Definition of Explaining Away

What is Explaining Away?

The practice of apparently acknowledging the importance and reality of something while actually dismissing it. In this context of creativity as worldmaking, it refers specifically to the practices of a Western Scientific metaphysics (see Bifurcation of Nature) that explains away experience, values, and distinct ways of being as mere beliefs, subjective experience, folk science, or culture – all of which can be truthfully and completely explained properly via alternative objective scientific measures. For example, religious beliefs are a mere expression of an evolutionary psychological need for group cohesion in early societies that is no longer necessary. 

Such an explaining away is world-destroying and is deployed in ongoing political projects of development and universalization. The creative ethical question is: how can we creatively participate in making a world where many worlds can thrive, and new worlds can be co-created? 

See also: Worldmaking, World-Denying, Bifurcation of Nature, Appartatus/Dispositif, Ontological Politics, Common Interests, Universalizing, Utility-as-the-answer.