Definition of Ontological Politics

What is Ontological Politics?

The recognition that worldmaking is not merely a useful neutral creative technique or anthropological form of mutual understanding – but a creative aesthetic/ethical/political project. Who gets to have their world taken seriously as real? Whose worlds are explained away as "beliefs," "myths," or primitive misconceptions? How can worldings meet as worldings worthy of being taken seriously? Ontological politics is the name for this creative project in which worlds are allowed to exist, matter, affect each other, and transform into new worlds. 

In Isabelle Stengers' formulation, the global West has developed an apparatus that does not recognize worlds and actively destroys them. 

Ontological politics asks: what would it mean to take the ontological plurality of worlds seriously as a creative ethico-aesthetic commitment?

See also: Worldmaking, Ontogenesis, Affordances, Common Interests, Assemblages