ABSTRACT
Presuppositions about other people often stand in the way of understanding. When we tacitly assume that others are like us in some way, understanding is distorted. What if the distorting assumptions are fundamental to the project of cultural anthropology? The ontological turn in anthropology is a multifaceted movement that grapples with the implications of this question. Culture has been conceptualized, at least in part, as a matter of the beliefs shared by a group of people. The facet of the ontological turn to be discussed in this essay rejects the notion of culture as shared belief, and refuses to characterize human difference in terms of a difference in belief. The very idea that all humans have beliefs deeply distorts the conceptualization of human difference. The notion of “belief” is a component of a representationalist picture of human thought and action that has been fundamental to Western self-understanding since (at least) the 17th century. To understand how human difference is to be conceptualized, if not in terms of different beliefs, this essay will contrast two versions of the ontological turn; one that rejects belief but retains representationalism and one that tries to reject the entire representationalist framework. The appreciation of radical alterity begins by understanding ourselves in radically new ways.
