Relationally Responsible

We argue that relational ontology reconfigures agency as consciousness of and responsibility for the worlds people bring forth collectively; virtue as primarily a property of collectives; and politics as ontological multi-scalar transformation. The relational self is both more and less responsible than the atomized self: less responsible (as individuals, and to a lesser extent as collectives) for the worlds we currently inhabit, yet more responsible (as collectives, and to a lesser extent as individuals) for the worlds we bring forth. We frame the movement for prison abolition as an actually existing example of how relational ontologies refigure agency, ethics, and politics.