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EDITED BY ARNE DE BOEVER, ALEX MURRAY, JON ROFFE AND AsHLEY WOODWARD GILBERT SIMONDON BEING AND TECHNOLOGY Gilbert Simondon Being and Technology Edited by Arne De Boever, Alex Murray, Jon Roffe and Ashley Woodward DDee BBOEVEROEVER PPRINT.inddRINT.indd i 006/12/20116/12/2011 114:264:26 © editorial matter and organization Arne De Boever, Alex Murray, Jon Roffe and Ashley Woodward, 2012 © the chapters their several authors Edinburgh University Press Ltd 22 George Square, Edinburgh www.euppublishing.com Typeset in 10.5/13 pt Sabon by Servis Filmsetting Ltd, Stockport, Cheshire, and printed and bound in Great Britain by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 978 0 7486 4525 1 (hardback) ISBN 978 0 7486 4525 1 (webready PDF) ISBN 978 0 7486 5079 8 (epub) ISBN 978 0 7486 5078 1 (Amazon ebook) The right of the contributors to be identifi ed as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. DDee BBOEVEROEVER PPRINT.inddRINT.indd iiii 006/12/20116/12/2011 114:264:26 Contents Abbreviations v Editors’ Introduction: Simondon, Finally vii Arne De Boever, Alex Murray, Jon Roffe and Ashley Woodward 1. Technical Mentality 1 Gilbert Simondon, translated by Arne De Boever Explications 2. ‘Technical Mentality’ Revisited: Brian Massumi on Gilbert Simondon 19 With Arne De Boever, Alex Murray and Jon Roffe 3. Identity and Individuation: Some Feminist Refl ections 37 Elizabeth Grosz 4. Crystals and Membranes: Individuation and Temporality 57 Anne Sauvagnargues, translated by Jon Roffe Implications 5. The Question of Anxiety in Gilbert Simondon 73 Igor Krtolica, translated by Jon Roffe 6. Infra-Psychic Individualization: Transductive Connections and the Genesis of Living Techniques 92 Marie-Pier Boucher 7. ‘Du mort qui saisit le vif’: Simondonian Ontology Today 110 Jean-Hugues Barthélémy, translated by Justin Clemens 8. The Aesthetics of Gilbert Simondon: Anticipation of the Contemporary Aesthetic Experience 121 Yves Michaud, translated by Justin Clemens DDee BBOEVEROEVER PPRINT.inddRINT.indd iiiiii 006/12/20116/12/2011 114:264:26 iv Gilbert Simondon: Being and Technology Resonances 9. Gilles Deleuze, a Reader of Gilbert Simondon 135 Sean Bowden 10. Science and Ontology: From Merleau-Ponty’s ‘Reduction’ to Simondon’s ‘Transduction’ 154 Miguel de Beistegui 11. The Question of the Individual in Georges Canguilhem and Gilbert Simondon 176 Dominique Lecourt, translated by Arne De Boever 12. The Theatre of Individuation: Phase-Shift and Resolution in Simondon and Heidegger 185 Bernard Stiegler, translated by Kristina Lebedeva Glossary: Fifty Key Terms in the Works of Gilbert Simondon 203 Jean-Hugues Barthélémy, translated by Arne De Boever Notes on Contributors 232 Index 235 DDee BBOEVEROEVER PPRINT.inddRINT.indd iivv 006/12/20116/12/2011 114:264:26 Abbreviations Abbreviations used to refer to Simondon’s published works CI Communication et information [Communication and Information] (Chatou: Editions de la Transparence, 2010) (collection of texts) CSI ‘Cours sur l’instinct’ [Course on Instinct], in Simondon, CI (see above) CSP Cours sur la perception [Course on Perception] (Chatou: Editions de la Transparence, 2005) (course from 1964 to 1965) FIP ‘Forme, information, potentiel’ [Form, Information, Potential] (lecture from 1960, added by the publisher), in Simondon, ILFI and IPC (see below) HNI ‘Histoire de la notion d’individu’ [History of the Notion of the Individual] (text added by the publisher), in Simondon, ILFI (see below) IGPB L’Individu et sa genèse physico-biologique [The Individual and its Physico-Biological Genesis] (Grenoble: Jérôme Millon, 1995) (this book contains the fi rst two-thirds of ILFI, as well as its introduction and conclusion) ILFI L’Individuation à la lumière des notions de forme et d’information [Individuation in Light of the Notions of Form and Information] (Grenoble: Jérôme Millon, 2005) (Simondon’s main thesis for the Doctorat d’Etat, written between 1954 and 1958) IMIN Imagination et invention [Imagination and Invention] (Chatou: Editions de la Transparence, 2008) (course from 1965 to 1966) IPC L’Individuation psychique et collective [Psychic and Collective Individuation] (Paris: Aubier, 1989 and 2007) (this book DDee BBOEVEROEVER PPRINT.inddRINT.indd v 006/12/20116/12/2011 114:264:26 vi Gilbert Simondon: Being and Technology contains the last third of ILFI, as well as its introduction and conclusion) IT L’Invention dans les techniques [Invention in Technics] (Paris: Seuil, 2006) (collection of texts) MEOT Du mode d’existence des objets techniques [On the Mode of Existence of Technical Objects] (Paris: Aubier, 1958) (Simondon’s secondary thesis for the Doctorat d’Etat, written between 1954 and 1958) MT ‘Mentalité technique’ [Technical Mentality], Revue philos- ophique de la France et de l’Etranger, 3 (Paris: PUF, 2006) NC ‘Note complémentaire sur les conséquences de la notion d’individuation’ [Additional Note on the Consequences of the Notion of Individuation] (text added by the publisher), in Simondon, ILFI and IPC (see above) DDee BBOEVEROEVER PPRINT.inddRINT.indd vvii 006/12/20116/12/2011 114:264:26 Editors’ Introduction: Simondon, Finally Arne De Boever, Alex Murray, Jon Roffe and Ashley Woodward Gilbert Simondon: Being and Technology is the fi rst book in English dedicated entirely to the work of this French philosopher. Although the importance of Simondon’s thought for twentieth- and twenty- fi rst-century continental philosophy is clear – his work is foundational for Gilles Deleuze and Bernard Stiegler, and resonates in the writings of other prominent thinkers, such as Jean Baudrillard, Paolo Virno, Giorgio Agamben and Roberto Esposito – relatively little attention has been paid to Simondon in the English-speaking academy. The few schol- ars writing about Simondon in English who have contributed to this collection – Brian Massumi, Elizabeth Grosz and Miguel de Beistegui, amongst others – are, next to some philosophers not included here (Alberto Toscano, Bruno Latour and Isabelle Stengers for example), the exceptions that confi rm the rule. Born in 1924, Gilbert Simondon was a doctoral student of both the French philosopher and physician Georges Canguilhem and the French phenomenologist Maurice Merleau-Ponty. By 1958, he had fi nished both his main thesis, L’Individuation à la lumière des notions de forme et de l’information [Individuation in Light of the Notions of Form and Information], and his supplementary thesis, Du mode d’existence des objets techniques (On the Mode of Existence of Technical Objects), for the French doctoral degree. While Du mode d’existence was immedi- ately published in France and quickly turned into an infl uential book, it would take until 1964 for the fi rst part of Simondon’s main thesis to be published. This text was later republished in 1995. The second part of the thesis, on which the forthcoming English translation Psychic and Collective Individuation is based,1 was not published until 1989, the year of Simondon’s death. This part was later republished in 2007. Due to a rising interest in Simondon’s work in recent years, a number of other (French) volumes have begun to appear, including a collection DDee BBOEVEROEVER PPRINT.inddRINT.indd vviiii 006/12/20116/12/2011 114:264:26 viii Gilbert Simondon: Being and Technology of texts on ‘communication and information’ and Simondon’s 1964–5 course on ‘perception’, as well as the course on ‘imagination and inven- tion’ and the collection of texts on ‘invention and technics’. With the English translation of Du mode d’existence and the second part of Simondon’s thesis well under way,2 the early twenty-fi rst century inter- est in Simondon is taking off in the English-speaking world, and the fact that translations into German, Russian, Korean, Italian and several other languages are in progress suggests a quickly growing interest in Simondon worldwide. This book developed out of the fi rst English-language special journal issue – published by Parrhesia: A Journal of Critical Philosophy – dedicated entirely to this important thinker.3 The dearth of English- language criticism on Simondon is no doubt largely due to a lack of English translations of Simondon’s writings,4 and it was on the occa- sion of the forthcoming publication of the translation of Simondon’s Psychic and Collective Individuation and On the Mode of Existence of Technical Objects that Parrhesia decided to put together a special issue on Simondon’s work. Several of the features, articles and inter- views that were published in Parrhesia’s special issue are reproduced here with only minor modifi cations. However, this book has also been expanded signifi cantly with several other contributions from emerging and established scholars of Simondon’s work. Gilbert Simondon: Being and Technology thus hopes to contribute further to English-language scholarship on Simondon, and function as a guide as this scholarship continues to expand. As well as (somewhat playfully) alluding to some of the major texts of twentieth-century philosophy (by Martin Heidegger, Jean-Paul Sartre and Alain Badiou), the subtitle of this book has been chosen to refl ect the two topics central to Simondon’s philosophy: ontology and technol- ogy. Scholars have also suggested that the fi eld of psychology and the human sciences should be added as a third area of investigation. (In fact, Simondon was elected to the chair in psychology at the Sorbonne in 1963.) Although the latter is also represented here – Marie-Pier Boucher and Dominique Lecourt’s contributions, for example, refl ect on this – the book’s main areas of interest are, as its subtitle indicates, ‘being’ and ‘technology’. The notions of ontogenesis, individuation (a near-synonym for ontogenesis, as Barthélémy explains in his glossary) and technics (which is not exactly technology) are thus central to this book’s project. By gathering contributions that address all these areas of Simondon’s thought, the book ultimately hopes to stimulate refl ection on how these different elements of Simondon’s philosophy fi t together.
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