A relation changes when it receives a name. What was previously sensed or locally described becomes portable: it can be cited, contested, taught, indexed, translated and attached to institutions. Naming does not merely represent an already completed idea; it gives the relation a public address. WordMagnet describes the capacity of a term to attract meanings, actors and resources, while TopolexicalSovereignty identifies the power to establish the names through which a field becomes navigable. Terms such as sustainability, resilience or the Anthropocene demonstrate that lexical force can assemble disciplines and publics, but also conceal unequal histories and incompatible political projects beneath apparent semantic unity. A name begins to work when it reorganises attention and prepares the formats through which a phenomenon will later be governed. A strong formulation must organise discrimination rather than atmosphere. Different users should be able to identify the same operation, distinguish what belongs from what does not and state what evidence would revise the category. Its institutional life also matters: search systems, journals, curricula, funding calls and databases decide whether a name remains marginal, becomes operative or hardens prematurely. A responsible formulation therefore needs definition, provenance, examples, exclusions and visible routes of revision. Formulation becomes circulation when the name is repeated by actors absent from its invention. From that point onward, every repetition is a version and the concept begins to travel beyond authorial control.
Austin, J.L. (1962) How to Do Things with Words.
Butler, J. (1997) Excitable Speech.
Foucault, M. (1969) The Archaeology of Knowledge.
Hacking, I. (1999) The Social Construction of What?
Koselleck, R. (1979) Futures Past.
Lefebvre, H. (1968) Le droit a la ville.
Wittgenstein, L. (1953) Philosophical Investigations.
