Cosmopraxis: Relational methods for a pluriverse IR
Author: Amaya Querejazu (2021)
DOI: 10.1017/S0260210521000450
After I reviewed previous Querejazu’s paper (2016) talked about the lack of ontological pluralism in International Relations (IR) Studies, recently she has explained a new concept of Cosmopraxis as relational methods for a pluriversal in global IR. In this paper, she brings a critical discussion about plurality (plural world and realities) as a coexistence relation to overcoming ‘Western/modern’ relations, which become fixed, translating the relationality into ‘things’. Meanwhile, this article defends that cosmopraxis is a complexity of pluriversal, the set of multidimensional experiences, and never being fixed in their meaning.
Reading pluriverse in IR is never easy; it is similar like explaining what coexistence in terms of existence is rather than political claims. The main problem of the global IR project is a dominant assumption that we inhabit a single one-world or universe and decline the other possibilities of realities or worlds. The results of ontological colonialization are a logic of binary separation and opposition according to the categories of reality, based on what Bruno Latour called the great divides. This binary logic is the dominant approach in IR, so that it restricts other possible ways to recognizing plural existence and limits political imagination, for instance, on how to solve planetary issues. In this position, she approaches relational ontologies as a primary ontological unit, not as merely ‘things’, but whole phenomena, having dynamic topological reconfiguration, entanglements, relationalities, re-articulations of the worlds. Therefore, it assumes that entities are always interconnected to others, not exist independently, but by entanglements with others.
Here, she refers to the cosmos as complexity of plurality in terms of interconnection, the realm of dimension (human, natural, other-than-human world, spiritual, physical) in which environmental or societies organize their lives to basic beliefs about the reality come to be (becoming). She highlights that cosmos can unfold the political pluriverse in worlding multiple relational communities around the world, thus by fostering the IR as an ontological plural, it will confront the dominant mainstream. However, cosmopraxis, in the beginning, only explaining how the ways of action things in a relational practice and also affect and transform realities at the same time in relationality ways, and not placed concerning methodology. On the other hand, cosmopraxis is about wordling, performing, and relating the live-world in everyday practices that connect us to the cosmos. In my mind, this concept is tricky if we do not have a position as a reader who wants to postpone our basic assumption regarding the binary of the world. In the next sections, she confidently explores the notion of cosmopraxis as the way of worlding and how this concept is enacted to our daily experience and thinking about pluriversal world.
Such considering different cosmologies as part of the political imagination is a very insightful way to talk further about involving other-than-human beings as political actors, in relational ways, but not being get lost and trapped as Pan– (this view doesn’t focus on the dynamics of cosmos, but merely translated them into primary analysis unit, keeping atomistic thinking) or just being (-ism or -ity), as an expression of verb or adjectives with relatively fixed meaning, privileging the presence of being (relationality) over the process of becoming (relations relating. Inspired by Shilliam and Shimizu, the relationality is profoundly global anti-colonial connectivity. Still, at the same time, relationality is a strong decolonial tool, and this is also used for an imperialist purpose. These complex processes of interconnectedness, the tendency of relations are neutral. Another challenge is using non-relational method, to avoid the ‘slippery slope’, such as Ling’s dialectics, based on the confrontation of opposite, to produce a synthesis, a hybrid, but it is also fixed. It means dialectics might not be the ideal approach, if it just reproduces the fixed world. Therefore, she uses the term cosmopraxis to overcome these challenges about the one-world dimension produced even by the relational approaches itself when understanding the relation. Consequently, Kurki (2018) recognize that the tendency thinking of things is no longer a plausible starting point because “[b]eing, or becoming, situated in relations is difficult, as we do not quite know where we are, how we are made, and how to “relate to relations”; and yet in these relations it becomes difficult to ignore the many relations we rely on to process in the world”.
Becoming and transformation are the fundamental of relational features of life, and how the reality is constructed, as worldings. Worldings depend on our cosmological assumption, we can understand the world as the universe or the pluriverse, we live our world-life according to how we experience reality and that determines also how our action in daily life produces very specific realities. Accordingly, the feature of multidimensional practice in the middle of our societies is by using rituals, for instance, to communicate with other beings, we also develop the skill or the artifacts to do reflect the worlding, but at the same moment, we get lost and leave the other-than-human being as just a part of the great divide, between society and nature. There has been illustrated how thought the practice of colonization of the single one-world has been enacted, and that is why the pluriverse tends to unfold a decolonialization of the fixed world. While atomistic worldings suppress other worlds, cosmopraxis is a way of worlding, refers to the experience of transforming the multiple worlds as practiced by our people, including other-than-human, and involve relational practices of co-participation in the cosmos.
As a way of worlding, the cosmopraxis is the results of the interconnectedness of specific situated world practices, and it transforms reality while simultaneously involving the experience of knowing/doing. The whole our experience unfolds the complex of relations, knowing while feeling while being simultaneous—it happens together in performative ways. She defines Cosmopraxis as practical, experiential, and ritual, it entangles and integrates everyday life ways. Every aspect of creative craft, like singing, dancing, storytelling, weaving, dreaming, metaphors, proverbs, and myth, can become a ‘relational way’ of aware acts of connecting; these mean relational language in the dynamic way of everyday life. Also, it helps us to understand a very different narrative of world, and not totalizing terms, such as universal, global, or common. As a relational tool, it displaces us from a common way of thinking and recognizes the other languages and forms of expressions differently. Cosmopraxis illustrates how relational ways is relevant to build a pluriversal IR, and not merely learning how indigenous community lives or worldings the world, but to re-learn the political participation dealing with the coexistence of difference. Some people might be born as different, but just in different stages of awareness of the other existence to build a multidimensional pluriverse. Relating way is also remembering or restoring our cosmic memories, they connect us with the cosmos in unspecific groups. Recognizing a life experience matter is related to involving worlds where all beings (human and other-than-human) are participants in ontological difference attitude.
In conclusion, she approaches the relationality by how relations relate, focusing on worldings worlds without any tendency to reifying them in a fixed world. This togetherness, juxtaposed, simultaneous experiences is coexistence action in connection with the cosmos. Therefore, the Cosmopraxis is the beginning of a new becoming, to remind us that by re-worlding and re-enchanting the world, the IR can contribute in a more meaningful way without fixing the world. As a new approach, I believe her explanation is an initial provocation to us to deal with something ‘weirds’ in the common constellation of scientific community. When the science of IR is to build the ‘global’ world definition, the pluriverse of cosmopraxis provokes us to experience deeply our specific relating relations with other-than-humans once, and in this age of human, the Anthropocene is open to define what global relations are, without being reduced in the absolute thinking, but also simultaneously bringing unspoken local worldviews in worldings terra incognita.
Mahaswa's Thought 