Gilbert Simondon Research Articles

Stand-Up Rerouting, or Cultural Transformation in Ali Wong’s Bawdy Comic Critique

ABSTRACT This article identifies and elaborates a form of comic persuasion called “stand-up rerouting,” showing how comedian Ali Wong’s stand-up in Netflix’s 2016 Baby Cobra transforms familiar conceptual norms, especially the conflicting binaries she faces as a woman and comedian. Drawing on the philosophical insights of Mikhail Bakhtin, Donna Haraway, and Gilbert Simondon as well as the feminist thought of Hélène Cixous and Trinh T. Minh-ha, the article traces Wong’s bawdy humor as it reroutes audience attention from a conceptual to a sensuous understanding of life. In embracing the tensions caused by normative expectations, and exploiting familiar cultural limits on identity in novel ways, Wong materializes alternative, nonbinary ways to reconcile tensions in her identities, transforming who and how she—and we—can be.

Reimagining smart city collaboration in Colombo, Sri Lanka after Gilbert Simondon

ABSTRACT Most cities across the globe are embarking on various ‘smart’-based initiatives that seek to use technological developments to enhance people’s lives and make society more productive. Within such smart cities, citizens are often expected to become active ‘collaborators’ in producing smartness. Such technocratic forms of collaboration maintain entrenched forms of hierarchical power, with citizens usually figured as passive ‘consumers’ or ‘users’ of smart technologies rather than as real transformative participants. In this paper, I explore how ‘collaboration’ in the smart city might be thought of differently in ways that challenge the more utilitarian senses that dominate much political and academic discussion. I do this through an engagement with Gilbert Simondon’s philosophy of individuation and technology. In particular, I explore the distinction he draws between ‘interindividual’ and ‘transindividual’ modes of relation and how they entail different political senses of what collaboration between humans and technologies might entail. I flesh this out by drawing on interview research with stakeholders and citizens in Colombo, Sri Lanka. I highlight how stakeholders and citizens imagine collaboration and how these imaginaries explore alternate ways of living in and relating to smart urbanism and smart mobilities today.

Tecnogenesi della Terra. Simondon e il neo-magico

Gilbert Simondon was among the first to observe the rise of planetary technologies and to integrate this phenomenon into his philosophy. Already since On the Mode of Existence of Technical Objects, Simondon claimed that technology is endowed with an intrinsic ecumenic tendency and that this tendency is manifesting through the technical ensembles of the informational era: technics is constructing the Earth as a new «techno-geographic environment». This paper aims at analyzing Simondon’s view on planetary technology and infrastructural networks, also in the light of the structural instability characterizing today’s social and natural systems. In the conclusions, an alternative way towards cultural progress is suggested, the one that Simondon discarded: the way of “aesthetics after aesthetics”. Aesthetics might in fact offer a different model to situate the human groups in the techno-planetary environment and overcome extractivist authoritarianism, as long as it finds effective realization into a neo-magic paradigm.

Agency Without Agents: Affective Forces, Communicative Events, and Organizational Becomings

How does agency emerge eventfully in processes of organizational becoming? This article aims to address this question by developing a process theory of agency based on Gilbert Simondon’s philosophical writings on individuation as a communicative phenomenon and Brian Massumi’s writings on affect. This theory views agency as an affective force, expressed as a communicative event, that governs the transition from one process of individuation to another, producing an enhanced ability to act and potentially leading to a collective process of transindividuation that is essential to organizational becoming. In turn, this article not only offers novel theoretical as well as methodological insights for organizational research, but also highlights researchers’ ethical responsibilities toward those whose individuation is precarious and who may not be able to partake in certain processes of organizational becoming.

Assemblage Robotic Plants: Individualizations of Many Orders of Magnitude

Abstract This paper focuses on the author’s artistic practice and presents robotic plant creations as assemblages using robotic autonomy unities in a Small-World Network configuration. This artistic production is significantly founded on Gilbert Simondon’s philosophical concepts about Technological Beings. Understanding these communities of robotic structures as individualizations is critical to apprehending them as individuals. The paper also discusses the implications of hardware design, coding, and the concept of artificial life related to the development of such technological organisms.

The theory of differentiation in philosophical reflections of Gilbert Simondon and Gilles Deleuze

The theory of differentiation in philosophical reflections of Gilbert Simondon and Gilles Deleuze

The Analog Ends of Science: Investigating the Analogy of the Laws of Nature Through Object-Oriented Ontology and Ontogenetic Naturalism

Abstract This article investigates the analogy of the “laws of nature” through Graham Harman’s Object-Oriented Ontology (OOO) and Gilbert Simondon’s ontogenetic naturalism (ON). Both thinkers challenge the literalist interpretation of scientific knowledge by emphasizing the indirect nature of relation and the primacy of the autonomy of discrete beings over pre-established physical laws. Harman’s OOO defends this autonomy as the irreducible independence of objects from their relations, while Simondon focuses on the modulation of information in shaping the laws of nature through individuation. The article argues that while science remains the best recursive triangulation between logic and empirical evidence, its grasp of an ultimate, literal Truth is constricted by an epistemological relation to autonomous realities, grounded in analogy. Consequently, the laws of nature are considered as legislated by discrete autonomies, with space and time emerging from the things themselves. The article concludes by discussing the consequences of this reframing in light of the ancient conception of díkēkosmos (cosmic justice).

Co to jest chaosmotechnika?

This article considers the problem of the scale of locality as a matter of placing technology in an (alter)cosmological perspective. It engages in a dialogue with two Simondon-inspired projects: on the one hand, Yuk Hui’s concept of cosmotechnics, and on the other, the transductive theory of systems outlined in the Deleuzoguattarian Thousand Plateaus. A new reading of a marginal thread of the latter, i.e., the universe of technical objects associated with the nomadism of the Great Steppe of the Bronze and Iron Ages, leads to the crystallization of the concept of chaosmotechnics, according to which the substrate of technical activities is the contingency of the cosmos. Answering the question of locality, the chaosmotechnic perspective allows for the untimely emergence of an alternative cosmology of the contemporary digital image from nomadic metal technical objects. Key-words: cosmos, technology, art, digital image, Witold Gombrowicz, Yuk Hui, Gilbert Simondon, Gilles Deleuze, Félix Guattari, Laura U. Marks

Fragile texts and machine readers: trans/in/dividual reading tactics in a complex technical milieu

This paper explores the following questions: What is reading all about, as our technical milieu becomes increasingly digital and our reading increasingly automated? What is entailed in closely reading a book, in studying and handling the book as an object? And what is the role of philosophy—and in reading philosophy—as we grapple with new technical modes of reading? Guided by philosopher Gilbert Simondon, this paper compares the language heuristics of large language models (LLM) with human reading practices, revealing parallel and diverging technical tactics, with the aim of increasing our understanding of how and why these algorithms are part of our technical reality. This comparison moves beyond concerns with automation and alienation, using Simondon’s notions of technicity and transindividuality to philosophically analyze the nature of collaborative reading in a distraction economy, and the extent to which transformer neural network models achieve an implicit embodied or grounded sense of language-use.

Gilbert Simondon, Imagination and Invention. Translated by Joe Hughes and Christophe Wall-Romana

Gilbert Simondon, <i>Imagination and Invention</i>. Translated by Joe Hughes and Christophe Wall-Romana

Between Smart Images and Fast Trucks: Digital Surveillance and Obscured Labour in Hyderabad, India

In Hyderabad, India, the growing information technology (IT) sector relies on ensuring safe and efficient movements of people and objects, and the city government and private actors have embraced the promise of digital surveillance to reach these goals. The new Telangana State, created in 2014, has built a new city-wide network of smart cameras, and at ‘hackathons’ programmers develop new digital tools, often connected to this network, that will technologically ‘solve’ social problems. In this article, I examine the system of CCTV cameras and programmers’ investments in these systems, and explore how migrant Vaddera stonecutters use cellphones to evade patrolling officers monitoring the streets where they carry the granite stones that they cut and load to construct the city’s buildings. Expanding on what Gilbert Simondon calls ‘the margin of indeterminacy’, this article reveals gaps in the digital infrastructure of surveillance—even as its integration and completion combine human and technical elements.

Canguilhem, Simondon and the Resolution of Problems: From Life to Pedagogy

This article explores the links between the philosophies of Georges Canguilhem and Gilbert Simondon. It highlights their shared emphasis on the difficult character of human life, framing this difficulty in terms of an existential encounter with problems and their resolutions. It shows how the notion of ‘problem’ which grounds both of their thinking presupposes a neo-vitalist conception of life as purposive behaviour, extended to forms of collective, technical and symbolic activity. The consequences of this conception for Canguilhem's and Simondon's engagement with questions of pedagogy, and the role of philosophical education in particular, are then examined. The article concludes by considering the ambiguous place of anxiety in their work and its significance for thinking about the conditions of knowledge and action. Following Canguilhem and Simondon, I argue for the importance of helping the human organism develop relatively autonomous interior and exterior milieus to cope with life's fundamental difficulty.

‘Anybody can do sculpture, it is purely mechanical’: Harriet G. Hosmer and the relation between sculpture, reproduction and machine invention

This article examines the work of Harriet Goodhue Hosmer, focusing on her unique approach to sculpture in the context of evolving ideologies and technological advances in the nineteenth century. The various facets of her life and career, shaped by the collaborative nature of sculpture making in this period, shed light on her identity as both a sculptor and inventor. Hosmer’s work and aspirations to be a harbinger of a new status for women that celebrated female strength and power can be seen against the backdrop of several nineteenth-century freedom movements, but also the emergence of spiritualism in the United States. Exploring invention, authorship and reproduction and revealing the processes of making sculpture in different sizes and materials, this article also incorporates notions of gender by discussing Hosmer and her goal of creating surrogates and machine inventions, considering the mutual interaction of body and technology. Hosmer’s success and her dedication to inventions is drawn out alongside the challenges she faced as a female sculptor in a male-dominated field. Drawing on Gilbert Simondon’s insights into invention, the article suggests that Hosmer’s commitment to invention and the ownership of her creations not only established her as a professional inventor, but also secured her an enduring place in the history of art and science.

Simondon and Novalis: Notes for a Romantic Mechanology

Abstract: German Romanticism plays a central role in Gilbert Simondon's writings. In Mode of Existence , Simondon draws on Goethe and E. T. A. Hoffmann to illustrate the tragic consequences of failing to attend to the individuated relationship between landscape and tool. While Novalis is only mentioned in passing, his work presents the most radical form of what might be called Romantic mechanology. With the stated aim of achieving the ideal of perpetual motion, Novalis's poetics highlight the central role literary experimentation plays in technological thinking, revealing how Simondon may shed new light on several key aspects of romantic poetry and philosophy.

Cosmic Hunt, Copper Electroplating, Chaosmic Transduction: Chaosmotechnics of Molecular Collaboration in Matthew Barney’s Redoubt Project (2016–21)

The article considers Matthew Barney’s artistic project Redoubt (2016–21) from the point of view of Gilbert Simondon’s transductive philosophy of individuation. Informed by Simondon—read here with Félix Guattari, Gilles Deleuze and Yuk Hui—the article performs a case study of Barney’s long-term, expansive and multi-layered project. Redoubt comprises a feature-length film, metal reliefs, and large-scale sculptures, as well as an intermedial performance. The article focuses on the mythological theme of the Cosmic Hunt deployed in Barney’s eponymous feature film as well as on his experimental artistic process entailing cast metals. The goal of the article is to provide a diagram of the functioning of Barney’s complex conception of metamorphosis, which plays itself out on many—heterogenous, yet ultimately entangled—orders of magnitude. Consideration will also be given to the political and decolonial implications of Barney’s artistic proposal, which liberate the notion of the hunt from its takeover by colonial extractivism in order to reveal it as an intensive capture of forces.

Simondon, Control and the Digital Domain

Deleuze put forth a description of fluid control in computerized society in his text ‘Postscript on Control Societies’. With the help of the philosophy of Gilbert Simondon, we can broaden and complexify this view and understand digital systems through the concept of modulation. These modulatory systems intervene in human individuation by controlling individuals as ‘dividuals’. In contemporary digital technologies, like blockchain platforms, the modulatory dividual control can be fierce and even total. Simondon’s concepts of pre-individual, individuation, and transindividuation present us with an ontology for this contemporary mode of control and enable us to better understand the complex relations between the being of humans and technical networks.

Weird Mediation: Deleuze and Guattari on Toxic Internet Subcultures

The article looks at how the Internet can be imagined as a kind of psychedelic technology – in the sense of ‘manifesting’ new realities – through the lens of different ideas associated with Deleuze and Guattari. It considers a darker strain of their ideas and their reception, initially looking back to discussions from earlier cybertheory before taking as its case study the production of ‘microfascist’ subjectivities on the notorious website 4chan – arguably the point of origin of both the ‘alt-right’ and ‘QAnon’. To unpack this case study, the article develops the idea of ‘weird mediation’ (in dialogue with Gilbert Simondon), as well as considering some ‘shamanic’ aspects from Deleuze and Guattari’s thought (in dialogue with Carlos Castenada), which together offer insights and warnings about the power of mind manifesting technologies.

Techno-genesis: Reconceptualising geography’s technology from ontology to ontogenesis

Technologies have been theorised to understand their powers to produce spacetimes – notably through Bernard Stiegler’s reading of technics as constitutive of human ontology. However, less attention has been paid to how technologies shape spacetimes according to their own distinct logics of evolution, the result being a tendency to reduce technological agency to a question of its effects on human being. The first half of the paper elaborates this problem in conversation with geographies of the digital turn. The second half introduces an alternative approach through Gilbert Simondon’s ontogenetic notion of technology characterised by its own logics of evolution – what I term techno-genesis.

Choreographic Explorations in the Middle and the Excess

Examining how the choreographic improvisation system Tools that Propel (TTP) facilitates dancers to excavate their habitual movement for new creative potential, this article questions whether the co-evolution of technology and humans – technogenesis – can bring about new understanding to the nature of habit. TTP enables intra-acting dancers to improvise with their own virtual body, seen moving in two superimposed moments of time; past incidences of movement are folded into present ones (projected on screen) when the system determines them to be recurring in the motion it tracks on the floor. Through an entanglement of the embodied and virtual gesture the intra-acting dancer explores their movement habits; improvising with TTP they can investigate the effects of movements and rewind to their causes, investigating a movement’s centre, its fulcrum, the moment of action (and potential) itself. TTP both reveals and is a process of becoming. It is a diffraction apparatus (Karen Barad (2007) Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum physics and the entanglement of matter and meaning, Durham, NC: Duke University Press.) enabling the re-conception of previously perceived entities in its entanglement of phenomena and a system of metastable equilibrium (Gilbert Simondon (2011 [1958]) ‘On the mode of existence of technical objects’, trans Ninian Mallamphy, Dan Mallamphy and Nandita Biswas Mallamphy, Deleuze Studies 5(3): 407–24) repeatedly bringing intra-actors back to the brink of emergence – the preformal universe before the separation of subject and object. This article argues that with(in) TTP the improvisation unfolds in a constant shifting process with no fixed boundary between subject and object – the becoming occurring in the movement between them. It posits that if nothing pre-exists the intra-action between phenomena, and thus the process of becoming, then arguably there is no such thing as habit at all; for nothing is fixed as an object, a thing, an entity, but always dynamically, and intra-actively, emerges as new potential.

Earth Collective. Natural Conditions for a Transindividual Politics

&#x0D; &#x0D; &#x0D; The concept of a transindividual relation has been articulated in order to resolve the problem of the unity of individuals in association with others. More particularly, it has been offered as a route for overcoming a disjunctive tendency whereby either individuality is lost to an encompassing collective, or the substance of the individual renders the collective accidental, optional, or a mere semblance. Transindividuality thus offers a way to think individuals and collectives thereof as relative, mutually dependent and constitutive, whilst maintaining a separation between the two. Equally, it affords a conception of a collective which is more than the sum of its parts, or an arbitrary aggregate of beings.&#x0D; Whilst this abstract description of transindividuality might appear apt for ecological or earth systems analysis, to date this has not been attempted. Neither of the two most significant thinkers of transindividuality, Gilbert Simondon and Étienne Balibar, broach the question of a natural transindividual at any length, nor do the various monographs and special editions of journals which have been dedicated to extending and criticising the former authors’ analysis of transindividuality. As such, this article addresses this lacuna through discussion of the problem of natural transindividuality, claiming that mutual dependency and constitution between individuals and collectives pertains to geophysical and vital relations as much as it does to human social relations.&#x0D; &#x0D; &#x0D;