What are Common Interests?

Isabelle Stengers has developed a critical multi-perspectival more-than-human approach to the social and political question of what is “in common”? Rather than grounding a politics in a commonness tied to the establishment of a shared underlying universal sameness (human nature, the ability to feel pain, identity, etc.)  – Stengers articulates a creative relational logic of shared qualitative differences. These are, as she says it so beautifully, "interests in common which are not the same interests". Such a logic is based in both a qualitative difference (“not the same”) and a shared matter (“interests in common”).

Distinct species of living beings (and distinct human worldings) might share a common condition – but what shows up as our direct experience will not be the same actuality. If “water” is what is common, then to a water-strider this water shows up (affords) as a tensile surface, while to a human it co-emerges (affords) as a supportive liquid. “Water” is a common interest, but it is literally not the same water. Change the relations, or any aspect of the relata, and what emerges as a worlding will be different. This practice resists both universalist positions ("we all want the same things deep down") and relativist positions ("because of my unique subjective experience we have nothing in common"). It is the condition of genuine ethical encounter across worldings.

See also: Perspectivalism, Ontological Politics, Transjective, Affordance