Definition of Waymaking

What is Waymaking?

Waymaking: is a metaphoric way to conceptualize the ongoing creative nature of worldmaking – the enactive practices of worlding. Paths, much like worlds, must be made. The poet Antonio Machado writes beautifully of this:

Wanderer, your footsteps are\
the road, and nothing more;
wanderer, there is no road,
the way is made by walking. 

This is especially important in regards to creative practices: The radically new, before it is brought into existence, is a “nothing” – it does not exist even as a virtual possibility. As such, it must be co-emergently brought into existence via collective creative activity. The metaphoric processes of waymaking help us sense this. 

Life and all activity always exceed the executing of pre-formed plans (virtual possibilities). Rather, there is an emergent co-creative dance between a dynamic environment and agent that co-creates the path, the subject and the world in the process of walking it into becomings. 

The way, world and subject are mutually co-creating rather than discreet pre-existing givens: Waymaking, worlding, and subjecting.

See also: World-making, Individuation, Emergence, Enaction