There are many Haraway-isms connected to the concept of “worlding”, including the verbification of many nouns, such as in the phrase “it matters what matters we use to think other matters with… it matters what knots knot knots, what thoughts think thoughts, what ties tie ties”. In Donna Haraway’s philosophy, things do not exist separately, but are entangled in an ongoing process of “becoming-with”, or sym-poeisis. The process of grappling with an object of study is a game of cat’s cradle or “string figures” - we are engaged responsively, moving amid a web of interconnected processes that turn on and on, never becoming disentangled, never unravelling the knots. Worlding is not separate to the study of how worlds come into being - it is a process in which all of us are always engaged, as we are always figuring matters into being and at the same time being figured into being through our relations with human and non-human kin. As you can tell, it is very difficult to describe Haraway’s philosophy without adopting her eccentric voice - perhaps another example of becoming-with? Person: Donna Haraway
Year: 2008
Elsewhere: New Materialism Almanac 