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

2 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».

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

ontological primacy over any other possible element, and what has been lost is first, the

4 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.

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

get much beyond it. He thinks this process is a discontinuous path of Being toward

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.

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 pre-

individual, 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

everything that is. What is, what has been, and what will be rise from the generative

6 J. Salem, L’atomisme antique : Démocrite, Epicure et Lucrèce, Hachette, Paris 1997. 7 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.

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 neo-

Platonic 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 pre-

Socratics 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 pre-Socratics

—that Being comes both from Being and from non-Being. This is possible because Being

can be understood in two different ways, as power and as act. Being in act comes from

8 Simplicius, On Aristotle’s Physics, 1121, 5-9.

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 2005.10 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.

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

17 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».

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, 795.23 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.

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

25 G. Simondon, L’individuation psychique et collective, cit., p. 91.26 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.

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 self-

evident, 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.28 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

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. 277.30 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».