The Cosmopolitical Functions of Art and Theory

Fictioning Devices proposes that contemporary art has developed new aesthetic and pedagogical functions by presenting metaphysical perspectives that generate alternatives to the narratives and social and political legacies of the Enlightenment, modernism, globalisation and colonialism. This volume introduces the concept of onto-fictioning, practices presenting ontological and cosmological perspectives, addressing developments in contemporary art influenced by discourses that include the ontological turn in anthropology, and a concern for environmentalism as well as blackness and postcolonialism in the Arts and Humanities. Two concepts in particular run throughout the book: cosmopolitics (concerning the ways in which defining reality is political) and cosmotechnics (concerning the relation of moral or social orders and the cosmos, articulated through technical activities or approaches to technology). Artworks that present fiction to generate encounters with multiple ontological and cosmological perspectives present narratives that differ, diverge or deviate from modern and globalising narratives, troubling the narrative of one-world shared by one-people and other similar narratives. The book engages with diverse artists and thinkers including John Akomfrah, Yuk Hui, Lawrence Lek, Fred Moten, Tai Shani, Susan Stengers, Eduardo Viverios de Castro and Sylvia Wynter.