Decolonising the Decolonisers? Of Ontological Encounters in the GMO Controversy and Beyond

Calls for decolonising IR are often focused on the need to decolonise dominant epistemologies. This article explores whether a shift towards decolonising ontology is able to provide a more profound challenge. Decolonising ontology implies acknowledging that there are multiple actual “worlds”, rather than just multiple perspectives on THE (“one”) world. However, I argue that this approach is limited by the representational strategies that are used for making the encounter of multiple worlds legible for an academic audience. Drawing on ethnographic work that anthropologists have undertaken in relation to the GMO controversy as well as broader decolonial work in IR, I maintain that the writing-up of research often entails the settling and stabilising of ontological encounters that have been experienced as unsettling and disconcerting. This move towards stabilisation is grounded in hegemonic, colonial understandings of which questions should be pursued and why: questions that continue to be about determining what “is” (rather than asking what questions would lead to rightful action), that can be answered with the help of all-encompassing concepts (such as the concept of the “pluriverse”), and that provide insights for entire disciplines (such as IR). The article shows to what extent this is detrimental to projects of decolonisation.