Monstrous Individuations: Deleuze, Simondon, and Relational Ontology
Filippo Del Lucchese, Marie Curie Fellow, UPJV – Amiens, Occidental College –
Los Angeles
Reality is always more complex than the concepts and categories employed by
philosophers to represent it. Especially when these concepts force reality into binary
oppositions or dialectical solutions, abstracted and disconnected from the multiplicity and
singularity of events, phenomena, configurations of Being and existence. This is
particularly true in the case of the conceptual pairing of individual and society,
represented in the history of political though by the opposition between “liberal
individualism” and “communitarian holism.” Despite frequently criticizing the
reductionism involved in this often naïve opposition, scholars have rarely offered an
effective alternative to it. A few decades ago, though, Gilbert Simondon attempted to
offer a powerful alternative vision of the individual/society relation, using the concept of
“transindividuality”.
As Etienne Balibar has stressed, Simondon’s is an ambitious attempt to define a
structure of human sciences through a critique of metaphysical doctrines of individuality,
that inevitably lead to the classic dualism of psychologism and sociologism.1 Beyond
classical metaphysics and through modern physics and biology of cognitive processes,
1
E. Balibar, «Spinoza: from Individuality to Transindividuality», Mededelingen vanwege het Spinozahuis,
71, Eburon, Delft 1997.
Simondon represents one of the most powerful attempts to redefine the reality of the
individual in the 20th century.
The first part of Simondon’s thesis, L’individu et sa genèse physico-biologique,
was published in 1964, the second part in 1989. In 1966, Deleuze writes a famous review
of the first part in the Revue philosophique de la France et de l’étranger in 1966, stating
that Simondon presents “a profoundly original theory of individuation implying a whole
philosophy.”2 By praising the influence that modern science can have on philosophy,
Deleuze – curiously enough – avoids focusing on the philosophical aspects of
Simondon’s work. And basically the very last part of the review is though short, is quite
critical, in as much as Delueze calls it “a moral vision of the world.”3 And even at this
point before Deleuze’s book on Spinoza, there can be no doubt that having a “moral”
vision of the world is probably the worst thing he could say about someone. Thus, even in
a review that is sympathetic, and even though the deep influence of Simondon on
Deleuze is widely recognized, it is important to keep in mind this early “denunciation”.
Something else we must consider in decoding the relationship between Simondon
and Deleuze is Spinoza. If on the one hand Deleuze himself declares that probably the
only author he invites into his hearth is Spinoza, while on the other hand Simondon only
quotes Spinoza to denounce and criticize him, clearly we have something going on in this
odd triangle that is more interesting than simply talking about “influences.” Even when
G. Deleuze, Revue de la France et de l’étranger, vol. CLVI, no. 1-3, janv-mars 1966, pp. 115-118. See
Desert Islands and Other Texts, Semiotext(e), Los Angeles-New York 2004, pp. 86-89.
3
Ivi, p. 89: «The fundamental idea is that the pre-individual, a ‘source of future metastable states,’ must
remain associated with the individual. Estheticism is therefore condemned as that act by which an
individual cuts him or herself off from the pre-individual reality from which he or she emerged. As a result,
the individual is closed in on a singularity, refusing to communicate, and provoking a loss of information.
[…] The reader may indeed ask whether, in his ethics, Simondon has not reintroduced the form of the Self
which he had averted with his theory of disparity, i.e. his theory of the individual conceived as dephased
and multiphased being».
2
doing hermeneutical (in the sense of going further than what an author says explicitly)
work, we must not overlook what Simondon actually makes explicit: his highly critical
reading of Spinoza.
In this paper I will show the main aspects of Simondon’s ontology, especially
those that have clearly influenced Deleuze. But at the same time I will try to point out
what is at stake in this conversation and what Deleuze could not have derived from
Simondon. I will focus primarily on Difference and Repetition, the most central work in
any analysis of the relationship between Deleuze and Simondon.4 I will try to show first
that the line of division between the two authors falls exactly along what we can call a
Spinozistic problematic and then to underline the most interesting elements of
Simondon’s thought, which can be found – exactly as Deleuze points out – “beyond”
Simondon himself.
*
No one would deny that Simondon’s intellectual enterprise—he proposes nothing
less than a profound attack on the traditional concept of “substance” and tries to
completely redefine ontology—is extremely ambitious. According to Simondon, what
has always been considered the only philosophical dimension to be investigated is the
world of substances and how they relate one to the other and give birth to the notion of
the individual. Substance and the individual have always been the starting point of every
ontology. In this way, Simondon argues, constituted individualities have always had
See also Pierre Montebello, «La questione de l’individuation chez Deleuze et Simondon», in J.M. Vaysse
(éd.), Vie, monde, individuation, Georg Olms Verlag, Hildesheim-Zürich-New York, 2003, pp. 213-213,
who, on the contrary, focuses especially on Milles Plateaux. Here, Montebello maintains, through an
original philosophy of nature and following Simondon, Deleuze and Guattari integrate the ontology of
relation into their expressionism. Montebello doesn’t point out any relevant discrepancy between Deleuze’s
and Simondon’s thought.
4
ontological primacy over any other possible element, and what has been lost is first, the
actual reality of relations, and second, the process of individuation, the process that
makes something the thing that it actually is and makes it different from other things.
This concept of a “principle of individuation” is not original (being as old as philosophy
itself) but it is an idea that Simondon wants to renew and stress.
For Simondon, individuation must be understood as a process. And, for this
reason, it is not the individual, the concept of “individuality” that deserves ontological
primacy but, on the contrary, “relation” and the concept of “relationality.” We must
substitute, Simondon argues, individuation for the individual, and operation for the
principle; we must leave aside the word “ontology” and use instead the concept of
“ontogenesis.” Clearly, this is not merely a change in perspective or in point of view.
This is a revolutionary effort to set “relation” free from the metaphorical cage in which it
has been locked by the traditional concept of “substance.” As a result, we are led to
recognize that relation is not what happens between two substances, but that in fact,
relationality “is” reality itself: Being itself appears to be not what “is” (and what
eventually happens in the form of relations) but only what “becomes,” in and through
relationality.
This revolution has many interesting consequences and corollaries. Knowledge,
for example, cannot be seen anymore as a simple link between a subject who knows and
an object that is known, but must be seen now as a relation between relations. In the same
way, “meaning” in general, as the contents of knowledge, cannot be said to pre-exist the
operation of knowledge itself, which is once again a relation of relations. Therefore, for
Simondon, meaning can only be understood “in between,” something between and
through individuals. Because of the dependence of our vocabulary on the traditional
ontology, Simondon proposes a new word—“transindividuality”—to explain this
relational ontology and how individuals “cross through” Being rather than being
constituted by it.
This also has political consequences related to the interpretation of the place of a
particular individual — man — in the world and as regards to other individuals. Basically
Simondon distinguishes between yet strictly binds together the two individuations he
calls psychique and collective. This is necessary, he argues, to avoid the double failure of
psychologism on the one hand and sociologism on the other, meaning by these words the
doctrines that assign a fixed (ontological) identity to man and his mind on the one hand
and to society on the other, failing to understand, once again, that their reality is first and
foremost relational. Therefore, transindividuality explains this double movement of
individuation and individualisation. The first movement brings the individual to its
physical existence, from a pre-individual being and reality. The second movement –
through which individuals continue to exist– is the series of individualisations that
corresponds to the action in an environment and with other individuals. Psychical reality
and sociological reality are therefore only the multiple relations of the individual with his
own pre-individual reality as well as with his environment and other individuals.
*
Now, this theoretical core of Simondon’s thought seems to describe an authentic
immanent ontology of relation, based on the dynamic power of becoming rather than on
the static concept of being . My impression, though, is that what I have just described is
actually closer to the language and the thought of post-Deleuzian and very sympathetic
readers, rather than to Simondon himself. There are in fact aspects of Simondon’s theory
that in my view explain Deleuze’s prudent reading and his early critique, and at the same
time and potentially more interesting, suggest what we can use of Simondon “beyond”
Simondon himself.5
The postulate of Simondon’s whole theory of individuation is that relation has the
status of Being. This problem is anything but original. Here we are completely within the
set of questions posed by the ancient Greek philosophers and particularly the pre-Socratic
question about if and how Being or non-Being “is.” Although both Simondon and
Deleuze paid a great deal of attention to their classic sources, modern scholars have
overlooked this important aspect of their work.
Typically, modern scholars start and end with a simple statement of Simondon’s
point of departure in his critique of classic ontology, that is to say, his claim that the
conflicting traditions of atomism and hylomorphism have always focused on the result of
individuation—the individual—rather rather than on the process of individuation. Both
traditions presuppose something (either the atom or the form) rather than explaining the
process of formation of this “something.” In focusing on the “process,” Simondon is
confronted with the same problem that Heraclitus or Plato or Aristotle had and doesn’t
5
See also Alberto Toscano, The Theater of Production : Philosophy and Individuation Between Kant and
Deleuze, Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke 2006, pp. 140-142. Toscano underlines the ambivalences of
Simondon’s philosophy, which is «legitimate to portray […] as driven – he writes – by a fundamentally
conciliatory vision, in whichthe operations of individuation are sequentially ordered into progressive
schemata of ever greater integration. […] the final horizon of Simondon’s project would be located in the
attempt to link every individual to its ultimate participation in a unified reality; in other words, to return to
the preindividual ground of its emergence». Notwithstanding this legitimate portray, Toscano points out the
consistency of the most significant contributions of Simondon’s philosophy, namely the «operational
ontology of relation» as well as individuation conceived as a «constructive operation». Yet, even for
Toscano, it is possible and also necessary to ‘separate’ the «fundamentals of his ontology» from «the great
cosmogonic epic that often transpires from his writings», as the latter «is largely to be ascribed to the
normative insistence within his thought of a kind of ethics of inclusion, the utopia of a ‘technical culture’».
For this kind of critics, toscano refers to Deleuze’s review of L’individuation as well as to G. Hottois,
Simondon et la philosophie de la ‘culture technique’, De Boeck, Bruxelles 1993.
get much beyond it. He thinks this process is a discontinuous path of Being toward
individuation. Rather than becoming, beings “switch” from one state of being into
another: Individuation, Simondon says, is either complete or it is not. We could say:
entweder Sein oder keine Individuation. Between the physical individuation and the
psychic individuation, as well as between psychic and collective individuation there is a
discrete sequence of steps, one after the other, as if the biological being of the individual
would come before its mental being.
This is a dangerous path, and equally important, it doesn’t help in the task of
redefining and grounding a new ontology using the concept of relation and “becoming”
rather than being. Even though Simondon’s language is based on immanence and
horizontal relation, it still relies on the traditional binary idea of dynamis/energheia
(power/act) as well as a distinction between essence and existence, precisely what
Simondon declares he wants to go beyond. Being – Simondon says – is radically preindividual, is not-one and has to be understood as a “principle”, as separated from every
single existing being. Being is pure potentiality, which is never completely actualized in a
particular individual. That’s why individuals always live their lives belonging both to the
pre-individual and to the individuated.
These tensions in Simondon’s own argument suggest a closer analysis of his
relationship with the pre-Socratic tradition. Let us consider his critique of Atomism.
There has been a huge debate both in recent years and in Simondon’s time about the atom
vis a vis its relation with other atoms as seen by Democritus, Epicurus or Lucretius.
Recently, Jean Salem has suggested the essential reality of the atom as an ontological
identity that exists prior to any interaction and therefore to the original vortex. Atoms are
progressively added to this vortex, which means that they must preexist. Moreover, if this
preexisting reality is not preserved, the original materialistic character of atomism is
betrayed.6
Prior to Salem, Jean Bollack points out that by considering the vortex as an
efficient cause or a deus ex machina that derives from matter, scholars have endorsed a
post-Aristotelian and teleological point of view. However, as Bollack states, the atom
itself only exists in and through its relations with other atoms and so the entire atomic
structure of the universe is in fact a “relation of relations.” Matter in the Atomist
cosmogony cannot be distinguished from the movement it engenders and from which it is
engendered.7
As he does not quote these debates, we can assume that Simondon did not know
about them. Yet it is striking that he is not interested in going deeper into the atomistic
hypothesis (especially in light of the new nuclear and particle physics which he knew
very well). On the contrary, to clarify his idea of the pre-individual, he uses instead the
concept of apeiron, Anaximander’s generative infinite or indeterminate, to explain his
conception of nature as the “reality of the possible.”
Let us focus on this choice of reference. Anaximander is the first one to use the
word arkhé in the philosophical sense of principle, source, and radical origin of
J. Salem, L’atomisme antique : Démocrite, Epicure et Lucrèce, Hachette, Paris 1997.
Ivi, p. 48: «La matière ne peut pas être distinguée du mouvement qu’elle engendre et qui l’engendre.
Concentrée en une masse, dès l’origine du processus de la genèse, elle est aussitôt, par l’effet de sa masse,
animée d’un mouvement discontinu qui ne dégage pas un à un les constituants ultimes, mais les entremêle
aussitôt dans l’innombrables enchevêtrements, et oppose ainsi, selon les différences qui se constituent
partout, les composants de la masse. Le tourbillon, comme il ne se dégage pas d’une forme pré-imposée au
monde, mais qu’il apparaît comme le contre-effet d’une grande concentration de matière et de
l’accumulation d’innombrables virtualités de mouvements, ne se déploie pas dès le début dans les limites
d’une sphéricité; il trouve sa forme giratoire dans l’enchaînement des impulsions particulières qui se
combinent et donnet, une fois contenues autour d’un centre, à la masse son unité». Contra, see again J.
Salem, Démocrite : grains de poussière dans un rayon de soleil, Vrin, Paris 1996.
6
7
everything that is. What is, what has been, and what will be rise from the generative
power of the apeiron, which is never the same and which moves endlessly. It envelopes
(periékhei) everything and has no quality, for it is totally indeterminate (aóristos). Things
are produced from it by way of separation (apókrisis) and ejection (ékkrisis). It is clear
that this generative power is not immanent to the things that it produces and rules. It is a
transcendent and eternal power that produces a cosmos that is in contrast subject to
limitation and death. It is interesting, however, that the apeiron can be seen in a very
different way. As there is no reason for a world to happen here rather than there, or now
rather than before or after, Anaximander himself supposes an infinity of different worlds.
And for this reason he is ranged among the atomists by Simplicius, the 6th century neoPlatonic author of the commentaries on Aristotle.8
The reference to indeterminacy could have been developed in many interesting
directions and could have led Simondon to more carefully interpret the atomist tradition
and to give a different meaning to the ontological status of the apeiron. However – and I
find it quite striking – instead of pursuing the possible connection between indeterminacy
and atomism, Simondon strongly criticizes the essentialism implied in the concept of
atoms, linking it to the hylomorphic hypothesis, and insists on the pre-individual being as
an apeiron, with the features of a transcendent principle. Both Simondon and the preSocratics try to explain how movement can generate things; how things, from an original
totality that is nothing in itself, become something here and now; and, how,
fundamentally, from non-Being things move into Being, of the main paradoxes classical
Greek philosophy tried to solve. Aristotle solves this by saying—against the preSocratics—that Being comes both from Being and from non-Being. This is possible
8
Simplicius, On Aristotle’s Physics, 1121, 5-9.
because Being can be understood in two different ways, as power and as act. Being in act
comes from Being in power, which is non-Being in act. So Being and individuation
follows the path of a teleological transformation of dynamis into energheia.9
Simondon is not completely succesful in overcoming this scheme. His
denunciation of hylomorphic theory doesn’t go much beyond the Greeks in saying how
we become what we are not, how we know what we do not know, how we leave without
having already left, nor does he completely overcome the Aristotelian idea of a dynamis
that has to be actualized in an energheia.
Muriel Combes suggests that the “fracture” that seems to divide the pre-individual
from actual individualities, as well as vital from psychic individuation, is in fact a tool
Simondon uses in order to criticize Bergson’s vitalism.10 The pre-individual reality that
every individual carries on in itself, does not, according to Simondon, belong to the vital,
but to the pre-vital. For Combes, this direct attack against the Bergsonian concept of
vital force (élan vital) reflects Simondon’s interest in recognizing, against Bergson’s
vision of a continuity between pre-vital and vital, the possibility of breakage, of fractures
and ultimately of transformations within Being.11
This reading is interesting and the critique essential for any ontology of
relationality. Yet if it aims to save Simondon from vitalism, it ends by throwing the baby
out with the bath water. Beyond – or against – Bergson’s vitalism, it is necessary to think
about discontinuity within immanence rather than through transcendence and a fracture
between pre-individual and individuated. Following Spinoza – and Deleuze – I wonder in
9
See M.R. Johnson, Aristotle on Teleology, Oxford University Press, Oxford-New York 2005.
See M. Combes, «Stato nascente : Fra oggetti tecnici e collettivo. Il contributo di Simondon» in U.
Fadini, A. Negri, C.T. Wolfe (a cura di), Desiderio del mostro : Dal circo al laboratorio alla politica,
Manifestolibri, Roma 2001, pp. 133-139.
11
Ibidem.
10
fact if breakage, fractures and transformations within Being can only be thought within a
plan of pure immanence and against any form of transcendence.12
Alberto Toscano perfectly understands the “danger” of speaking about the
preindividual in such terms or, as he puts it, of preindividual “as such,”13 the risk of
obliterating the multiplicity and complexity not only of the individuated reality, but also
of the individuating operations themselves. This is exactly where, in my view, the
Anaximandrean concept of preindividual leads, namely to a “cosmogonic narrative
moving from the undifferentiated to the individual, a narrative that would be forced, once
again, to adduce transcendent principles to explain the fact of productivity.”14
Toscano suggests that in order to avoid this danger, the preindividual reality must
not be seen as a “creative reservoir” of Being, but only as a “real condition of
individuation.” Nor should the preindividual field be considered to contain or anticipate
the forms that any individuation may take, and “it would therefore be more accurate to
speak in the plural of preindividual fields.” This is clearly one of the most interesting
philosophical paths we could follow from Simondon, yet it takes us away from
Simondon. For Simondon, the choice of Anaximander’s apeiron is not metaphorical.
And I think that this explains also how Simondon fails to understand Spinoza, the
early modern author who most successfully challenges Aristotle’s system, and why
Deleuze – who has produced one of the most interesting readings of Spinoza – is so
careful both in how he uses Simondon and when he quotes him explicitly.
12
M. Combes, «Stato nascente : Fra oggetti tecnici e collettivo. Il contributo di Simondon» in U. Fadini, A.
Negri, C.T. Wolfe (a cura di), Desiderio del mostro : Dal circo al laboratorio alla politica, Manifestolibri,
Roma 2001, pp. 133-139.
13
See A. Toscano, The Theater of Production, cit., p. 156.
14
Ivi.
Let us consider Simondon’s reading of Spinoza. Scholars have suggested an
underground connection between them, and there are certainly many elements that
suggest an interesting common reading. 15 Yet we must take into account what Simondon
explicitly says in his critique of Spinoza. I believe that Simondon reads Spinoza in the
light of the Hegelian interpretation.16 Simondon’s main thesis about Spinoza can be
summarized in 4 points: there is 1) an infinite expansion of the unicity of substance to the
whole cosmos; 2) a radical monism of substance which implies the negation of the
individual reality; 3) as a consequence the impossibility of Being to become something;
4) finally, a similarity between the monad of Leibniz and the substance of Spinoza in the
impossibility of conceiving “becoming:”
We therefore should think of the theory of individuation as a theory of phases of
Being, of how Being becomes; this becoming is what is essential. In fact,
thinking about the notion of Substance, we see that becoming corresponds badly
with the essence of Being; the notion of accident is not satisfying and it forces
philosophers to build systematic but fragile edifices, like Leibniz’s, that do not
take into account becoming as becoming, because, once accidents are seen to be
comprised in essence--conceived as a complete individual notion-- there is no
actual becoming, nor any potential future, for the monadic substance. Regarding
becoming, things are not better in the Spinozist system: here, becoming rather
15
See E. Balibar, From Individuality to Transindividuality, cit., and M. Combes, Simondon : Individu et
collectivite. Pour une philosophie du transindividuel, Presses Universitaires de France, Paris 1999.
16
Doctrine of Essence, Science of Logic, Gesammelte Werke, Felix Meiner 1992 pp. 376-379
than being integrated, is negated (just as the individual himself is negated as a
separate being) [author’s translation].17
This was exactly Hegel’s critique of Spinoza in Science of Logic, which
Simondon follows in an extremely naïve and limited way.18 To which he adds further
proof of his complete incomprehension of the liberty/necessity relationship in Spinoza,
by saying that in every pantheism (and here he clearly refers to Spinoza) the only liberty
See Simondon, L’individuation psychique et collective, cit., PUF, Paris 1964, p. 223. For Leibniz, see
Discourse on Metaphysics, edited and translated by Daniel Garber and Roger Ariew, Hackett Publishing
Company, Indianapolis & Cambridge 1991, XIII, pp. 12-14: «it is true that we are maintaining that
everything that must happen to a person is already contained virtually in his nature or notion, just as the
properties of a circle are contained in its definition. […] Let us make an example. Since Julius Caesar will
become perpetual dictator and master of the republic and will overthrow the freedom of the Romans, this
action is contained in his notion, for we assume that it is the nature of such a perfect notion of a subject to
contain everything, so that the predicate is included in the subject, ut possit inesse subjecto. […] it will be
found that the demonstration of this predicate of Caesar is not as absolute as those of numbers or of
geometry, but that it supposes the sequence of things that God has freely chosen, a sequence based on
God’s first free decree always to do what is most perfect and on God’s first free decree always to do what is
most perfect and on God’s decree with respect to human nature, following out of the first decree, that man
will always do (although freely) that which appears to be the best».
18
See Hegel’s Science of Logic, translated by W.H. Johnston and L.G. Struthers, George Allen & Unwin,
London, The Macmillan Company, New York 1951, vol. II, Book II, Section III,1, «Observation:
Philosophy of Spinoza and of Leibniz»: for (1), p. 170: «In a similar manner in the Oriental idea of
emanation the Absolute is self-illuminating light. But it does not only illumine itself: it also emanates. Its
emanations are distances from its unclouded purity; and the subsequent products are less perfect thatn the
preceding ones out of which it arises. Emanation is taken only as a happening, and becoming only as a
progressive loss. Thus Being increasingly obscures itself, and night, the negative, is the last term of the line
and does not return to the primal light»; for (2): «The Substance of this system is One Substance, one
inseparable totality; there is no determinateness which is not contained and dissolved in this Absolute; and
it is of sufficient importance that everything which to natural imagination or determining understanding
appears, distinctly or vaguely, as independent, is wholly reduced in this necessary concept to a mere
positedness» For (3), p. 169: «But in this Absolute, which is only unmoved identity, both Attribute and
Mode exist only as vanishing and not as becoming, so that this vanishing too now takes its positive
beginning only from without», and p. 179: «Hence the necessity of the progress of the Absolute to
unessentiality is lacking, as well as its dissolution in and for itself into identity; or, the becoming both of
identity and of its determinations is wanting»; for (4), p. 170: «The lack of intro-Reflection which is
common to Spinoza’s exposition of the Absolute and to the theory of emanation is made good in the
concept of the monad in Leibniz. – The onesidedness of one philosophic principle is generally faced by its
opposite one-sidedness, and, as everywhere, totality at least is found as a sundered completeness. – The
Monad is only One, an intro-reflective negative; it is the totality of the content of the world; in it the
various manifold has not only vanished, but is in a negative manner stowed away».
17
we can have is the one of the stoic dog, “freely” following the chariot to which it is
attached.19
*
Now in the last part, I would like to show not only the peculiar way in which
Deleuze uses Simondon but also some of the interesting things we can find in Simondon,
even beyond Simondon himself.20 There is a beautiful image in Deleuze of the theatre of
representation as opposed to the theatre of multiplicities, which destroys identity, both
that of the spectator and that of the author. There is no final recognition nor production of
knowledge, rather, we are left with problems and continually open questions.21 In the
same way, I would like to propose a series of problems, for which some of Simondon’s
intuitions might prove to be useful.
We have already seen, for example, how Simondon completely avoids the debate
on the status and reality of the atom in classic atomism. Paradoxically, it is his silence or
naïve conclusions that suggest how important is to push Epicurus and Lucretius to their
own limits in order to build an ontology of relations and becoming. Ancient atomists,
according to Simondon, look for the principle of individuation within its result and not
within the operation of individuation itself, which is another way to say that despite the
purpose, there still is a final cause – Being itself – in the atomist’s world. Standing at the
19
On the classical topos of the Stoic dog, see S. Bobzien, Determinism and Freedom in Stoic Philosophy,
Oxford University Press, Oxford 1998, and Tad Brennan, «Fate and free will in Stoicism», Oxford Studies
in Ancient Philosophy 21 (2001), pp. 259-286.
20
See once again Toscano, The Theater of Production, cit., p. 156, who introduces his chapter on the
individuation in Deleuze by arguing that «Separating out a certain strand or tendency within [Simondon’s]
work is part of a wider attempt to consider the relational variants of the ontology of anomalous
individuation. […] we can distinguish a cosmogonic model of preindividuality – thinking the apeiron that
both precedes and subtends the partition of the world into items and regions – and a relational/differential
model of individuation, which combines the recursive temporality of habit with the ‘problematic’ character
of an intensive difference, such that individuation is considered as an invention». See also p. 142: «At the
antipodes of [Simondon’s] ethos of inclusion is the appropriation of [his] ontology of individuation enacted
by Deleuze».
21
Deleuze, Difference and Repetition, cit., p. 192.
crux of different possible interpretations, it is our task – following the problems pointed
out by Simondon – to think about the atom not as something pre-existing the relation
itself, but something “constituted by” and “constituting the” relation at the same time.
This is exactly what Deleuze does in Difference and Repetition. The ancient
atoms – he says, without quoting Simondon – are still too independent one from the
other. And their relations still seem to “happen within” a space and a time. A further
effort is required by the interpretation of cryptic texts such as the Lucretian In uno
tempore tempora multa latent (many different times hidden within one single time).22
The clinamen, Deleuze suggests, is not the movement of an atom toward another atom;
rather it is the reciprocal determination that makes both the encounter and the atoms
themselves exist. Moreover, multiplicity does not depend on the concept of unity and its
multiplication. We could say that the multiple is one and the one is multiple, but it
doesn’t work. The true substantive, the substance itself—Deleuze suggests—is the
multiplicity. In this sense, “difference” takes the place of the old dialectic between the
one and the multiple. There is a horizontal plurality of beings, meaning that in every
single space and time, every being contains and in fact implies a multiplicity of different
beings.23 So we see here the typical Deleuzian “underground” use of Simondon.
Another example is what I would call a conflictual ontology, which can be found
in authors like Machiavelli and Spinoza,24 and, it turns out, in Simondon and Deleuze. As
soon as multiplicity and relation take center stage, the idea of “conflict” becomes central.
This happens, for example, in the definition of perception and knowledge. Knowing, for
22
Lucretius, De rerum natura, IV, 795.
See V. Morfino, Il tempo della moltitudine, Manifestolibri, Roma 2005.
24
See F. Del Lucchese, Tumulti e Indignatio. Conflitto, diritto e moltitudine in Machiavelli e Spinoza,
Ghibli, Milano 2004.
23
Simondon, is not understanding something, not grasping or catching a meaning or a form
that already exists outside. Once again both the world and the individual only exist in
mutual relation, and knowing – says Simondon in a beautiful image – is nothing more
and nothing less than “placing oneself across (se mettre en travers),” so that knowledge
becomes a form of resistance to the flux of being: “without this active gesture of the
subject within this complex relational system, no perception would ever be possible.”25
The same problem appears in Deleuze’s fascinating argument concerning the
simulacrum and the copy in the section called “difference in itself.” There is a danger,
Deleuze says, in invoking pure differences, set free from negative and identity, the danger
of falling into a representation of pure soul, meaning the “representable, reconciliable
and federative differences,” that are distant from the “bloody contradictions” of history.26
Yet – and I find here the attitude suggested by Simondon – there is a process through
which problems arrive at their level of affirmation and positivity. When this happens,
knowledge is no longer the grasp of appearences, but rather the selection and positioning
of problems. These problems
release a power of aggression and selection which destroys the beautiful soul by depriving it of its
very identity and breaking its good will. The problematic and the differential determine struggles
or destructions in relation to which those of the negative are only appearences, and the wishes of
the beautiful soul are so many mistifications trapped in appearances. The simulacrum is not just a
G. Simondon, L’individuation psychique et collective, cit., p. 91.
Deleuze, Difference and Repetition, cit., p. 52. And he continues: «The beautiful soul behaves like a
justice of the peace thrown on to a field of battle, one who sees in the inexpiable struggles only simple
‘differends’ or perhaps misunderstandings». Echoes of this problematic are to be found in J. Rancière, La
Mésentente. Politique et Philosophie, Galilée, Paris 1995, en. trans. Disagreements : Politics and
Philosophy, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis 1998.
25
26
copy, but that which overturns all copies by also overturning the models: every thought becomes
an aggression.27
A last example is what Simondon calls the “epistemological postulate” of his own
work, which is that “the relations between two relations is itself a relation.” Scholars have
correctly pointed out the oddity of this formulation, which seems to be at least selfevident, if not repetition. But this postulate means in fact that the reality of knowledge is
the same as the reality of Being itself, which once again is nothing more than a relation.
Knowledge exists only on the very same level of the beings to which it is able to relate. It
doesn’t open the door to a different (and transcendent) level vis a vis the objects known.28
Muriel Combes suggests that this is something close to a subversion of the
Hegelian formula concerning reality and rationality. In some sense, it is as if Simondon
was saying that “whatever is relational is real, whatever is real is relational.” Not only
does the relation finally belong to Being, but in some sense it constitutes Being. This
abusive appropriation of Hegel’s formula is fascinating. Yet, once again, following
Deleuze, it suggests that we might go much beyond Simondon’s formulation. Hegel’s
aphorism in fact suggests a transcendence and a primacy of rational over reality: “Was
vernünftig ist, das ist wirklich” comes first rather than the other way around. If we read
Simondon in this way, we come once again to an idea of ontological “primacy,” which I
suggest is the concept we need to challenge if we want to move beyond classical
ontology, toward a new ontology of relation and “becoming.”
27
Deleuze, Difference and Repetition, cit.,. p. XX.
Something which Spinoza had already suggested, by saying that the higher mode of knowledge is the
knowledge of singularity. See Ethics II,40 scholium 2
28
Let us consider again Deleuze on the simulacrum. He virtually rewrites the
postulate of Simondon with the same structure, by saying that the simulacrum is the
system in which different relates to different through difference itself.29 Once again it
seems an unnecessary repetition. And yet, once again, this postulate has a precise
meaning: not only a challenge to a particular model and an attack against a particular
paradigm, but a challenge to and an attack against every model, against the concept of
model itself. By way of the simulacrum—Deleuze says—“anarchies are substituted for
the hierarchies of representation, nomadic distributions for the sedentary distributions of
representation.”30
The simulacrum reflects some of the elements of Simondon’s relational being, but
in fact goes beyond its boundaries. I think that at the same time it is possible and
necessary to go beyond the idea of “primacy” itself, even beyond the primacy of relation.
This is the monstrous character of Deleuzian philosophy, and in my view he finds traces
of this monstrosity first and foremost in Spinoza’s ontology: “this ontological measure” –
he writes introducing the substance/mode relation in Spinoza—“is closer to the
immeasurable state of things than to the first kind of measure; this ontological hierarchy
is closer to the hubris and anarchy of beings than to the first hierarchy.” 31 It is the
monster of all demons.
29
Deleuze, Difference and Repetition, cit., p. 277.
Ibid., pp. 277-278.
31
Ibid., p. 37. And also ivi: «The words ‘everything is equal’ may therefore resound joyfully, on condition
that they are said of that which is not equal in this equal, univocal Being: equal being is immediately
present in everything, without mediation or intermediary, even though things reside unequally in this equal
being. There, however, where they are borne by hubris, all things are in absoltue proximity, and whether
they are large or small, inferior or superior, none of them participates more or less in being, nor receives it
by analogy. Univocity of being thus also signifies equality of being. Univocal Being is at one and the same
time nomadic distribution and crowned anarchy».
30