Can oil speak? On the production of ontological difference and ambivalence in extractive encounters

Two disparate views emerge as rural people living along Timor-Leste’s south coast are confronted by extractive industries charged with implementing a large oil infrastructure project: emphasis is put either on the productive potential of the non-human environment or on the spiritual connections with particular sites. Whilst political ontology approaches posit that resource conflicts reveal underlying ontological differences between animism and naturalism, this article shows how differences are in fact produced by extractive encounters. Resource extraction promotes the articulation of clear-cut positions, thereby displacing more ambivalent relations with the inhabited environment. The ontological multiplicity of East Timorese origin accounts challenges the analytical prioritization of difference in political ontology and provides a model for attending to multivocality, ambiguity and political context.