Putting a Non-Essentialist Ontology to Work: A Response to Peter Dahlgren’s Review of the Discursive-Material Knot: Cyprus in Conflict and Community Media Participation

This article is a response to Peter Dahlgren’s review of The discursive-material knot: Cyprus in conflict and community media participation. Dahlgren’s engagement with the DMK book consisted of four questions, with an invitation to respond to them. These questions were not so much critiques, but more like invitations to clarify, and – more importantly – to expand into a few territories that were insufficiently addressed in the DMK book. This article starts with explaining the platform structure of the DMK book and the strategy that was used to write it. This then allows to focus on the first platform, explaining the basics of the DMK, the supporting role of the structure/agency dimension, and the difference between the concepts of ideology and discourse. This is also a good opportunity to think through the opportunities for (hegemonic) discourse critique. In the next part, the issues related to high theory, ontology and metaphysics are addressed. The last part returns to the DMK book’s case study and the interdependence of the different platforms, arguing that empirical research can also feed into non-essentialist ontological reflections, while these reflections also provide support for the research itself.