Organismic Spatiality: Toward a Metaphysic of Composition

Abstract

The task of this paper is the construction of a theory of organismic spatiality. I take as a starting point Gilles Deleuze's reference in The Logic of Sense to Gilbert Simondon's concept of the membrane. The membrane is a dynamically topological limit between the organism's milieus of interiority and exteriority—the first moment of organismic spatiality. It is the foundation of the organism as an entity spatially distinct from its environment. The membrane is discriminatory and asymmetric—a concept, I claim, best understood by way of a discussion of affectivity. To understand how the membrane brings the organism's interior milieu into contact with the outside requires us to analyze its capacity to affect and be affected by its environment. To appreciate the compositional implications of this affectivity, I bring the concept into conversation with Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela's work on autopoietic systems theory. Conceived autopoietically, the organism's activity as a living system constructs its own milieu of exteriority. Just as it pulses to its rhythm of temporality, so too does the organism live its own space: The here, as opposed to the now, of organismic subjectivity.