Organism-Oriented Ontology

Abstract

Discussing different aspects of the philosophy of Gilbert Simondon, Raymond Ruyer, Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, and including some contemporary thinkers, such as Catherine Malabou, Bernard Stiegler, Bruno Latour, and Donna J. Haraway, the book argues that all these threads can be seen as precursors to organism-oriented ontology. Rather than concentrating on individuals and identities, contemporary philosophy is increasingly interested in processes, multiplicities and potential for change, that is, in those features that define living beings. The book argues that the capacity of living beings for self-organisation, creativity and contingency can act as an antidote to biopolitical power and control in the times of the Anthropocene. By conceptualising symbionts and holobionts, hybrids and chimeras as ontological conditions, we resist the biopolitical demand to differentiate, classify and decide which forms of life are worth living. In this respect, organism-oriented ontology is mutually inclusive, sharing ontological value with the cognisers of other species, those that are living and those that have become extinct. It gives ontological weight to all conditions of human life, including trauma, disability, illness, decomposition and death. It also includes technologies, which are understood not as something external and hostile, but as extended projections of our internal organs and organisms.