Monstrous Individuations: Deleuze, Simondon, and Relational Ontology

Abstract

Starting with Gilbert Simondon's theory of the individual (singular and collective) and its genesis, developed in his book L'individuation psychique et collective, this article discusses the principle of individuation and the critique of finalism. Simondon distinguishes and yet strictly binds together the two individuations that he calls psychique and collective, which is necessary, he argues, to avoid the double failure of psychologism and sociologism, by which he means the doctrines that assign a fixed (ontological) identity to man and his mind, on the one hand, and to society, on the other. Both psychologism and sociologism, according to Simondon, fail to understand their only reality, which is first and foremost relational. Influenced by Simondon's ontology, Gilles Deleuze's concept of nomadism is taken up in order to develop the idea of a principle of individuation intended as a critique of teleology. The question of individuation is thus referred to its ontological roots in the conflict between Aristotelian metaphysics (priority of act over power [potentia] and of final cause over efficient and material causes) and Spinozist metaphysics (power [potentia] existing only in act, absolute immanence, radical criticism of every teleology). This essay shows what is at stake between the two authors and what Deleuze could not have derived from Simondon, which Del Lucchese calls a Spinozistic problematic.

Tensed toward the collective: A Simondonian perspective on human experience in context

“…affects, relations, forces, signs and events” (p. 98). What Duff and Price-Robertson express here is a shift from an essentialist ontology (privileging the position of the experiencing subject a priori to any situated instance of experience) toward a relational ontology (Del Lucchese, 2009). By prioritising processes of becoming over the matter-of-factness of things, these thinkers part with the substantialising idea of an autonomous agent of experience (the subject) in favour of placing the experiencing subject within a context of experience.…”

Dreaming of islands: individuality and utopian desire in post-Darwinian literature

“…In his later major philosophical work, Difference and Repetition, Deleuze develops his engagement with the relation between being as indistinction and fluidity (difference) and individual, material (differenciated) beings (Deleuze, 1994;Del Lucchese, 2009). Deleuze argues for a concept of the individual which is focused first on the process by which it is generated-individuation-in order to avoid the presupposition that the individual form precedes its creation.…”

Individuación, ciencias humanas y humanismo en la teoría de G. Simondon

“…Para responder estas preguntas, se tomarán dos vías en su obra: la propuesta de una "axiomática para las ciencias humanas" (Simondon, 2015a) y el concepto explícito de humanismo. La axiomática propuesta allana el camino para tesis deleuzianas 1 y foucaultianas acordes con posturas posthumanistas (Blanco, 2015;Del Lucchese, 2009;Heredia, 2015;Iliadis, 2013;Rodríguez, 2016); mientras el humanismo descrito, si bien tiene claras pretensiones de superación, pone de presente aspectos modernos, como la reivindicación de la reflexión ética, la libertad y los fines humanos; especialmente, en conceptos como enciclopedismo y ecumenismo, revisitados en su obra desde la perspectiva de la técnica.…”