The Routledge Companion to Feminist Philosophy

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NATIVE AMERICAN CHAOS THEORY AND THE POLITICS OF DIFFERENCE

Shay Welch

Introduction

Native American philosophy raises feminist philosophical questions and offers a new perspective for rethinking longstanding feminist disputes. I focus in this chapter on ways Native American metaphysics can contribute to a question in feminist political philosophy. I choose this approach over a focus on Native American feminisms for three reasons. First, what Western women call “feminist” is just the core set of Native American philosophical values. I see feminism as a construct invented to redress atrocities committed by and through the Western worldview. Second, Native American women would prefer that Western feminists live up to their own values; the failure of Western feminists to put their money where their mouth is, is the reason why many Native women, like many other women of color, do not identify as feminist (Anderson 2010; Mayer 2007). Third, the more Western feminism interacts with Native American philosophy, the better chance Native American philosophers have to revive, substantiate, and legitimate their worldview in the discipline and in the world.

I argue here that Native metaphysics can help Western philosophy imagine socio-political communities in ways that do not regard difference as a threat. Native chaos theory is useful for imagining an inclusive non-oppressive, normative democratic harmony. Native metaphysics portrays creativity vis-à-vis difference as, not only inherently valuable as an individual and social attribute, but also as vital to an inclusive, democratic political structure. To demonstrate both how this is possible and why this is desirable, I resituate Iris Marion Young’s conceptions of a politics of difference and democratic inclusion in the Native American metaphysical system of chaos theory. A Native American metaphysical foundation includes chaos, creativity, and difference, and so escapes the trappings of liberalism against which feminist politics of difference continues to hammer.

Within diverse communities, individuals’ and groups’ motley modes of political participation produce friction. Feminist philosophers have criticized liberal political philosophy for aiming to eliminate or conceal differences. Many feminists rightly argue that the traditional liberal aim of achieving and enforcing cooperation via the values of universality and impartiality excludes, marginalizes, and silences diverse perspectives that fall outside of the arbitrarily conceived universal norm. The politics of difference is one approach through which feminist political philosophers have attempted to alleviate this problem. A central claim of the politics of difference is that traditional liberal objectives of universality, individualism, and impartiality are inapt conditions for democratic mechanisms, such as inclusion and representation. Feminist models of politics of difference strive to eliminate the lived consequences of liberal political theory by demonstrating the inclusive capabilities of the acceptance, normalization, and valuation of diversity in social and political interaction. Liberal universality is predisposed towards, and so ultimately produces, sameness for the purpose of manageable unity. It hinges on an assimilation ideal. A politics of difference rejects universality, and so sameness, insofar as the end of sameness marks distinction as deviance and yields hostile competition rather than presumed cooperation. Liberal values, and not the differences themselves, are inadvertently the source of antagonism between community members. A politics of difference opens space for agonism but does so purposefully for the sake of democracy. Difference generates tension but the struggle of negotiation results in a form of cooperation that is not a feigned, obedient, conformity to what is signified as “normal.”

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The reductive tendency of universality in politics of difference not only stifles, but also intentionally controls, creativity. It smothers communities’ motivation for agonistic public participation. Yet it is for the sake of democratic cooperation, one might purport; otherwise, agonism would revert to antagonism and society would quickly collapse into chaos. The irony, or rather the ignorance, of preventing agonistic chaos to promote cooperation is that chaos is a creative and harmonizing energy. The discipline of quantum mechanics is just now learning what Native Americans have known all along—chaos is a natural ordering process through which the balancing and self-organization of collectives emerges. The liberal operation of stultifying a natural ordering process in fact generates massive breakdowns in social harmony by over-determining an unnatural state of stagnate sameness. Through chaos, balance is short-lived yet is forever renewing through intervals of varied interaction and the introduction of new elements into the ordering schema. Through chaos, rich forms of organization and cooperation can be achieved through unpredictable, creative activity rather than enforced through formalized procedures of suppression. From a Native American perspective, the socio-political differences that agonism thrives on are forces through which inclusive and representative democratic arrangements can flourish, since these arrangements are incessantly rearranged in the direction of cooperative harmony through the ongoing stabilizing of perpetually new contributions. Even if the liberal ideals of universality and impartiality could give rise to strict equality among community members, the requisite conformity underlying sameness would preclude innovative ways of producing, and living in, multifarious arrangements for interaction required for an explorative and expressive society. Exploration and expressiveness qua creativity are central to a properly democratic society; without inclusive and diverse participation, democratic practices turn subsumptive and reduce individual contributions into a singularity, contrary to normatively ideal democratic mechanisms. Chaos, creativity, and difference are the life forces of difficult yet non-oppressive democratic structures grounded in agonism, since they can simultaneously integrate community members in explorative dispute and attune them to the advantages of complicated but malleable and expressive collaboration. A true politics of difference must regard these metaphysical life forces as legitimate and justifiable. Native American metaphysics is a resource for conceiving difference as inherently liberatory and cooperative.

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A Brief Overview of the Native American Worldview

The Native American philosophical worldview does not demarcate different ethical, social, metaphysical, and epistemological domains. Native logic is a non-hierarchical logic that informs knowledge and living vis-à-vis a complementary, non-oppositional, non-dualistic, fluid system that acknowledges and accounts for the connections between phenomena and their relationships to entities both similar and distinct (Cajete 2000, 2004; Fixico 2003; Peat 2002; Waters 2004) Brian Burkhart terms this worldview as the moral universe principle: “The idea is simply that the universe is moral. Facts, truth, meaning, even our existence are normative. In this way, there is no difference between what is true and what is right” (Burkhart 2004: 17). In simplistic terms, from the Native perspective, what ought to be is and so what is ought to be.

Given the integration of facets of philosophical inquiry, the values of interrelatedness, relationality, and equality are primary. The framing commitment of the Native worldview is that of respectful coexistence, which, as I will show shortly, grounds the epistemological conception of truth as respectful success. In Navajo thought, this concept is called hóɀhó, but it is a common value throughout the Native framework. Hóɀ signifies a life path, which should always flow towards wellness, happiness, and sustainability. Lloyd Lee explains that life is comprised of energies, both positive and negative, and one must live a life that strives towards equilibrium between them. Balance and harmony, particularly concerning social arrangements, are taken as the norm and it is the responsibility of both individuals and communities to sustain them (Lee 2014: 56). Similarly, Viola Cordova uses the notion of kinship to explain the relationship between and responsibility to balancing and sustaining harmony between all of the world’s occupants: “The Native American recognizes his dependence on the Earth and the Universe. It recognizes no hierarchy of ‘higher’ or ‘lower’ or ‘simple’ or ‘complex,’ and certainly not of ‘primitive’ and ‘modern.’ Instead of hierarchies he sees differences, which exist among equal ‘beings’ (mountains, as well as water and air and plants and animals would be included here). The equality is based on the notion, often unstated, that everything that is, is of one process” (Cordova 2004: 177).

Taiaiake Alfred sees respectful coexistence as a universal value affecting all elements of creation and he posits it specifically as the goal of justice (Alfred 2009a: 14). All persons are co-creators of and with the world, so every action we engage in or commitment we affirm affects and substantiates nature and other persons (Cajete 2000: 76). Justice, he says, requires the restoration of harmony to social relations and a perpetually renewing commitment to the integrity of all individuals and communities (Alfred 2009a: 66); the process of justice, he states, is the healing of relations to ensure individuals can fulfill their responsibilities to one another (Alfred 2009a: 67).

Narrative is the heart and soul of both knowledge and ethical relations in the Native tradition, particularly because narrative is born through an oral tradition that relies on the sharing of individual experiences for knowledge construction. Narrative serves many complementary functions. First, narrative bonds members of the community (Fixico 2003: 29). This is possible because, second, narrative helps individuals apprehend and handle the complexity of the world through a storied picture through which to see particular instantiations of more general occurrences (Deloria 1999: 67; McPherson and Rabb 2011: 110). An audience is imbued with a “reactionary power waiting to be acted upon” (Fixico 2003: 27) by speakers and the stories told by others provide a medium through which to share experiences and generate meaning and connection. As a result, community members can better engage in public forms of moral deliberation because stories feed collective knowledge and imagination and reveal potential trajectories for individuals to determine and converge on the right path of respectful coexistence. Put another way, narrative effects respectful coexistence through deliberative engagements, because experiential knowledge is the fundamental source of moral education, and thus identity formation, within communities (McPherson and Rabb 2011: 104).

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From within a Native American paradigm knowledge functions as a conduit between community members and allows them to converge on the right path to respectful coexistence. This understanding of knowledge as an active and interactive means through which to discover the right path requires a shift in how we understand the conception of truth itself. Because individuals co-create the world, their creative participation in construction processes is a meaning-shaping principle of action (Burkhart 2004: 16–17). Truth, which emanates from narrative sharing aimed at harmonious collective living, is determined by successful respect. Narrative does not emerge from knowledge; rather, knowledge emerges from narrative. It cannot exist apart from persons or communities. Knowledge is relational. The centrality of narrative to knowledge construction presents knowledge as lived and embodied (Norton-Smith 2010: 60), active—procedural. One cannot “know P” without “knowing how to P.” Because knowledge is ethical and relational, the procurement of knowledge imposes stringent constraints on the way knowers go about acting in, and thus knowing about, the world.

Since science is the product of information that is gifted to us from and through nature, the domain of Native scientific inquiry intertwines with epistemology so tightly that knowledge and science are used interchangeably (Cajete 2000: 21). Ultimately, the objective of Native science is to integrate the heart and being with rational perception to surpass superficial understanding of what is toward a deeper understanding of one’s relationship to that thing (Cajete 2000: 72). Thus, Native science is procedural. Its truth is not fixed but rather evolves and renews with all new interactions with nature. Gregory Cajete explains: “Native science reflects the unfolding story of a creative universe in which human beings are active, creative participants. When viewed from this perspective, science is evolutionary—its expression unfolds through the general scheme of the creative process of first insight, immersion, creation, and reflection. Native science is a reflection of the metaphoric mind and is embedded in creative participation with nature. It reflects the sensual capacities of humans” (Cajete 2000: 14).

Because the world is in constant flux, codifying knowledge is unnecessary. Flux and flexibility involve substantial creativity by both individual actors and the universe. A deep understanding of creativity as a foundation of action and, thus, knowledge makes the notion of animism within Native ontology intelligible. The universe, and all of its inhabitants—human and non-human—possess, act on, and contribute their own unique energies to the creative, collaborative function of natural organization; they are all regarded and respected as alive (Cajete 2000: 21). Without creativity and flux, the world can be nothing other than static—dead.

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According to both Native American science and Western quantum mechanics, chaos is non-linear movement and evolution. It is itself the generative force and thus the process of becoming for the universe. Cajete describes chaos as flux, as ebb and flow, that is in everything at all times and in all places (Cajete 2004: 48). Chaos theory is predominantly characterized by the butterfly effect; it is not a massive wave of influence that hurls about radical change. Contrary to many folk conceptions, chaos, as a process, is subtle; it nudges the natural world through small-scale adjustments and connections that are imperceptible in a time slice, but are, cumulatively and over time, momentously dynamic. The chaos driving these tiny connections and reconnections and progressions progresses from the synergism of unpredictability, flux, and socio-ecological participation. All aspects of the universe interact in a sort of cosmic dance where all participants interact but only some, by sheer chance of attraction, emerge as temporary partners in the grand scheme of things. Chance or, rather, spontaneity, is a core signifier of chaos, which indicates an inherent indeterminism within the universe (Sheldrake, McKenna, and Abraham 1992: 26). Given these traits, chaos theory elucidates social life qua human creativity, which Cajete terms our “butterfly power.” Chaos is embodied in persons and it is this that allows us to respond creatively to constant change. He explains: “The basic presupposition of chaos theory is that predictability and control over nature, persons, and society is therefore impossible and their creative participation cannot be trapped or stamped out without inevitable systemic collapses at the individual and collective levels” (Cajete 2000: 19).

The product of cycles of indeterminate but creative chaos is, unexpectedly, order. According to quantum mechanics, there is an underlying relationship between order and chaos such that order cannot exist without chaos and each follows from the other (Peat 2002: 176). The chaotic interactions between natural phenomena actualize new forms and structures from potentiality and then re-organizes them as they continue to interact. Though chaos is uncontrolled and unpredictable, like all highly complex systems, the magnitude of chance causes the relations of the universe to be probabilistic (Sheldrake, et al. 1992: 26). Order, in this sense, is better thought of as an equilibrium or bifurcation point in the midst of the chaos, which Cajete refers to as an eye of a hurricane (Cajete 2004: 48). He posits order as the point when a connection is made to a natural principle manifesting itself in the unfolding of the greater natural process (Cajete 2004: 48); the equilibrium occurs just as the system begins to transform itself (Cajete 2000: 18). But order in this sense, reflects not a convergence on or in conformity but rather convergence in diversity—in this paradigm, there is no such thing as an anomaly. In generating organized structures, the universe does not discard any participatory activity or phenomena, which means that apprehension of the workings of the world requires us not to dismiss any of our experiences.

Chaos imparts a particularly meaningful prescription about how individuals should interpellate social life. All information and experiences must be conceived of in relation to the framework of moral interpretation in the community. For stable organization, differing experiences among individuals cannot be pushed to the margins of respectability (Cajete 2000: 44). That chaos drives change and movement in nature reveals the senselessness of externally imposed mechanisms of control. The presumption of control demonstrates Western intellectual chauvinism (Deloria 1999: 6). Western metaphysics discards anomalous occurrences because, as Deloria apprehends, these facts are discerned through their own measuring devices that disrupt the security of the “universal” laws (Deloria 1999: 12). Deloria expounds: “Any damn fool can treat a living thing as if it were a machine and establish conditions under which it is required to perform certain functions—all that is required is a sufficient application of brute force” (Deloria 1999: 6). Chaos theory asserts that predictability and control over nature, persons, and society is impossible. Their creative participation cannot be trapped or stamped out without systemic collapses at the individual and collective levels.

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The Politics of Difference and Native American Chaos Theory

Though the politics of difference is a socio-political framework, the questions of difference and creative chaos boil down to ontology. The functioning of difference and its relationships to creativity and chaos require a particular metaphysical system that recognizes both phenomena as inherent. To be workable and sustainable, a politics of difference must replace its Western colonizing worldview with one that centers creativity and chaos. The Native American worldview is the apposite theoretical home for a politics of difference.

Native chaos theory illuminates a strong correlation between organizational practices at the ontological level and ethico-political relations. The universe aims at a cooperative harmony that sustains the interdependence of all participants. Nature and all of its infrastructures demonstrate a tendency to self-organize and generate balance. This balance is achieved when there is no interference or attempt to control its organizing capacities—the only restriction on equilibriums is that organization follows ethically from diversity. The notion of respectful success as the foundation of truth in the Native schema mirrors the efficacy of this ethical restraint. Whereas the Western paradigm marks stark differentiations between nature and humans, the Native framework understands humans as just one among different kinds of persons and phenomena that must flourish. If the entirety of the universe must, does, and can self-organize in ways that respect difference and interrelatedness, then so too can humans and/with all other persons. The Native worldview conceives of this global interrelation and cooperation within nature as a communal soul that operates according to a natural democracy (Cajete 2000, 2004). Native chaos theory evidences how creativity and spontaneity among wildly divergent community members gives rise to order and permits continual renewal and reorganization, which, politically, manifests as freedom in and through revolving social consent and participation in social arrangements (Welch 2012). Liberation is only possible when different selves recognize and respond to their radical relationality with all others (Alfred 2009a; 2009b; Cordova 2007; Deloria 1999; Norton-Smith 2010).

Young grounds a politics of difference in a diachronic conception of equality that emanates from a cultural democratic pluralism. Cultural democratic pluralism is a communicative mode of democracy predicated on a heterogeneous public that exacts mutual respect among socially and culturally differentiated groups and affirms as valuable the differences between them (Young 1990: 163). Recognition of cultural and individual difference is crucial to equality; a homogenous society is not only undesirable but it is impossible (Young 1990, 163). Cultural democratic pluralism fosters equality through individual and social group participation in democratic practices (Young 1990: 158). When community members value group differences as positive social goods they are then positioned to communicate with others through relations of perspectival difference rather than deviance from a normative perspective (Young 1990: 166). Narrative is essential to democratic communication under a politics of difference (Young 1996: 120). By refusing that shared understandings are given, Young unknowingly aligns her political theory with the Native scientific commitment to anomalies as enlightening and instructive.

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Through her emphasis on narrative, Young positions recognition as a starting point rather than the end of equality (Young 2000: 61). Substantive recognition is inextricable from processes of listening. What must accompany the listener’s recognition, is an ongoing openness to hear the speaker (Young 2000: 112). The dismissal or discounting of others’ perspectives post-recognition often occurs because of community members’ ignorance of their unique experiences and differing shared histories. When community members are unfamiliar with others’ trajectories, they bring to the table empty generalities and/or false assumptions about those with whom they interact, which habitually triggers the othering of those perspectives as insignificant anomalies (Young 2000: 74). Recognition without listening is merely a glorified form of tolerance.

Narrative does its democratic work by transmuting anomaly into collective knowledge contribution. It conveys one’s subjective particularity through the uniqueness of one’s story and the cultural specificity of social group membership by unveiling systemic patterns of shared histories and social locations between group members. And while narrative proves central to demonstrating the particularity of “others,” it also illuminates one’s own particularity and difference. In light of multifarious expositions about differing lived experiences and preferences, individuals can see that their perspective regarding subjective being, social life, and political organization is just one of many, rather than wrongly presuming their standpoint aligns with some presumed majority view from which divergent experiences can or should be othered.

The process of distinction reveals how entrenched community members are in relations of mutual effect. Stories, rather than claims, reflect how they are shaped by and through one another as a result of their intersecting social relations. Narrative makes it possible for community members to discern at least some shared premises from which to build and sculpt dialogical understanding because narratives target underlying false assumptions for correction (Young 2000: 53, 74). When values and priorities are shared through experiences and histories in narrative form, listeners can grasp more meaning behind the values invoked than they would if the values had been presented as uncontextualized, impartial claims. Public narratives of plural perspectives are essential for understanding individuals’ needs for inclusion, the consequences of being excluded, and the significance of differing values, since stories impart affective illocutionary force. This affective force resonates and can motivate listeners to hear and attempt to apprehend others’ narratives to effect individual and social group participatory parity, which positions community members in relations of mutual respect.

According to Young, shared understandings inadvertently force assimilation because any narrative that is “anomalous” is marked as deviant. Therefore, the success of this narrative-based sculpting process depends on the ability of community members to navigate the chaos of infinite perspectives creatively through agonistic negotiation of what is, can, and should be shared as knowledge, Native philosophy presumes a shared epistemology by virtue of far-reaching interaction and the fact that language constructs a shared cognitive orientation among community members without also presuming shared understandings (Overholt and Callicott 1982: 11). Native philosophers hold that a right understanding of the world, requires communities to synthesize diverse experience through interpretive practices to reflect evolving knowledge that emanates from and builds on the communal narrative (Overholt and Callicott 1982: 73). Because Native philosophy sees knowledge as procedural, it cannot be acquired independently. For individuals or social groups to have shared understandings, they must be co-creative through active praxes of learning. Narrative as a performative practice fosters the creation of the same thin shared understandings that Young posits as central to deliberation, because unique interpretations are excavated through ethical discursive relations.

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In a Native American worldview, dictates for the community are modeled after an ethically interdependent nature. In nature, all participants and contributions are useful and so beneficially interact either directly or tangentially. This implies, rather than invites, mutual reciprocity as respect for what participants bring to the wholeness of the systemic structure. Will Roscoe avows that you don’t waste people because every person has a gift (Roscoe 2000: 4). All beings must in principle be respectfully recognized for the reciprocity inherent in their unique talents without which there would be no system and no organizational arrangements (Fixico 2003: 52). This interdependence between, and reliance on, all of nature’s and humanity’s contributions to sociality exists in the Western schema but goes unnoticed because the foundational metaphysical conditions of Western philosophy encourage marginalization and fragmentation. Fragmentation comes from the impolitic splitting of domains: the personal from the political, the public from the private, the metaphysical from the ethical. Relatedly, the binary logic that motivates such boundaries is hierarchical, which parses domains of activity and contributions within them so that some are worthy of recognition and others are not. Human efforts are more valuable than natural efforts and one of the objectives of personhood involves controlling and dominating nature to the point of its extermination through imbalance. The partitioning between the valuable and not-valuable continues to bracket down between the normative and the deviant, the regular and the anomalous, and the desirable and detestable until the vast majority of individual and social group contributions that differ from those of the dominant groups no longer have any recognizable value.

One example of the relationship between Native logic and practices of inclusive and intersectional reciprocity is that Native communities often have third and fourth genders. The spectrum contains sharp instantiations only on each of its ends but the spectrum itself is constituted by multifarious versions of ambiguity, amalgamation, and complexity. Native North America is believed to have been the queerest continent on the planet (Roscoe 2000: 4). Individuals who are multigendered are deemed as having pivotal roles in the community by virtue of the specificity of their intersectional gender expressions. Third and fourth genders participate in creative contributions in community praxes such as crafting, warring, advising, and healing or ethical relations such as non-procreative sex and romantic love (Roscoe 2000; Waters 2004). Other times, gender is wholly contextually and relationally dependent.

In the Native framework, difference is neither as a site of competition nor conflict. Differences, much as feminists like Young attempt to advocate, are unproblematically sites of inherent intersectionality by virtue of systemic interdependence; difference is required for balance and cooperative harmony. At its metaphysical foundation, the Native framework is inclusive and designates difference as crucial strata rather than as anomalous glitches. The “Native mind” operates from “a symbolic kinship based on the ethos of totality and inclusions” (Fixico 2003: 48) because no system can be regarded as complete. All that can be known are patterns in arrangements, but difference stimulates our ability to see patterns and interactions change. Bohm and Peat (1987) assert that fundamental ideas must always be subjected to differences to ensure that society does not become rigidly committed to normative assumptions and conformist arrangements. Individuals must engage in free and creative play to test the legitimacy of their conditions because it is only through free play vis-à-vis difference that the true creative potential of society can emerge (Bohm and Peat 1987: 59, 111). But Western philosophy repudiates difference and creativity for specifically this reason; it is committed to stasis and control that resists the liberatory practices of a politics of difference.

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Even as Young encourages inclusive deliberation, inclusive forms of deliberation are not without their own melees. Young notes that inclusion can make deliberative exchanges more difficult and less efficient (Young 2000: 119). A justice framework imbued by a politics of difference fosters conditions for agonism. This is because relations of mutual effect are relations of togetherness, which means that disagreements and conflicts arise simply as a result of inevitable relationality. As Honig argues, taking differences seriously requires communities to “affirm the inescapability of conflict and the ineradicability of resistance to the political and moral projects of ordering subjects, institutions, and values” (Honig 1996: 258). Additionally, the shift in focus from the atomistic individual to individuals as members of social groups doubles the acceptable number of justice claims for equality (Honig 1996; 2001). Discord and dispute in deliberation must be met head on if equality and justice can ensue. Without the acknowledgement of difference and the profound importance of negotiating difference through assorted modes of public participation, an inclusive and equal—harmonious and balanced—social configuration will be impossible.

What Young overlooks due to her Western metaphysical assumptions—and that a Native philosophical metaphysics can make sense of—is that agonism inherent in a politics of difference thrives on and evokes the creative force of chaos. Agonistic, creative chaos manifests in the clash of different narratives, preferences, and lived experiences, in individuals’ attempts to reconcile and adapt to varying modes of communication, in the deliberative negotiation process, and in the commotion of packed out participatory activities. When resituating a politics of difference into a Native worldview, chaos is less about conflict than creative participation. It is a mere fact about the universe that if we desire order, there must be moments of disorder, but disorder does not lead to the Leviathan.

In the Native American worldview, equality is not a state but is achieved through participatory activity. Chaos is not one of the flaws in inclusive practices but is merely the Archimedean point of participation. Equality through inclusion is a wildly eventful endeavor. Deliberative practices must proceed hither and thither through convoluted channels of interpellation, interpretation, and collaboration instead of down the linear, sterile method undergirding liberalism. Chaos and disorder mark the moments of participation and negotiation prior to the settling of justice claims and the realization of intermittent relations of equality. Because community members incessantly and creatively co-construct one another via their individuality and the social group memberships, justice claims will never be fully settled and a state of equality will never be permanent. Even though narrative and other creative communicative devices aim at familiarizing others with the distinctive experiences of social groups, there will always be a gap in the understanding between those who have particular experiences and those who do not—at least until they have engaged in extensive public exchanges to construct bridges. And because gaps exist, states of equality between individuals and between social groups will never be for once and all achieved. Though the processes of a politics of difference cultivate equality through equalizing practices, differences that need attending to, whether innocuous or oppressive will always cause an undulation of power relations. Between the valleys of the chaos of discursive play and disconnect exist peaks of balance through which cooperation and harmony can emanate. The Native American view expands on a politics of difference’s acceptance of flux in social location in participation, by taking flux to be given as a fact of collective existence.

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Young argues that community members should interact in respectful wonder (Young 1996), which directly connects to Native American metaphysics. Respectful wonder calls on community members to engage imaginatively to try to understand the needs of others. Imagination is a creative and chaotic place. This wonder must be respectful, since chaotic imaginative capacities unconstrained by normative dictates sometimes trend toward exoticization rather than empathizing. The employment but management of imaginative perceptions involves creatively piecing together pictures of lived experience that are both similar to and different from one’s own. Respectful wonder facilitates deliberation and negotiation, which are themselves creative in three ways. First, individuals must employ creativity to determine how to communicate their perspectives in pointed but rhetorical ways to ensure uptake. Second, individuals’ suggestions and input require the excavation of experience and the shaping of contributions that speak to their own and others’ justice claims and social arrangements. Third, praxes of negotiation are raucous as much as they are intentional and end-directed. Negotiation fashions itself much like the process of a group trying to work together to construct a jigsaw puzzle with too many pieces.

Young is well aware that many liberatory impediments reduce to problems with liberal social ontology (Young 1990: 228). Yet knowing how to get outside of one’s own worldview is nearly inconceivable if other reasonable worldview perspectives have themselves been all but vanquished by the worldview in question. If the perspective is there but foreign, the possibility of traversing a foreign worldview is, well, chaotic. This is why I think Western feminists must see the power and liberatory potential inherent in Native American metaphysics. For it just is the case that we live in Western society, and feminists need to see that their values are not utopian goals but have been the norm for successful, healthy democratic societies. Unfortunately, the perspective that shares feminist goals has been subject to genocide, which ultimately reveals how dangerous—and so liberatory—metaphysical assumptions of given interrelatedness and harmony can truly be.