here, consider that Butler's claim that capitalism and its neoliberal ideology are expressions of independent and atomistic individuality is not so much false as it is partial. Although Butler sets up a dichotomy between ontological interdependency and the social illusion of independence, capitalist interdependency must be understood in relation to the fact that its social relations appear like independence. Grasping the form interdependency takes in capitalism, thus, requires explaining its dialectical relationship to independence as one of capitalism's unique features. Rather than rendering interdependence natural and independence socially imposed, Marx recognizes that both are features of capitalist society. As he demonstrates in the Grundrisse, capitalist interdependency marks the transition from fixed relations of personal dependence to "personal independence founded on objective [sachlicher] dependence" (Marx, 1993). Marx analyzes capitalist interdependency in relation to the individual freedom that arises from the dissolution of personal bonds of dependence constitutive of feudal society, the emergence of the capitalist mode of production, and its concomitant social relations. Capitalist society, for Marx, constitutes a totality in which individuals, regardless of their social roles, are fully integrated. That is, to survive as independent producers, all individuals must take part in the division of labor.12 This integration forms a taut network of interdependencies, yet it does not entirely negate the personal independence of the individual. Rather, capitalist interdependency constitutes an opposition between the individual—as self-determining, free, and autonomous—and the sphere of objective necessity. It thus individual freedom what has to "a more form of in a of historically specific conditions in which in a form that and In with feudal forms of in other the capitalist mode of constitutes a society characterized by a new form of interdependence. Specifically, what to interdependency in capitalism is that comes to social relations. In societies, and its and in accordance with and relations of and domination as or personal and to In capitalism, by contrast, one no what one rather, and its as for the of others for and That is, it is not to merely one must also In exchange, in capitalism about a new form of interdependency each is on for their Thus, comes to all social rather than being by as was the in precapitalist society. The unique character of in capitalism about a peculiar form of interdependency. In capitalist society, each in the same socially each is a part of the and, as abstract it is a of a social that constitutes the capitalist social totality 1993). Here, the specificity of is while and its become the through which individuals the of By this capitalist its unique form of each individual is on others for their as everyone's all social to Butler's thus, capitalism does not interdependency rather, in feudal interdependency, it simultaneously to a new form of interdependency. Butler's account, moreover, Marx's analysis reveals that interdependency is not given but socially In capitalism, interdependency is not a ontological condition to be protected, as Butler but a form of in capitalism to as a of rather as a for the of goods In upon capitalist us to in the of interdependency is understood as The of social relations thus and to a form of domination that these or feudal societies, for instance, capitalist domination is uniquely As this domination not in class or its is the of social forms of capitalist society that are by forms of social 1993). Capitalist that is, cannot be to the of particular or individuals; rather, it is the of the of all individuals in capitalist relations for The character of interdependency is, its form of The abstract nature of capitalist interdependence itself helps us Butler that capitalism is characterized by individual independence. As Marx it is precisely because capitalism's objective form of interdependency is that it does not immediately appear to be a form of interdependency at all (Marx, 1993). That is, societies, in capitalism appear independent even they are interdependent. Marx's concept of helps this for Marx the by which human beings are by their own and the this is a social relation between individuals, it to them as their to relations which independently of them and which of between (Marx, 1993). basic interdependency as in these social that is, is by the interdependent, and yet mode of Consequently, Marx of and which has become a condition for each as something to as a (p. The of independence, thus, from the condition of the capitalist mode of Marx's account of however, does not negate the independence of the individual in capitalism. Rather, it the dialectical relationship of independence and interdependence. In Marx's historical the of the individual a historically of independence from relations of the dissolution of social with the increased dependency of individuals on economic relations of domination (p. thus the emergence of the independent individual in capitalism as a existing only in to the relations of interdependence that Doing so, Marx's account the dichotomy Butler between independent individuals and interdependency. This Marx's analysis reveals, the of capitalist interdependency itself. As Marx in the Grundrisse, interdependency, as an objective exists as the historical of human one to a specific in the of the individual (p. That this interdependency takes an and objective form in capitalism only that individuals in the of the conditions of their social life" (p. The individuality in capitalism, Marx holds, on the of as a (p. In other capitalist interdependency is to the individual as an independent and a social that capitalist uniquely The historical specificity of capitalist interdependency the of Butler's Butler's naturalization of capitalist interdependency can be by the fact that interdependency both has a specific character in capitalist society and is a feature of all human In Butler, this is with its historically determined form in capitalism, as an of the human condition: one is on others for (Butler, As in the Marx critiques the political for the same the failure of Adam Smith's analysis as in its of historical formations as of human In features of capitalism as and Butler's account this thus failing to analyze the capitalist mode of and its social relations. In treating interdependency as a natural fact, Butler's social ontology fails to beyond the that interdependency over time. Thus, social ontology to its rather than the social forces that form the individual, it and them features of the human condition. the that on the in capitalism, by contrast, requires a historical description of those In what such a description would the account interdependency as the mode of domination in capitalism. between historically distinct forms of interdependency reveals a fact about Butler's that the form of interdependency their theory ontologizes is capitalist. Indeed, the tendency to historically specific features of capitalism is the of Butler's This is most in their theory of ontological equality. that for Butler ontological equality is not an equality of independent individuals but denotes an equality of characterized by and "defined and sustained by virtue of their interrelationality" p. 16). This ontological condition two and equality. In examining each of these this section argues that each is unique to capitalist society. In turn, this analysis that Butler's theory of the natural human condition is the ontologization of a condition that is

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