Summary
Onto-epistemology is the idea that what exists (ontology) and how we come to know it (epistemology) can’t be separated: we know the world from inside it, as part of it. The term belongs to the physicist-philosopher Karen Barad, who in ‘Meeting the Universe Halfway’ (2007) writes it in full as ‘ethico-onto-epistem-ology’, adding ethics as a third strand that can’t be pulled out.
Evelien Geerts, summarising Barad, puts the consequence this way: “because we are part of the world, we can no longer see ourselves as innocent bystanders”. Responsibility becomes ‘response-ability’, an ability to respond that is owed to non-human beings as well as human ones.
Rationale
Part 2’s footnote lists “epistem-ontological orientations (if you’re really fancy)” among other names for this territory. Barad gives a philosophical version of a plainer claim of ours: we’re participants in culture, never its “objective observers”.