Things do not exist first and relate second. People, objects and ideas come into being through their relations with one another.
- +Fits Feminist Epistemology, Pragmatist Epistemology, Post-structuralist Epistemology
- –Tension with Positivist Epistemology
Key thinkers: Bruno Latour, Karen Barad, Jane Bennett
The longer story
Relational ontology says you're asking the wrong question if you start with individuals and then ask how they connect. Things are their relations. You don't exist first and then have relationships; you're constituted by them. Bruno Latour's networks, Karen Barad's 'intra-actions,' feminist care ethics—all say relations come first. For creative research, this means you can't study an artist apart from their tools, materials, collaborators, institutions. They're not separate entities that happen to interact; they're nodes in a network that constitutes all of them. Follow the connections; that's where reality lives.