Composition/Compositionism

[ˌkɑm·pəˈzɪʃ·ən/] or [ˌkɑːm.pəˈzɪʃ.ənˈɪz.əm]

Related terms: Assemblage, Autopoiesis, Becoming, Becoming-With, Co-Creation, Compost, Nature/Culture

If you enter into a world that is defined by nature or by law, it means that the common world is given once and for all. But what happens if there is no common world? Then, you have to compose it out of many parts, partners, agents, and voices. »Composition« is a way to express the new political task once the horizon of the nature/culture divide has vanished. If humans are not »in nature«, nor »parts of nature«, but if they have to explore, one by one, their entanglements with various entities that allow them to be alive, each part of an intense public controversy, then they must, collectively, compose their world. »Composition« has the great virtue of referring to music as well as to »compost«! Politics can then be defined anew as »the progressive composition of the common world«.

[This entry is a contribution by Bruno Latour to the Glossolalia.]