Organism-

Oriented
Ontology

Audronė Žukauskaitė
Organism-­O riented Ontology
Organism-­Oriented Ontology

Audronė Žukauskaitė
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 Contents

Acknowledgements vii

Introduction: Towards an Organism-­Oriented Ontology 1

The Thinking of the Organic 2
Autopoietic Systems 6
Organism-Oriented Ontology 11
Outline of Chapters 14

1 Gilbert Simondon: From Ontology to Ontogenesis 19

Physical Individuation: Transduction 20
Biological Individuation: The Membrane 26
Psychical Individuation: The Transindividual 31
Conclusion 37

2 Raymond Ruyer: Organic Consciousness 38

Morphogenesis: Between Preformationism and Finalism 39
Equipotentiality 44
Types of Forms, Types of Consciousnesses 47
Self-Survey without a Self 50
Conclusion 55

3 Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari’s Philosophy of Life 57

Individuation as Differentiation 58
The Deconstruction of an Organism 64
The Brain: Between the Mental and the Cerebral 71
Conclusion 75

4 Catherine Malabou: Plasticity of Reason 77

Plasticity and Potentiality 77
Damasio: From the Neuronal to the Mental 82
Malabou: Between the Neuronal and the Mental 85
Epigenesis and Reason 90
Conclusion 95
vi contents

5 General Organology: Between Organism and Machine 96

Simondon on Technical Objects 97
Stiegler’s General Organology 102
Hui’s Cosmotechnics 108
Conclusion 113

6 Planetary Organism 115

The Gaia Hypothesis 116
Gaia and the Theory of Autopoiesis 119
Gaia and Actor-Network Theory 123
Gaia and the Theory of Sympoiesis 128
Conclusion 132

7 Hybrid Organism 134

Sympoiesis as ‘Making-With’ 134
Immunity and Contagion 139
Hybrids and Chimeras 145
Conclusion 151

Conclusion: Organism-­Oriented Ontology 152

Bibliography 158
Index 169
 Acknowledgements

The title ‘Organism-­Oriented Ontology’ was first presented in my talk on

the Anthropocene that I presented at the conference in the Lithuanian
Culture Research Institute, and it felt as though it opened some important
perspectives into contemporary philosophy. I presumed that the notion
of organism connects the most interesting theoretical works, such as
newly translated and reinterpreted philosophies of Gilbert Simondon and
Raymond Ruyer, together with the most intriguing aspects of Gilles Deleuze
and Félix Guattari, and also relates to the contemporary philosophy of
Catherine Malabou, Bernard Stiegler, Bruno Latour and Donna J. Haraway.
This book is the result of a research project ‘Posthumanist Theory:
Objects, Problems, and Methodologies’, which took place from 2017–20.
The project received funding from the Research Council of Lithuania
(agreement no. S–MIP–17–32). The book also includes modified excerpts
from previously published articles, which have been significantly rewritten.
Some aspects of Simondonian philosophy were discussed in ‘G. Simondon’s
Theory of Ontogenesis: Between Organism and Technical Object’, pub-
lished in Lithuanian in Problemos, 94, 2018, pp. 22–34; Simondon’s and
Ruyer’s influence on Deleuze was elaborated in ‘Multiplicity as a Life:
Deleuze, Simondon, Ruyer’, in Deleuze, Guattari and the Art of Multiplicities,
ed. Radek Przedpełski and S. E. Wilmer, Edinburgh University Press, 2020,
pp. 35–49; the connection between Ruyer and Deleuze was elaborated in
‘Interspecies Sonification: Deleuze, Ruyer, and Bioart’, in Aberrant Nuptials:
Deleuze and Artistic Research 2, ed. Paulo de Assis and Paolo Giudici, Leuven
University Press, 2019, pp. 421–8; and the connection between Ruyer and
Malabou was discussed in ‘Other Minds: Ruyer, Damasio, and Malabou’, in
Shared Habitats: A Cultural Inquiry into Living Spaces and Their Inhabitants, ed.
Ursula Damm and Mindaugas Gapševičius, Transcript, 2021, pp. 271–92.
The notion of organology was examined in ‘General Organology: Between
Organism and Machine’, published in Lithuanian in Athena: Philosophical
Studies, 16, 2021, pp. 52–68, and in ‘Planetary Assemblages: From Organic to
Inorganic and Beyond’, in Machinic Assemblages of Desire: Deleuze and Artistic
Research 3, ed. Paulo de Assis and Paolo Giudici, Leuven University Press,
viii acknowledgements

2021, pp. 297–308. The notion of Gaia was introduced in ‘Gaia Theory:
Between Autopoiesis and Sympoiesis’, in Problemos, 98, 2020, pp. 141–53.
Different aspects of immunity were discussed in ‘The Notion of Immunity
in the Philosophies of Jacques Derrida and Roberto Esposito’, published in
Lithuanian in Athena: Philosophical Studies, 13, 2018, pp. 81–95, and some
aspects of hybridisation in ‘Hybrids, Chimeras, Aberrant Nuptials: New
Modes of Cohabitation in Bioart’, in Nordic Theatre Studies, 31.1, 2019,
pp. 22–37. The notion of immunity was also examined in ‘Sympoiesis,
Autopoiesis, and Immunity: How to Coexist with Nonhuman Others?’,
in Text Matters, 12, 2022, pp. 380–96. Different ideas in this book were
presented at many conferences in Lithuania and abroad. I want to thank
the first readers of the manuscript, Naglis Kardelis, Kristupas Sabolius and
S. E. Wilmer, and also the anonymous reviewers.
 Introduction:
Towards an Organism-­O riented Ontology

My previous research on biopolitics posed for me an unresolvable theo-

retical question: does biopolitical power ever reach its end and is it at all
possible to resist biopolitical power? Is biopolitics such an assemblage of
micropowers that it incorporates every attempt to resist it? Michel Foucault
and Gilles Deleuze provide an answer that doesn’t seem very elucidating
or obvious: it is life itself that can resist biopower. As Deleuze points out,
quoting Foucault, ‘when power in this way takes life as its aim or object,
then resistance to power already puts itself on the side of life, and turns life
against power: “life as a political object was in a sense taken at face value and
turned back against the system that was bent on controlling it”’ (Deleuze
2006a: 76). When power starts to interfere with different domains of life, not
only manipulating the human species but also re-­engineering all other spe-
cies and environments, it is the potentiality of life that allows one to resist it.

When power becomes bio-­power, resistance becomes the power of life, a

vital power that cannot be confined within species, environment or the
paths of a particular diagram. Is not the force that comes from outside
a certain idea of Life, a certain vitalism, in which Foucault’s thought
culminates? Is not life this capacity to resist force? (Deleuze 2006a: 77)

More recently, Catherine Malabou makes similar claims by pointing out

that ‘a resistance to what is known today as b ­ iopower – ­the control, reg-
ulation, exploitation, and instrumentalization of the living ­being – ­might
emerge from possibilities written into the structure of the living being itself’
(Malabou 2016b: 429). She suggests that there might be biological resistance
to the biopolitical which is revealed in new developments in biology and
medicine such as epigenetics, cloning or regeneration. All these develop-
ments propose new transformations, such as reprogramming, replicating
or regenerating the body through a combination of external factors and its
own genetic material. These transformations imply that a body is transpos-
able, changing and full of potentialities, hence it might evade the grasp of
power. As Malabou observes,
2 Organism-­Oriented Ontology

The articulation of political discourse on bodies is always partial, for it

cannot absorb everything that the structure of the living being is able
to burst open by showing the possibilities of a reversal in the order of
generations, a complexification in the notion of heritage, a calling into
question of filiation . . . (Malabou 2016b: 438)

It is the capacity of living beings to self-­organise, self-­generate and change

that might help them to evade the control of biopower. This makes me
ponder whether the biopolitical paradigm can be opposed by the organic,
and whether one could conceptualise the plastic and transformative proper-
ties of living beings as enabling them to evade biopolitical power.

The Thinking of the Organic

This thinking about the living being is not something absolutely new in
the history of philosophy. As Yuk Hui points out, since Immanuel Kant’s
Critique of the Power of Judgement (1790), the concept of the organic has
been a new condition for philosophising (Hui 2019: 2). Thinking about
the organic arose as a reaction to the mechanism of that time, and devel-
oped in different directions, such as vitalism, organicism, systems theory,
cybernetics, the theory of autopoiesis, organology and the Gaia hypothesis.
What connects all these theories into one current of thought is the idea
that the organic being is not reducible to a mechanical model of linear
causality. Instead, it follows its immanent causality, which is not linear but
recursive. This means that the organic being constantly refers to itself and
evaluates itself in order to maintain and prolong its being. Thus, the organic
being expresses a special kind of organisation, which is determined by its
immanent causality, and functions by not simply referring to itself but by
constantly changing and integrating contingency into its functioning.
In Critique of the Power of Judgement, Kant discusses teleological judgements
and, in this context, defines organisms as ‘natural purposes’ or ‘natural
ends’. In §§64–5 of the ‘Analytic of Teleological Judgement’ Kant argues
that an organism is a natural purpose because it is ‘cause and effect of itself’
(Kant 2000: 243, 5:371). Kant gives the example of a tree, which can be
considered as a natural purpose in three respects. First, the tree generates
another tree according to a natural law, but the tree it produces is of the
same species. Thus, it ‘generates itself as far as the species is concerned’, so
it continually preserves itself as a species. Second, the tree also generates
itself as an individual by taking matter from the outside and converting it
into a substance of which it is made. This is nothing other than generation
(Kant 2000: 243, 5:371). Third, one part of the tree generates itself in such
a way that the preservation of one part is reciprocally dependent on the
preservation of another part: one part helps to preserve another part and
the whole (Kant 2000: 244, 5:372). In §65 Kant specifies the condition for
something to be a natural purpose. ‘Now for a thing as a natural end it is
 Introduction 3

requisite, first, that its parts [. . .] are possible only through their relation to
the whole’ (Kant 2000: 244–5, 5:373) – this condition is valid not only for
organisms but also for artefacts, such as a watch, in which each part serves
the whole. ‘Then, it is required, second, that its parts be combined into a
whole by being reciprocally the cause and effect of their form’ (Kant 2000:
245, 5:373). This condition is met only by living beings but not by artefacts,
because a watch cannot replace its parts or repair itself on its own. By con-
trast, ‘An organized being is thus not a mere machine, for that has only a
motive power, while the organized being possesses in itself a formative power’
(Kant 2000: 246, 5:374). This formative power propagates itself in matter
and organises itself. Thus, organisms are both organised and self-­organising.
What is important to point out here is that Kant’s understanding of
organisms as self-­organising beings is based on an analogy with reason’s
own existence as both the cause and effect of itself. As Jennifer Mensch
argues, ‘ascribing purposiveness to an organism was something that was
done in the service of reason’s own investigations and that purposiveness
was ultimately an idea generated by reason for the sake of itself’ (Mensch
2013: 143–4). Kant regards natural organic processes as analogous to reason’s
intentional purposeful activity. Is this interest in the organic just a digres-
sion, or is it a turn towards thinking about the organic? Mensch argues that
‘Kant found epigenesis to be attractive for thinking about reason because it
opened up possibilities for thinking about reason as an organic system, as
something that was self-­developing and operating according to an organic
logic’ (Mensch 2013: 144). Kant’s interest in the theory of epigenesis is also
at the centre of Catherine Malabou’s work, where she discusses Kant’s
attempt to reconcile the biological and the transcendental. As Malabou
points out, ‘The meaning of the epigenesis of and in critical philosophy
derives from the long rational maturation of the relation between the tran-
scendental and that which appears to do without it, to resist it: the living
organism, which self-­forms and has no need for categories’ (Malabou 2016a:
161). Thus, the self-­organising power of living beings is revealed here as
capable of resisting biopower.
Kant’s fascination with living organisms encourages thinking about the
organic, which is later adopted by different philosophers and biologists. As
Hui points out, ‘Kant’s Critique of Judgement sets up [. . .] the organic condi-
tion of philosophizing. This means that philosophy, insofar as it wants to
exist at all, has to become organic’ (Hui 2021: 51). This new condition of
philosophising can be traced back to the debates between mechanism and
vitalism: mechanism explains living beings according to the laws of physics
and chemistry, whereas vitalists argue that to understand living beings we
have to presume the existence of some non-­physical, vital force, such as
Henri Bergson’s élan vital or Hans Driesch’s entelechy. In The Science and
Philosophy of the Organism (1908), Driesch distinguishes between aggregates
and organisms: aggregates appear as the result of external forces, whereas
organisms are driven by entelechy, meaning that they have their end or goal
4 Organism-­Oriented Ontology

in themselves, and express an unexpected capacity to rearrange themselves

at certain moments in life. Although the idea of entelechy was often explained
as a causal factor that enables the process of biological organisation without
being part of this organisation, that is, as being transcendent to the living
being, in fact Driesch asserts the autonomy of life in the sense that life has
the faculty of giving laws to itself. Driesch discovered that organisms have
the faculty for the rearrangement of their material, and, in this sense, his
notion of (neo)vitalism can be seen as a precursor to organicism and systems
theory.
Organicism, which appears as a special trend in the philosophy of biology
in the twentieth century, is associated with authors such as Ludwig von
Bertalanffy, Joseph Needham, Joseph Woodger and Conrad Waddington.
Organicism can be seen as an attempt to solve a contradiction between
mechanism and vitalism: organicists argued that biological entities can be
explained in terms of organisation, which has a hierarchical order and
which can be seen as being autonomous. ‘Von Bertalanffy [. . .] saw organi-
cism within biology as having three major components: an appreciation of
wholeness through regulation, the notion that each whole was a dynamic,
changing, assemblage of interacting parts, and the idea that there were
laws appropriate for each level of organization (from atoms to ecosystems)’
(Gilbert and Sarkar 2000: 3). Organicists thought that the dispute between
mechanism and vitalism could be resolved by acknowledging that every
level of organisation has appropriate laws that cannot be reduced to the
organisation of lower or higher levels.
Organicism is closely related to systems theory, where a system is under-
stood as an advanced form of organisation. As Hui points out,

Organicism is fundamental to thinking of an open system, which is dif-

ferent from a closed system for the reason that the former exchanges
information with its environment, which defers its destruction according
to the second law of thermodynamics. Systems theory investigates a form
of organization of which organicism is an advanced form. If classical
physics produces a theory of unorganized complexity, systems theory
concerns ‘organized complexity’ . . . (Hui 2019: 74)

In General Systems Theory (1968), von Bertalanffy suggested that an organism

is an open system because it needs a continual flux of matter and energy
from the environment, which keeps it in a steady state. Thus, an organism
is a system that is far from equilibrium. Therefore, it cannot be described
by classical thermodynamics, which deals with closed systems at or near
equilibrium. Bertalanffy also suggested another property of an open ­system
– ­that of self-­regulation. This idea was supported by Ilya Prigogine thirty
years later when he formulated the thermodynamics of open systems in
terms of ‘dissipative structures’ (Capra 1997: 49). The basic characteristics
of ­systems – o
­ penness and self-­regulation – ­led to the idea that these general
 Introduction 5

principles might be applied to systems of a different nature (organisms and

their parts, social systems and ecosystems).
At the same time, when Bertalanffy was trying to define general sys-
tems, Norbert Wiener was creating a theory of self-­regulating machines, for
which he invented the term ‘cybernetics’. In his Cybernetics: or Control and
Communication in the Animal and the Machine (1948), Wiener was also trying
to overcome the opposition between mechanism and vitalism. He argued
that ‘The living organism is above all a heat engine, burning glucose or gly-
cogen or starch, fats, and proteins into carbon dioxide, water, urea. It is the
metabolic balance which is the centre of attention’ (Wiener 1985: 41). In this
respect, there is no clear division between a living organism and a machine:

and hence there is no reason in Bergson’s considerations why the essen-

tial mode of functioning of the living organism should not be the same as
that of the automaton of this type [. . .] In fact, the whole mechanist–vital-
ist controversy has been relegated to the limbo of badly posed questions.
(Wiener 1985: 44)

There is no difference between an organism and a machine because machines

are able to simulate the functioning of organisms. However, cybernetic
machines are very different from machines described by Descartes. The nec-
essary element of cybernetic machines is ­feedback – ­a circular arrangement
of causally connected elements so that each element has an effect on the
next until the last ‘feeds back’ (Capra 1997: 56). Wiener acknowledged that
feedback is an important concept to define not only cybernetic machines
but also living organisms, which use feedback loops to maintain their home-
ostasis and balance. In this respect, the notion of feedback leads to another
­idea – t­ hat of self-­organisation.
However, even if the phenomenon of self-­organisation emerged in cyber-
netics, it was smoothly extended to living systems. In the 1970s and 1980s the
phenomenon of self-­organisation was elaborated by very different thinkers
and researchers: Ilya Prigogine in Belgium, James Lovelock in Britain, Lynn
Margulis in the United States, Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela in
Chile (Capra 1997: 85). Systems theory presented a more elaborated model
of self-­organisation which can be compared with that emerging from cyber-
netics in three respects. First, in contrast to self-­organisation in cybernetics,
a more elaborated model includes the creation of new structures and new
modes of behaviour in the self-­organising process. Second, self-­organising
models are open systems operating far from equilibrium, exposed to the flux
of matter and energy. Third, in self-­organising systems the components are
interconnected in non-­linear ways (Capra 1997: 85). What is important here
is that self-­organising systems have the capacity to create new structures and
new modes of behaviour and integrate them into their internal order.
6 Organism-­Oriented Ontology

Autopoietic Systems
The notion of self-­ organisation is creatively elaborated in Humberto
Maturana and Francisco Varela’s theory of autopoiesis, which can be taken
as a starting point to discuss different theories of biological organisation.
The theory of autopoiesis examines living systems both as organisationally
closed and structurally open at the same time. Maturana and Varela pro-
posed the term ‘autopoiesis’ in the 1970s. Auto means ‘self’ and refers to the
self-­organisation of living systems, and poiesis means ‘making’ (and comes
from the same root as the word ‘poetry’). Thus, autopoiesis means ‘self-­
making’, or the self-­organising capacity of a living being. A simple example
of an autopoietic system is a unicellular organism which is capable of main-
taining and recreating its organisation despite multiple chemical reactions
taking place in it. Thus, the main characteristic of an autopoietic system is
its self-­organisation, self-­maintenance, and its constant self-­reproduction
within a boundary. Not every self-­organising structure is autopoietic; only
those organisations that are self-­making, i.e. autopoietic, are considered to
be alive. The idea of self-­making and self-­organising implies that a living
system is organisationally closed, that its order is imposed not by external
forces but by the system itself. However, a living being cannot survive with-
out energy and nutrients and for this reason it is connected to the environ-
ment. The environment triggers an autopoietic system and engenders some
changes within its structure. Therefore, it is said that every living system
interacts with the environment through ‘structural coupling’. However,
even after undergoing some structural changes, the model of organisation
of the system does not change. This is why autopoietic entities are said to be
closed on the level of organisation but open at the level of structure.
Thus, Maturana and Varela define autopoietic systems as organisa-
tionally closed and structurally open at the same time. Such a definition
might sound like a contradiction because closure and openness towards
the environment move in different directions. However, what is important
to understand here is that a living system needs the environment so as to
obtain energy and nutrients to maintain itself and to keep its identity. As
Evan Thompson points out,

The self-­transcending movement of life is none other than metabolism,

and metabolism is none other than the biochemical instantiation of the
autopoietic organization. That organization must remain ­ invariant –
­otherwise the organism d ­ ies – ­but the only way autopoiesis can stay
in place is through the incessant material flux of metabolism. In other
words, the operational closure of autopoiesis demands that the organism
be an open system. (Thompson 2009: 85)

In other words, to stay alive a system has to communicate with the environ-
ment and change, because a total closure would mean death. In this context
 Introduction 7

it is important to understand the difference between ‘organisation’ and

‘structure’: ‘organisation’ means the relations between the components of
a system that allow it to be a member of a specific class (e.g. a bacterium, an
animal or a human brain). All living beings of the same class have a similar
organisation. The term ‘structure’ means the actual relationships between
physical components: a given organisation can be embodied in different
physical structures (Maturana and Varela 1998: 47). In other words, living
beings differ from each other in their structure, but members of the same
class are alike in their organisation.
It is important to note that even if an autopoietic system is triggered
by the environment, its organisation remains constant. In this sense, an
autopoietic system differs from an allopoietic system, or a machine, which is
dependent on external inputs and outputs. An autopoietic system ‘makes’
itself, and the changes within this system appear as emerging properties, in
other words, properties that are not present in the parts but emerge from the
interaction of these parts. Thus, in contrast to a mechanism, which defines
a living being as the sum of its parts, and vitalism, which presumes that a
living being is guided by some transcendent principle, the autopoietic entity
is guided by its immanent cause. By referring to themselves and constantly
restructuring themselves, living beings are driven by recurrent causality,
or recursivity, which incorporates contingency into its functioning. In this
sense, a living being does not have a final cause or teleology because it is open
to change and contingency. In Autopoiesis and Cognition (1980), Maturana
and Varela argue that teleology does not belong to autopoietic organisa-
tion: ‘Living systems, as physical autopoietic machines, are purposeless
systems’ (Maturana and Varela 1980: 86). In later years, Varela explained
that organisms do not require a transcendental cause in the Kantian sense
and that organisms have their intrinsic teleology (Thompson 2009: 93, n.
52). His later revision of this theory was that organisms do not have a
teleology but a sense-­making, which emerges from an organism’s coupling
to an environment. In this regard we can argue that a living being is driven
not by external causes (inputs and outputs as in the case of allopoietic
systems), or by a transcendent cause (a teleology of universal reason), but by
its immanent causality.
In this respect, a living system may be differentiated from a non-­living
system. If a non-­living system, such as a cloud or a rock, is affected from the
outside, it will react according to a linear model of cause and effect, whereas
if a living system is affected from the outside it will react (or respond)
through recurrent interaction within the system. The idea that a living
being responds to the environment and can even affect it in a certain way
led to the conclusion that a living being is interrelated to its environment
through a ‘structural coupling’. This insight challenges Darwin’s idea of
adaptation because the organism is not simply adapting to the environment
but is also actively manipulating it. The idea that living beings can manip-
ulate and change their environment allows Maturana and Varela to argue
8 Organism-­Oriented Ontology

that self-­organising activity, expressed at different levels of life, is a mental

activity. ‘Living systems are cognitive systems, and living as a process is a process
of cognition. This statement is valid for all organisms, with and without
a nervous system’ (Maturana and Varela 1980: 13, emphasis in original).
Living systems are cognitive systems in the sense that they change their
environment. For example, photosynthetic organisms create an oxygen-­rich
environment. Likewise, spiders and beavers, not to mention humans, create
their own environments. All living beings interact with their environment
in a cognitive way and create preferable conditions for their own being.
This statement is valid for organisms at different levels of complexity: for
example, a cell interacts with its environment by incorporating substances
and making some internal changes; a nervous system interacts with its envi-
ronment through perception, and every sensory perception initiates internal
changes within it. Thus, an autopoietic system relates with the environment
structurally; in other words, it relates through recurrent interactions that
cause changes within the system (Capra and Luisi 2014: 135). This explains
the difference between living and non-­living systems: a non-­living system
will react to an external disturbance according to a linear logic of cause and
effect, whereas a living system will respond according to recurrent causality
which will engender changes within the system. Every change within the
system influences the system’s future behaviour. Therefore, Maturana and
Varela assert that the interaction between a living system and the environ-
ment is structurally determined.
However, this does not imply that a living system is determined from the
outside; rather, it is determined by its internal changes. The environment
triggers some changes within the autopoietic system, but the system itself
introduces changes into the environment. Thus, the living system and the
environment are co-­evolving and co-­emerging. ‘The emphasis and overall
concern here is not to define cognition in terms of an input from the exter-
nal world acting on the perceiver, but rather to explain cognition and per-
ception in terms of the internal structure of the organism’ (Capra and Luisi
2014: 141). According to Maturana and Varela, all interactions between
the living being and the environment can be described as mental activity:
‘The interactions of a living o ­ rganism – ­plant, animal, or h­ uman – ­with its
environment are cognitive interactions. Thus life and cognition are insepa-
rably connected. ­Mind – ­or, more accurately, mental a­ ctivity – ­is immanent
in matter at all levels of life’ (Capra and Luisi 2014: 254; Capra 1997: 168).
The statement that living systems are cognitive systems radically changes
our understanding of cognition and consciousness. Hence, the notion of
cognition is applied not only to humans and animals with nervous systems
and brains, but is expanded to all living beings. According to this theory,

the brain is not necessary for mind to exist. A bacterium, or a plant,

has no brain but has a mind. The simplest organisms are capable of
perception and thus of cognition. They do not see, but they nevertheless
 Introduction 9

perceive changes in their e­ nvironment – ­differences between light and

shadow, hot and cold, higher and lower concentrations of some chemi-
cals, etc. (Capra 1997: 170)

Thus, cognition involves not only thinking, but also perception, emotion,
self-­awareness and ‘feeling of what happens’. Cognition and mental activity
are associated not only with self-­reflecting subjectivity but with diverse pro-
cesses of life taking place in living beings.
The idea that living systems are cognitive systems not only extends the
notion of cognition to all processes of life but also changes our understand-
ing of what human cognition is. If cognition is embodied in all processes
of life, this implies that the brain is not the only organ through which
cognition is expressed.

The entire dissipative structure of the organism participates in the pro-

cess of cognition, whether or not the organism has a brain and a higher
nervous system. Moreover, recent research indicates strongly that in
the human organism the nervous system, the immune system, and the
endocrine system, which traditionally have been viewed as three separate
systems, in fact form a single cognitive network. (Capra 1997: 171)

This insight allows one to conclude that human cognition and knowledge
are rooted in biological existence, and that there is a certain continuity
between different levels of cognitive systems, or different forms of ‘self’.
For example, Varela distinguishes between biological self, bodily self and
cognitive self.1 Varela’s ideas are supported by Antonio Damasio’s theory
of consciousness, which relates conscious activity to continually changing
neural mapping. These non-­conscious nervous impulses form the ‘proto-­
self’, which is later encapsulated into the conscious experience of ‘core self’;
the ‘core self’, in its turn, is encapsulated into the ‘autobiographical self’ that
is the equivalent of reflective consciousness. In other words, both Varela’s
and Damasio’s theories reveal the continuity and discontinuity between
different levels of biological, neurological and reflective self. However, the
idea that cognition is rooted in living processes and that it can evade brain
­control – ­and simultaneously the grip of biopolitical ­manipulation – ­might
be thought of as a potential site for resistance.
Maturana and Varela’s notion of autopoiesis is a good theoretical model
to start thinking about living beings and also to define their interactions
with non-­living beings, such as machines or the atmosphere. Maturana and
Varela often describe living beings as ‘autopoietic machines’, thus pointing

1
In ‘Organism: A Meshwork of Selfless Selves’ (1991), Varela distinguished between
five levels: 1) cellular identity (biological self); 2) immunological identity (bodily
self); 3) behavioural identity (cognitive self); 4) personal identity (sociolinguistic
self); and 5) social identity (collective self).
10 Organism-­Oriented Ontology

out that living beings and cybernetic machines share the characteristics
of self-­organisation and recursivity. However, autopoietic machines liter-
ally produce ‘themselves’. They are the product of their transformations,
whereas allopoietic machines produce something different from themselves.
Still, autopoietic systems and allopoietic systems are connected in ‘structural
couplings’ and produce organism–machine hybrids. The notion of autopoi-
etic system is also useful in trying to explain the interactions between living
and non-­living systems. For example, Gaia theory is based on the idea that
plants and other organisms produce the atmospheric gases to make the
Earth suitable for living. James Lovelock and Lynn Margulis recognised
that planet Earth as a whole is a living-­like, self-­organising system. It was
Varela who convinced Lovelock and Margulis that Gaia theory could be
reframed from its initial cybernetic model into an autopoietic system. As
Margulis and Sagan point out, ‘There is little doubt that the planetary
­patina – i­ ncluding ­ourselves – i­ s autopoietic’ (Margulis and Sagan 1986: 66).
Thus, the notion of autopoiesis is a very useful theoretical model to
explain the internal organisation of an organism, to define the interactions
between organisms of different complexity, to demonstrate the intercon-
nection between the human body and mind, or to discuss the interactions
between living and non-­living systems. However, the notion of autopoiesis
might have its limitations, especially when trying to explain the production
of change. As Mark B. N. Hansen points out, ‘autopoietic closure remains
insufficiently dynamic to grapple with the basic operation of change that
is everywhere at work in the world’ (Hansen 2009: 116). If autopoietic sys-
tems constantly reproduce themselves, how can something new emerge or
happen? And in what way can one autopoietic system interact with another
autopoietic system? Donna J. Haraway (2016) proposed a productive notion
of sympoiesis, which accounts for the interaction between living beings
of different species. Félix Guattari (1993) argued that autopoiesis can be
rethought as machinic heterogenesis, which could break operational closure
by coupling autopoietic systems with allopoietic machines. The tension
between operational closure in autopoietic systems and the need to go
beyond this closure to incorporate heterogeneous collective systems will be
discussed later in this book. At this point we can agree with Hansen’s idea
that the notion of closure, or boundary, might depend on the scale being
explored (Hansen 2009: 117). In other words, the closure and openness of
autopoietic systems should be differentiated at different scales: ‘whereas
autonomy of the living requires organizational closure, autonomy of
psychic and collective beings requires openness to alterity’ (Hansen 2009:
126). A human being is composed of different levels of autopoietic systems:
according to Varela (1991), it is made of a cellular autopoietic system, an
immunological autopoietic system, a cognitive autopoietic system, and at
the same time it belongs to social assemblages. Thus, even if the notion of
autopoiesis works perfectly well in examining cellular identity, at different
scales, such as that of immunological or social identity, the notion of opera-
 Introduction 11

tional closure might be insufficient and require the invention of the idea of
operational openness.

Organism-Oriented Ontology
At this point I would like to ask if the biological mode of existence can
be defined in ontological terms? Is an organism just a domain of life, or is
it an ontological mode of existence? Here I would like to propose a new
concept of an organism-­oriented ontology, which encompasses different
threads coming from systems theory, the notion of autopoiesis, and the phi-
losophy of biology, and relates them to actual and ‘vital’ ideas circulating
in contemporary philosophy. An organism-­oriented ontology pursues the
Kantian idea that some characteristics defining living ­beings – ­organisms –
might be helpful to reconceptualise ontology. In this respect, the notion of
an organism-­oriented ontology engages with the controversies concerning
whether the living system is closed or open, whether it follows a certain
teleology and purpose, or, on the contrary, is absolutely contingent and
unpredictable. An organism-­oriented ontology examines the relationships
of continuity and discontinuity between different levels of a living system,
and also between organisms of different complexity. It problematises the
relationship between organisms and technological objects and extensions,
asking to what extent these technological extensions can be seen as part of
the organism. Paraphrasing Cary Wolfe’s essay title ‘What “The Animal”
Can Teach “The Anthropocene”’ (2020), I would like to ask what the organ-
ism can teach contemporary philosophy, and consequently, how the notion
of the organic could help to resist recent challenges, such as climate change
and the Anthropocene. On the other hand, I would like to ask whether
some models of self-­organisation and self-­determination, specific to organ-
isms, could be useful in resisting biopolitical power.
The notion of an organism-­oriented ontology prioritises three main ideas:
processuality, multiplicity and potentiality (the potential for qualitative
change). In contrast to ontologies based on the priority of identity and
substance, organism-­oriented ontology examines organisms as developing,
changing and evolving. This orientation towards processes follows Alfred
North Whitehead’s process philosophy, the notion of morphogenesis
coming from Raymond Ruyer’s philosophy of biology, and also from the
notion of ontogenesis formulated by Gilbert Simondon. This means that
instead of being instructed by some pre-­existing form (as in the case of
preformationism), or by a transcendent idea (as in the case of vitalism), the
living being itself is inventing its immanent principles of self-­organisation,
self-­generation and self-­maintenance. For example, Simondon questions
the idea of the bounded and pre-­formed individual and proposes the theory
of individuation, which examines both living and non-­living beings from
the perspective of permanent development. Similarly, Ruyer rejects the
notion of preformationism and invents a new n ­ otion – t­hat of a living
12 Organism-­Oriented Ontology

f­orm – w ­ hich follows its own principles of generation and development.

Simondon’s and Ruyer’s insights are incorporated into Gilles Deleuze and
Félix Guattari’s ontology of becoming.
The ontology of becoming, focusing on processuality, differences and
changes, marks a radical shift in contemporary philosophy. Many philoso-
phers, after Deleuze and Guattari, take processuality as the necessary con-
dition of thinking. For example, processuality as the potential for change
appears in Catherine Malabou’s notion of plasticity, and also in her con-
cept of epigenesis, which explains how organisms of different complexity are
shaped by the environment. Processuality is also at the centre of Bernard
Stiegler’s examination of technological objects which allow us to memorise
our past and to anticipate our future. Processuality is also central for Bruno
Latour’s thinking of the Earth, and generally, of nature, which should be
reconsidered not as a universe but as a process.
The notion of processuality leads to the second principle, that of multi-
plicity. The notion of multiplicity can be seen as opposing that of identity
and totality. Driesch described the organism as an extensive manifoldness,
which develops from simple to more complicated forms, and also as an
intensive manifoldness, which involves the differentiation and epigenesis
of these forms. Here we can take into account the fact that organisms are
composed of heterogeneous parts that are being constantly restructured;
moreover, organisms are constantly coupled with the environment and
compose with them certain kinds of assemblages. This image of an organism
as a manifoldness can be discovered in the Deleuzian notion of multiplicity.2
Metaphysical philosophy used to conceive things as being unified, timeless
and eternal, whereas the Deleuzian concept of multiplicity allows us to
examine them as being differentiated, unfinished and continuous, as if they
were developing organisms. Deleuze extends the notion of multiplicity to
different fields: multiplicities correspond not only to organisms but also
to mathematical relations and realities, psychic structures, languages and
societies.
Some biological theories, such as developmental systems theory or the
theory of symbiosis, support the thesis that organisms are multiplicities
that develop according to their interaction with environments and other

2
Deleuze takes inspiration not only from biology, but also from the differential
geometry of Friedrich Gauss and Bernhard Riemann. Riemann suggested a new
approach to space by examining n-­dimensional surfaces or spaces, which were
defined through their intrinsic features and without embedding them into the
global extrinsic higher-­dimensional (N+1) space. Deleuze takes these main features
of the manifold and extends them into a universal theory of multiplicity. As
DeLanda points out, ‘A Deleuzian multiplicity takes as its first defining feature
these two traits of a manifold: its variable number of dimensions and, more impor-
tantly, the absence of a supplementary (higher) dimension imposing an extrinsic
coordinatization, and hence, an extrinsically defined unity’ (DeLanda 2002: 12,
emphasis in original).
 Introduction 13

organisms. This thesis allows a major reconceptualisation of the notion of

an organism: instead of thinking about organisms as Kantian wholes, we
can interpret them as multiplicities, or assemblages, which can be examined
not only vertically, according to their heredity, but also horizontally, accord-
ing to their interaction with their environment (Bennett and Posteraro
2019: 12). This reconceptualisation of the notion of the organism contests
the notion of biological individuality and anticipates the concept of the
­holobiont – ­the host organism plus its symbionts. Scott F. Gilbert argues
that the notion of the holobiont is not limited to non-­human organisms; it
also radically changes our understanding of what it means to be a person
(Gilbert et al. 2012; Gilbert 2017). Thus, a human organism can be seen as a
multiplicity that includes other organic and inorganic components, such as
micro-­organisms or technological extensions. In this respect, the concept of
multiplicity helps us to rethink the interaction between organisms of differ-
ent species and the interaction between organic and inorganic components.
The ideas of processuality and multiplicity lead us to the question of
potentiality. If the development of an organism is not defined by some
prior form (preformationism), or by some transcendent principle (vitalism),
how can we explain its development? How can something proceed, develop
and change and still remain part of the same body, species or multiplicity?
How do multiplicities emerge and coexist together? This can be explained
by referring to the notion of potential, or potentiality, which explains how
something new might emerge and thus change the existing structure or
system. Simondon expresses this idea through a distinction between the pre-­
individual phase and the process of individuation. Ruyer makes a similar
distinction between equipotentiality, which is the reservoir of living forms,
and the process of morphogenesis, which is an actual development. Deleuze
encompasses both physical and biological notions of potentiality into his
concept of the virtual and opposes it to the intensive and the actual. The
Deleuzian ontology of becoming explains reality as the interplay between
the virtual (the potential) and an actual becoming which accounts for the
genesis of individuals and the process of ontogenesis.
The tension between potentiality and actuality also guides Malabou’s
work, where it appears as a struggle between plasticity and determination,
epigenetics and genetic code, creativity and calculus. Malabou is looking
for the potential for transformation and change not in the ‘transcendental’
realm but in the biological reality of an organism. Similarly, the notion of
potentiality guides Simondon’s and Stiegler’s research into technical objects
and technologies: it is pre-­individual potentiality which explains both the
development of technical objects and the evolution of technologies. The
same question reappears in recent discussions about Gaia theory: is life
on this planet something that can be measured and geo-­engineered, as is
implied in the Anthropocene theory, or is it an emergent property, an ‘intru-
sive Gaia’, which is potentially unpredictable and capable of eliminating
humans from the surface of the Earth?
14 Organism-­Oriented Ontology

Thus, it is not difficult to discern that processuality, multiplicity and

potentiality characterise any living being, or organism, if by organism we
mean not a bounded and finite individual but something that is constantly
developing, multiple and capable of change. In contemporary philosophy,
the notion of the organism is often misinterpreted as a locus of identity
and wholeness, and therefore it sometimes has negative connotations. For
example, Deleuze and Guattari are hostile to the notion of the organism,
which they understand as a principle of organisation and articulation, and
to which they oppose their notion of the body without organs (Deleuze and
Guattari 2004: 176–7). Thus, as Bennett and Posteraro point out, Deleuze
and Guattari managed to reconceptualise the notion of the organism in such
a way that it might be understood as an assemblage (Bennett and Posteraro
2019: 12). Such an understanding of the organism is consistent with recent
developments in biology, such as the theory of autopoiesis, the notions of
symbiosis and symbiogenesis, and the concept of the holobiont. Interpreted
in this way, the notion of an organism can be significantly extended and
used to account for the interactions between the different levels of the living
system (internal organism), for the interaction between different species
(a hybrid organism) and the interface between organic and inorganic, or
technological, entities (an exo-­organism). It also helps us to rethink the
interactions between living and non-­living systems on a planetary scale and
to compare the quantitative approach to the Earth (the Anthropocene) and
the qualitative theory of Gaia (interpreted as a quasi-­organism).

Outline of Chapters
This book, establishing the notion of an organism-­oriented ontology, will
try to bring forth an organic condition of philosophising as the necessary
condition for contemporary philosophy. Chapter 1, ‘Gilbert Simondon:
From Ontology to Ontogenesis’, introduces Simondon’s theory of individ-
uation. Simondon argues that philosophy should analyse not complete and
self-­identical individuals, but the processes of individuation. Individuation
is understood as a shift from the pre-­individual state to the continuous pro-
cess of individuation, and the individual is seen only as a result, emanating
from this process. In this respect, the theory of individuation tackles both
the metaphysics of substance and traditional hylomorphism, and places
processes at the centre of ontology. The process of individuation is seen as
the potentiality for transformation, or change, when a metastable system is
undergoing a phase shift under certain conditions. Simondon’s theory is a
good starting point for this book because it compares physical, biological,
psychical and technical individuation. In contrast to physical individua-
tion, which is completed when certain conditions are exhausted, biological
and psychical individuation is in continuous transformation through the
interaction both with the pre-­individual and its milieu. Simondon’s theory
not only defines the unique trajectory of biological individuation but also
 Introduction 15

reveals that psychical and social individuation, as well as technological

individuation, are deeply rooted in the biological. The comparison between
different kinds of individuation helps Simondon to develop a universal
method of analogical paradigmatism. This method allows him to create a
theory of ontogenesis which can explain both continuity and discontinuity
between living and non-­living, organic and inorganic systems.
Chapter 2, ‘Raymond Ruyer: Organic Consciousness’, discusses Ruyer’s
philosophy of biology. Like Simondon, Ruyer is interested not in bounded
individuals, but in processes and becomings. In contrast to the theory of
preformationism, which presumes that an organism is formed in advance
and later changes only in quantity, Ruyer argues that an organism develops
by undergoing a qualitative change and guides its own morphogenesis. Ruyer
defines an organism as a primary consciousness, which has the capacity of
equipotentiality and self-­survey. Equipotentiality refers to an organism’s
capacity for change and transformation, whereas self-­survey is understood
as a recursive system of self-­organisation which both directs the process of
development, or morphogenesis, and maintains the organism’s identity. For
Ruyer, organic consciousness is primary in relation to secondary cerebral
consciousness and to complex psychological consciousness. In this sense,
organic consciousness is a characteristic of any living being. Human con-
sciousness thus appears to be not the highest form of organisation, but just
a phase in a biological continuum.
Chapter 3, ‘Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari’s Philosophy of Life’, traces
Simondon’s and Ruyer’s influence on Deleuze and Guattari’s works. In
Difference and Repetition Deleuze investigates the internal multiplicity within
the organism, which appears as a tension between the virtual and the pro-
cess of actual morphogenesis. The process of morphogenesis is described
as intensive ‘dramatisation’, which ends up in actual differenciation into
‘species and parts’. Deleuze argues that the model of actual differenciation
allows him to describe physical, biological, psychical, social and linguis-
tic multiplicities, and in this respect he follows the Simondonian method
of analogical paradigmatism. However, in his later works, written with
Guattari, the distinction between two modes of different/ciation is trans-
formed into an investigation into external multiplicities, made of relations
between different organisms, or between organisms and their environments.
In A Thousand Plateaus Deleuze and Guattari remain hostile to the organicist
notion of the organism (understood as an organised whole) and suggest
a major reconceptualisation of the organism in terms of an assemblage,
which, in contrast to the lines of descent and filiation, is open to symbiosis
and ‘unnatural participations’. Deleuze and Guattari read symbiosis as a
multiplicity that is defined not by biological features but by co-­functioning
and multiple interactions.
Chapter 4, ‘Catherine Malabou: Plasticity of Reason’, examines the
notion of plasticity which, derived from Hegel’s vocabulary, becomes
the main characteristic of life from stem cells to the brain and artificial
16 Organism-­Oriented Ontology

i­ntelligence. If Ruyer distinguishes between preformationism and morpho-

genetic improvisation, Malabou contrasts the traditional notion of form
with her notion of ‘plasticity’, which refers to qualitative change that takes
place both at the level of cells (cell plasticity) and the brain (neuroplasticity),
and which can be either creative or destructive. It is destructive plasticity
that is the most interesting for neurological and philosophical investiga-
tions because it reveals the rupture between the cerebral and the mental, or
between cerebral auto-­affection and mental auto-­affection. In these cases, we
discover something that Malabou names as the ‘cerebral unconscious’ – cer-
ebral activity without consciousness. These discoveries open a gap between
the brain and the mind, or between the biological and the logical origin of
thinking. Deleuze and Guattari had already started to question the central
role of the brain and described it as an interaction between the organism’s
inside and outside. In a similar tone, Malabou argues that instead of being
seen as the proprietor of the brain, the subject is defined by his or her
neuronal connectivity, which relates the inside to the outside, the brain to
the outside world.
Chapter 5, ‘General Organology: Between Organism and Machine’,
takes the discussion back to Simondon and his reconsideration of technical
objects. Simondon creates a quasi-­biological notion of the evolution of
technical objects, although keeping in mind the difference between techni-
cal objects and living beings. Simondon’s insights can be traced to Bergson
and also to Georges Canguilhem, who proposed the term ‘organology’.
Organology examines technical invention as ‘a universal biological phe-
nomenon’ and redefines machines as organs of the human species. Bernard
Stiegler significantly elaborated the notion of ‘general organology’ and
asserted that human life can be maintained only through the invention
of tools and the organisation of the inorganic. Stiegler explained ‘general
organology’ as a theory encompassing the articulation of bodily, techno-
logical and social organs (Stiegler 2010: 34). In this respect, Stiegler’s ‘gen-
eral organology’ allows us to compare biological, technological and social
individuation as different stages of collective ontogenesis. The notion of
organology is further elaborated by Hui (2019), who argues that technical
objects become organic in the sense that they incorporate organic proper-
ties, such as recursivity and contingency. Thus, ‘general organology’ is a
theory which explains technology through the model of the organism and
of organic properties characteristic to living beings.
The theory of organology, relating biological, technological and cyber-
netic beings, poses a more general methodological ­question – ­how can these
different levels of organisation be combined with each other? Chapter 6,
‘Planetary Organism’, discusses the attempts to connect all kinds of ontoge-
netic development into a consistent whole in terms of the Gaia hypothe-
sis. In the 1970s James Lovelock explained Gaia in terms of a cybernetic
machine; later, together with Lynn Margulis, they remodelled Gaia in terms
of symbiogenesis and explained it as a kind of superorganism. At the same
 Introduction 17

time, when Lovelock and Margulis were trying to conceptualise Gaia theory,
Maturana and Varela were working on the theory of autopoiesis. In 1988
Lovelock, Margulis and Varela participated in a Gaia theory symposium in
Italy, where Varela argued that Gaia can be characterised as being living-­
like, and therefore as an autopoietic entity. Margulis took Varela’s point
further by pointing out that cells and Gaia display a general property of
autopoietic entities. The theory of autopoiesis was challenged by Donna
J. Haraway’s theory of sympoiesis, which helps to define the interaction
between organisms and thus to explain how something new might emerge.
This is why chapter 7, ‘Hybrid Organism’, discusses symbiosis as a spe-
cific kind of biological assemblage. Haraway points out the obvious but
ignored fact that every living being is dependent on other living beings,
such as viruses, bacteria, archaea, etc. Referring to the theory of autopoiesis,
Haraway argues that Margulis would have chosen the term ‘sympoiesis’, but
the term had not yet surfaced at that time. The term ‘sympoiesis’, proposed
by M. Beth Dempster, refers to collectively producing systems that do not
have self-­defined spatial or temporal boundaries. These systems are evolu-
tionary and have the potential for change. Thus, the theory of sympoiesis
discredits the notion of the bounded individual and examines living beings
as mutually interconnected and interdependent. Similarly, Gilbert argues
that there is no such thing as biological individuality; both human and
non-­human animals are h ­ olobionts – o
­ rganisms coexisting with persistent
communities of symbionts (Gilbert et al. 2012; Gilbert 2017). Taking this
into account, Haraway suggests sympoiesis as a continuous process of
‘becoming-­with’ which creates new networks of collaboration and gives
an increased potency to its collaborators. However, the question that still
needs to be answered is whether all forms of coexistence are profitable and
welcomed. In this respect, the concept of immunity is central in discussing
the theory of sympoiesis: how does one define the limit at which coexistence
is collaborative and productive, and beyond which it becomes damaging
and lethal?
In the final chapter, ‘Conclusion: Organism-­Oriented Ontology’, I sum-
marise all of the threads coming from these different theories and argue
that the concept of an organism-­oriented ontology allows us to rethink the
differences between living and non-­living systems; to explain the tension
between the self-­referential, homeostatic nature of the organism and its
continuous capacity of change and development; and, finally, to recon-
ceptualise the notion of cognition by taking into account the multiplicity
of organic processes defining human and non-­human living beings. The
notion of an organism-­oriented ontology helps to reflect different modalities
of life, especially the continuity between biological processes taking place in
the body and those taking place in the mind. Maturana and Varela’s idea
that living systems are cognitive systems, and that a living process is nothing
other than a process of cognition, radically changes our understanding of
cognition and the mind. This means that the brain is not the centre of
18 Organism-­Oriented Ontology

control and that cognitive processes can take place at different levels of
organic organisation. Ruyer’s idea about primary consciousness being pres-
ent in every living being, similar to Deleuze and Guattari’s insistence that
everywhere there are forces that constitute microbrains, allows us to have
a different perspective on the world as rooted in biological cognition. Brian
Massumi, influenced by Ruyer and Deleuze, defines this perspective as a
‘subjectivity-­without-­a-subject’, while assuming that the word ‘subjectivity’
might not be the right one (Massumi 2014: 41). In this book I will argue that
the notion of ‘subjectivity-­without-­a-subject’ has important political and
ethical consequences. If organic plasticity is not pre-­programmed and does
not have to adapt to the environment but rather helps to create it, then
it offers a new conceptual tool to rethink resilience and creativity. In this
respect, an organism-­oriented ontology can be described as an ontology of
resistance: if biopolitics operates by creating hierarchies, by making divi-
sions and exclusions, an organism-­oriented ontology is all-­inclusive and
non-­hierarchical. To rethink organic plasticity in terms of processuality,
multiplicity and potentiality, capable of qualitative change, we need to
define organism-­oriented ontology, which is the aim of this book.
 1
Gilbert Simondon:
From Ontology to Ontogenesis

This chapter analyses Gilbert Simondon’s theory of ontogenesis, which

describes the processes of the individuation of living and non-­living beings.
Simondon argues that philosophy should be concerned not with substan-
tial, defined and bounded individuals but with the processes of individ-
uation that create these individuals. Thus, Simondon creates a universal
theory of individuation, which is understood as a process initiated by the
pre-­individual state that contains a potential or a charge, and is then accom-
plished in a series of differentiations that result in creating an individual.
In this sense, Simondon argues that ontology is based not on identity but
on difference that forces individuals to move from one phase to another
and undergo a qualitative change. What is relevant for this book is that
Simondon creates a method of analogical paradigmatism that allows one
to compare ­different – p ­ hysical, biological, psychosocial and ­technical –
­systems. Simondon not only defines the unique nature of biological indi-
viduation but also reveals that psychical and social individuation, as well
as technical invention, are deeply rooted in the biological. The comparison
between different kinds of individuations helps Simondon to develop a
universal theory of ontogenesis which can explain the continuity between
living and non-­living, organic and inorganic systems.
Simondon’s works are not very numerous: his main ideas are formulated
in the doctoral thesis Individuation in Light of Notions of Form and Information
and the complementary thesis On the Existence of Technical Objects, both
defended in 1958. The complementary thesis was published immediately
after the defence in 1958, whereas his major work on individuation had to
wait to become accessible to a wider audience.1 Nevertheless, Simondon’s

1
Simondon‘s main doctoral thesis, L’Individuation à la lumière des notions de forme
et d’information, first appeared as two separate works: the first part was published
under the title L’individu et sa genèse physico-biologique by PUF in 1964, and the
second part was published under the title L’individuation psychique et collective
by Aubier in 1989. The main doctoral thesis was published in its entirety by
Jerôme Millon in 2005. It was translated into English quite recently: Individuation
20 Organism-­Oriented Ontology

works were known to his contemporaries, and his works deeply influenced
Gilles Deleuze, who not only wrote a review of Simondon’s book, but also
incorporated Simondon’s ideas into his own work.2 Simondon’s notion
of individuation is discussed in Deleuze’s Difference and Repetition, and
his theory of material becoming can be traced throughout Deleuze and
Guattari’s A Thousand Plateaus. Recently Simondon’s works have been
widely discussed and reconsidered by Bernard Stiegler, Yuk Hui, Elizabeth
Grosz, Anne Sauvagnargues, Brian Massumi and others. Several journal
issues have been dedicated to Simondon’s ideas and their reception in con-
temporary philosophy.3 In this chapter I will concentrate on Simondon’s
theory of ontogenesis, or individuation, which examines the processes of
individuation taking place in physical, biological and psychosocial domains.
Simondon’s theory of technical objects and its influence on the theory of
general organology will be discussed in Chapter 5.

Physical Individuation: Transduction

In defining his philosophical project, Simondon argues that we have to
examine being not as something stable and identical to itself, but as some-
thing developing or becoming. The most important philosophical question,
in Simondon’s view, is not ‘What is being?’ but how being is becoming, what
stages or phases it undergoes. Simondon argues that the traditional meta-
physical approach to being takes into account only those properties that
describe being as a self-­identical and substantial entity, whose paradigmatic
model is an individual. In the Introduction to his Individuation Simondon
explains:

There are two paths according to which the reality of being qua individ-
ual can be approached: a substantialist path, which considers the being
as consisting in its unity, given to itself, founded on itself, not engendered
and as resistant to what is not itself; and then there is a hylomorphic

in Light of Notions of Form and Information, trans. Taylor Adkins, Minneapolis, MN:
University of Minnesota Press, 2020; Individuation in Light of Notions of Form and
Information, vol. II: Supplemental Texts, trans. Taylor Adkins, Minneapolis, MN:
University of Minnesota Press, 2020. The complementary thesis, Du mode d’exist-
ence des objets techniques, was published by Aubier in 1958. It was translated into
English as On the Mode of Existence of Technical Objects, trans. Cécile Malaspina and
John Rogove, Minneapolis, MN: Univocal Publishing, 2017. Some translations of
Simondon were published in Parrhesia (Simondon 2009a; Simondon 2009b).
2
There is more about Simondon’s influence on Gilles Deleuze in Chapter 3.
3
Parrhesia: A Journal of Critical Philosophy (On Gilbert Simondon), ed. Arne De
Boever, Alex Murray, Jonathan Roffe and Ashley Woodward, 7, 2009; Pli: The
Warwick Journal of Philosophy (special volume: Deleuze and Simondon), 12, 2012;
Deleuze Studies (Ontologies of Difference: The Philosophies of Gilbert Simondon
and Raymond Ruyer), ed. Andrew Iliadis, 11.4, 2017.
 Gilbert Simondon: From Ontology to Ontogenesis 21

path, which considers the individual as generated by the encounter of a

form and a matter. (Simondon 2020a: 1)

The substantialist path presumes that there is a principle of individuation

which might explain what is an individual. However, the principle of indi-
viduation has to be explained itself. The other, hylomorphic path, is also
misleading because the principle of individuation is supposed to be con-
tained either in the matter, or in the form. In other words, both substantialist
atomism and hylomorphism start from the individual instead of explaining
how this individual is created: both approaches presume that, first, there is
an individual, and then, secondly, there is individuation or development.
By contrast, Simondon suggests that the process of individuation is prior
to the emergence of the individual: ‘we would try to grasp ontogenesis in
the whole unfolding of its reality and to know the individual through individu-
ation rather than individuation starting from the individual’ (Simondon 2020a: 3,
emphasis in original). In other words, philosophical research should focus
on the principle of ontogenesis, or individuation, instead of examining an
individual as a final and autonomous reality. In this respect, individuation
should be considered as an ongoing process, whereas an individual is only a
temporary and partial result which emerges by interrupting or arresting the
processes of individuation.
Thus, Simondon argues that individuation arises neither from a cer-
tain substance, nor from an interaction between a matter and a form,
but from a tense and supersaturated system. This system is named as a
pre-­individual state; in other words, a state that is anterior to unity and
identity, because unity and identity can be applied only to being that is indi-
viduated (Simondon 2020a: 4). Simondon takes the hypothesis about the
pre-­individual state from physics, namely, from the thermodynamic notion
of metastable equilibrium. A stable equilibrium is achieved when all poten-
tial energies are actualised and all transformations achieved; by contrast, a
metastable equilibrium is a system that is neither stable nor unstable, but is
charged with potentials for becoming, and that contains enough potential
to ‘produce an abrupt alteration leading to a new, equally metastable struc-
turation’ (Simondon 2020a: 369). As one of many examples of metastable
equilibrium Simondon discusses the duality of a photon, which can be
regarded both as a particle and a wave, or both as a physical individual and
as a certain amount of energy, capable of potential change. Thus, a meta-
stable equilibrium, which defines the pre-­individual state, can be considered
as a reservoir of potential energy, which is the condition for transformation
and change, and which engenders the process of individuation.
However, as Simon Mills points out, ‘For Simondon potential does not
mean the same as possibility or the virtual but something wholly real that is
indicative of the potential energy inherent in metastability’ (Mills 2016: 36).
In other words, the potential is not virtual in the sense that Deleuze gives
to the term (we will discuss this point later) but rather designates a physical
22 Organism-­Oriented Ontology

energy, which has the capacity to undergo a phase shift. For example, under
a certain temperature, water can undergo a phase shift and turn into ice or
a gas. Hence, as Simondon explains, ‘becoming is a dimension of the being
and corresponds to the being’s capacity to phase-­shift with respect to itself,
to resolve itself by phase-­shifting’ (Simondon 2020a: 4). To consider indi-
viduation we have to take into account this constant change or flux, which
does not allow the application of the categories of unity and identity. The
latter can be applied only to the last phase of individuation which creates a
completed individual. However, this last phase of individuation exhausts its
potential and excludes becoming, therefore no phase shift is possible.
In other words, for Simondon the primary ontological reality is becoming,
or the process of individuation, rather than stable and self-­identical being.
Only by discovering the principle of individuation can we explain being as
individuated being. As Simondon points out, ‘instead of grasping individua-
tion on the basis of the individuated being, the individuated being must be grasped
on the basis of individuation and individuation on the basis of pre-individual being,
which is distributed according to several orders of magnitude’ (Simondon
2020a: 12, emphasis in original). This methodological shift requires a change
in terminology: instead of examining the notions of substance, form and
matter, Simondon turns to such terms as information, metastability, inter-
nal resonance, energetic potential and orders of magnitude (Simondon
2020a: 12). All these terms imply a relation, but not a relation that is estab-
lished between two pre-­existing terms; it is a relation that is simultaneous
with those terms whose existence it guarantees. This relation cannot be
explained through the principle of identity and the principle of excluded
middle, and it needs a new ­method – t­ hat of transduction.
Transduction appears in the middle of the pre-­ individual being and
expresses the tension, the disparity between a certain problem and its pos-
sible solution. It is important to stress that transduction is a process, or a
propagation, from which something new e­ merges – ­it is simultaneously a
transformation, or a change, and a new reality emerging from this change.
As Simondon points out,

By transduction we mean a physical, biological, mental, or social opera-

tion through which an activity propagates incrementally within a domain
by basing this propagation on a structuration of the domain operated
from one region to another: each structural region serves as a principle
and model, as an initiator for constituting the following region, such that
a modification thereby extends progressively throughout this structuring
operation. (Simondon 2020a: 13)

A good example of this structuring activity is the process of crystallisation:

the supersaturated mother liquid contains a tension, an excess of potential-
ity, therefore it is enough to introduce a very small s­ eed – a­ piece of d
­ ust – t­ o
resolve this tension and start the process of crystallisation. The crystal starts
 Gilbert Simondon: From Ontology to Ontogenesis 23

growing and expanding in all directions, and ‘each previously constituted

molecular layer serves as the structuring basis for the layer in the process of
forming’ (Simondon 2020a: 13). As Anne Sauvagnargues points out, ‘For
Simondon, this term refers to the dephasing or structuring differentiation
through which individuation takes place in such a way that each structured
region serves as a constitutive principle for the next region’ (Sauvagnargues
2012a: 7). Thus, transduction is a method of ontogenetic structuration that
explains the genesis of reality and also allows one to compare ontogenetic
structuration taking place in different domains.
Simondon argues that the notion of transduction can not only be applied
to a physical domain, but also accounts for biological, or vital, and psychical
individuation. In the domain of physical operation, transduction expresses
the growth and development of a physical structure which is effectuated
as progressive iteration (the crystal grows by iterating its own structure),
whereas in the domain of the vital operation it can produce heterogeneous
domains as a result of the interaction between the living organism and its
environment. However, transduction defines not only physical and vital
domains, but also the psychical and the domain of knowledge. In the domain
of knowledge transduction is related to the discovery of the p ­ roblematic –
­an idea that is elaborated in Deleuze’s Difference and Repetition. This signals
that transduction for Simondon is not only a technical term but a new
method of thinking: ‘Transduction corresponds to this existence of rap-
ports that takes hold when pre-­individual being individuates; it expresses
individuation and allows for individuation to be thought; it is therefore a
notion that is both metaphysical and logical; it applies to ontogenesis and is
ontogenesis itself’ (Simondon 2020a: 14, emphasis in original). In other words,
transduction expresses not only the method of dynamic transformation
and structuration, but also a different logic, which can account for this
transformation in different domains. As Simondon argues, transduction
can be used ‘as the basis of a new type of analogical paradigmatism in order
to pass from physical individuation to organic individuation, from organic
individuation to psychical individuation, and from psychical individua-
tion to the subjective and objective transindividual’ (Simondon 2020a: 14).
Thus, transduction is a new method of thinking which is different from
deduction and induction. In contrast to deduction, which searches for a
transcendental principle to solve the problem found in the domain, trans-
duction extracts the resolving structure from the domain itself and from its
potentials. For example, a supersaturated liquid resolves its tension by using
its own potential and starting the process of crystallisation without the help
of any external principle or form (Simondon 2020a: 15). On the other hand,
transduction is opposed to induction: even if induction extracts the terms
from the studied domain, it retains only what is common to all of them
and thus eliminates difference and singularity. Transduction, by contrast,
retains all differences and disparities and makes them communicate in such
a way that it integrates them into a new system or structure.
24 Organism-­Oriented Ontology

In this respect, the notion of transduction implies two important conse-

quences. First, transduction is a mental procedure that retains differences
and disparities not by negating or reducing them, but by restructuring them
into a new system or structure: ‘resolving transduction operates the inversion
of the negative into the positive: that through which the terms are not identical
to one another, that through which they are disparate [. . .] is integrated
into the system of resolution and becomes a condition of signification’
(Simondon 2020a: 15, emphasis in original). In this sense, transduction can
be compared to Hegelian dialectics, because transduction presupposes a
relation between two contradicting or disparate domains. However, in con-
trast to dialectics, transduction does not seek a resolution to this contra-
diction, it does not seek a synthesis that could homogenise these disparate
domains. ‘Where Hegel imagines internal contradiction and difference in
the concept, Simondon proposes a real disparity, a heterogeneity between
the terms that only the problematic relation puts in tension, and that
cannot be put in tension without their heterogeneity being maintained’
(Sauvagnargues 2012a: 10). Another important point is that transduction
never seeks to overcome differences in a unifying synthesis; instead, ‘trans-
ductive disparation makes heterogeneity the constitutive condition for the
invention of a new solution. Disparation is made possible by this ine-
radicable difference’ (Sauvagnargues 2012a: 10). Transduction maintains
difference or disparity between two heterogeneous systems, two orders of
magnitude, and forces them to communicate and create a new problematic,
full of potentials and capable of new transformations.4 Deleuze interprets
this transductive disparation as the necessary condition of thinking, which
he names as the problematic. For Deleuze, ‘the problematic replaces the
negative’ (Deleuze 2004d: 88) and allows for a new categorisation of reality
in positive terms.
From this follows the second consequence: the notions of form and
matter should be replaced by that of information. As was mentioned
before, Simondon criticises both substantialist atomism and the hylo-
morphic doctrine because both approaches start from the constituted and
given individual, and only then examine how this individual is changed in
the process of individuation. Substantialist atomism is deceiving because
substance is never finished or completed; all elements exist in a relation-
ship with their environment and are defined by it. For example, if we put a
crystal into a new supersaturated solution, it will start growing again. The
hylomorphic approach is deceiving in a similar way because it presupposes

4
As Elizabeth Grosz points out, ‘Transduction can be considered the converse of
the ­dialectic – ­it analyzes not what must be overcome, negated, and left behind as
the detritus of history, as do Hegelian and Marxist dialectical models, but what
returns, transforms itself without an unusable residue, and that, if it leaves a
remainder, leaves it as dynamic and full of potential, an inexhaustible if changing
virtuality’ (Grosz 2017: 180).
 Gilbert Simondon: From Ontology to Ontogenesis 25

a passive matter and an active form as two separate and already existing
individuals: a form is superimposed upon a matter and moulds it into a
certain shape.
By contrast, Simondon argues that instead of examining form and matter
as two separate entities, we should think about a form-­taking activity that
defines what ontogenesis is. For example, a brick can be made by super-
imposing a mould on to clay: clay is seen as a passive matter that receives
its form from the mould. However, as Simondon points out, ‘the clay is
not just passively deformable; it’s actively plastic, because it’s colloidal; its
capacity to receive a form is not distinct from its capacity to keep it, because
keeping and receiving amounts to the same thing’ (Simondon 2020a: 24).
As Muriel Combes points out, ‘The clay can eventually be transformed
into bricks because it possesses colloidal properties that render it capable
of conducting a deforming energy while maintaining the coherence of
molecular chains, because it is in a sense “already in form” in the swampy
earth’ (Combes 2013: 6). In other words, in order to be moulded, the clay
must have a potential for deformation that allows it to transform into a
brick.

The relation between matter and form thus does not take place between
inert matter and a form coming from outside: there is a common
­operation that is on the same level of existence between matter and
form; this common level of existence is that of force . . . [. . .] Matter and
form are brought together as forces. (Simondon 2020a: 26–7, emphasis in
original)

In other words, the form-­taking activity can be accounted for only as a

system of an energetic regime where opposite forces are affecting each
other.
Thus, the opposition between matter and form (or mould) should be
replaced by the notion of modulation, which explains the interaction
between form-­giving force and form-­taking force as a continuous and fluc-
tuating modulation. Therefore, Simondon suggests the replacement of the
concept of form by that of information: information is a signification that
emerges out of disparity or difference between two orders of magnitude,
such as a supersaturated solution and a seed in the process of crystallisation,
or as the form-­taking activity of clay and the form-­giving activity of a mould
in brick formation. As Simondon observes,

in order to think the transductive operation, which is the basis of indi-

viduation in its various levels, the notion of form is insufficient [. . .] The
notion of form must be replaced with that of information, which supposes the
existence of a system in a state of metastable equilibrium that can individ-
uate; unlike form, information is never a single term but the signification
that emerges from a disparation. (Simondon 2020a: 16)
26 Organism-­Oriented Ontology

As we can understand from this quotation, the notion of information is

used here in a non-­conventional way:5 it refers not to the technology of
transmission but to signification, which appears from the disparity between
two orders of magnitude, or between two different sub-­systems. Information
here expresses an active communication, an internal resonance between
two heterogeneous realities. In this respect, Simondon’s notion of infor-
mation is very different from that which was formulated in cybernetics and
information theory, because it cannot be understood in quantitative terms.
As Brian Massumi points out, for Simondon, information implies a quali-
tative change to a new level of existence, a new reality (Massumi 2012: 32).
Transduction, modulation and information can be seen as diverse paths to
reach a qualitative change enabling the creation of a new ontological reality.

Biological Individuation: The Membrane

The theory of individuation explains not only the transformation of phys-
ical entities but also the development of biological individuals. However,
biological individuality is much more complicated than physical: ‘in biology
it seems that the notion of individuality is applicable to several stages or
according to different levels of successive inclusion’ (Simondon 2020a: 168).
Biological individuation is interpreted as a process of transduction when
one biological form is transformed into another. In this sense, both physical
individuation and biological individuation involve a kind of transduction.
However, some important differences occur between the two: in contrast
to physical individuation, which is completed when certain conditions are
exhausted, the individuation of a living being is never completed but is an
ongoing process; ‘it is not merely a result of individuation, like the crystal or
molecule, but a theater of individuation’ (Simondon 2020a: 7). Moreover,
unlike in physical individuation, where heterogeneous transductive charac-
teristics appear at the margins of physical reality, for example at the edges of
a crystal, biological individuation requires a transduction that differentiates
between the interior and the exterior of a living being. A living being is a
system of communication where the interior is always in communication
with the exterior and vice versa. In other words, the individuation of a
living being cannot be completed in a single stroke, but needs an ongoing
transformation. As Simondon observes, ‘the living being resolves problems,
not just by adapting, i.e. by modifying its relation to the milieu (like a
machine is capable of doing), but by modifying itself, by inventing new

5
As Mills points out, ‘In the early cybernetic model the notion of information
corresponded to the transfer of a message from a sender to a receiver within a
system that presumed the pre-­establishment of entities between which messages
could flow. It is important to understand that in Simondon’s conceptualization of
information terms do not exist prior to the operation of individuation, therefore
this cybernetic model of information exchange is not yet apposite’ (Mills 2016: 47).
 Gilbert Simondon: From Ontology to Ontogenesis 27

internal structures, and by completely introducing itself into the axiomatic

of vital problems’ (Simondon 2020a: 7). The physical being has no real
interiority, whereas the living being is constantly transforming itself from
within and also keeps track of this continuous transformation.
In other words, physical individuation is finite and it works as a quantum
leap that resolves the tension in a single stroke, whereas biological individu-
ation is never completed. It always carries a certain charge of pre-­individual
potential within itself, which, in its turn, constitutes a new problematic and
initiates new phases of individuation. As Simondon points out,

The living individual is contemporaneous with itself in all its elements,

which is not the case for the physical individual, for the latter includes
a past that has radically passed, even when it is still in the process of
growing. At the interior of itself, the living being is a node of informative
communication; it is a system within a system, involving within itself a
mediation between two orders of magnitude. (Simondon 2020a: 8, empha-
sis in original)

For example, a crystal, after being formed and completed, becomes iner-
tial and submerges into the past, whereas a living being stretches in two
directions at once: it is directed towards the outside, the external milieu,
and towards the inside, which is restructured and attuned to this milieu
with the help of internal resonance. Thus, the living individual is created
by two orders of magnitude: it is constantly restructured according to the
external milieu, or environment, which is actual, and, at the same time, it is
permanently recharged by its pre-­individual potential. As Grosz points out,

Life remains indebted to the pre-­individual to the extent that the resources
for all its becomings, all its future individuations, self-­actualizations, must
be drawn from these singularities which its own must incorporate. The
‘phases’ of life, from fertilized egg to corpse, are internally structured,
organized through the forces that enable life to elaborate itself . . . (Grosz
2012b: 49)

In this sense, a living being, or life in general, can be maintained only if it

constantly remains connected to the pre-­individual charge and is able to
keep a metastable equilibrium. That means that living beings never reach
a stable equilibrium because biological individuation proceeds from one
metastable condition to another metastable condition, which is seen as the
necessary condition of life. As Mills points out, ‘in the case of vital individ-
uation the operation does not resolve, for in doing so it would result in the
death of the organism. Vital individuation requires an ongoing metastable
tension and the need for further problems requiring solution’ (Mills 2016:
59). A living being is alive only if it is capable of resolving its problematic by
entering into a new phase of metastability.
28 Organism-­Oriented Ontology

A metastable equilibrium means that a living being maintains, prolongs

and sustains its activity by constantly interacting with its milieu and with
the pre-­individual potential. In this respect, the theory of individuation,
or ontogenesis, challenges the theory of adaptation, as described by Jean-­
Baptiste Lamarck and Charles Darwin. According to Simondon,

The notion of adaptation is poorly formed to the extent that it supposes

the existence of terms as preceding that of relation; what deserves to be
critiqued is not the modality of relation such as the theory of adaptation
envisions it; what deserve to be critiqued are the very conditions of this
relation coming after the terms. (Simondon 2020a: 234)

The problem here is that such a clear opposition between a living being
and its milieu could appear only in a world of stable equilibrium where all
potentials have been exhausted and where no transformation is possible.
But to account for the activity of the living, one must replace the idea of
the stable equilibrium with that of the metastable. Simondon argues that a
living being and its milieu are mutually correlative in such a way that their
potentials cannot be fully actualised or exhausted but are resolved through
integration into the higher dimension.

According to such a conception, in order to think the living being, life

must be thought as a transductive result of operations of individuation
or, better yet, as an interlinking of successive resolutions, insofar as each
previous resolution can be taken back up and reincorporated in subse-
quent resolutions. In this sense, we could consider that life in its entirety
seems like a progressive construction of increasingly elaborate forms, i.e.
forms capable of containing increasingly elevated problems. (Simondon
2020a: 237)

Thus, life is seen as the resolution of problematic, which might not always
be successful. Life as a posed problem might not be resolved or might be
resolved b­ adly – ­this is how death comes into life. Death also arrives when
the metastable equilibrium is exhausted, deprived of potentials and can no
longer enhance new individuations. In this sense, a metastable equilibrium
is the necessary condition of life.
And yet some other conditions are required to define life. In the chapter
‘Topology and Ontogenesis’ Simondon suggests that to define a living being
we need a special topology that expresses the relation between a milieu of
interiority and a milieu of exteriority. ‘Perhaps the space of the living being
isn’t a Euclidean space . . . [. . .] perhaps the essence of the living being is a
certain topological arrangement that cannot be known based on the physics
and chemistry that typically use Euclidean space’ (Simondon 2020a: 250). But
how can we imagine this non-­Euclidean space and how does it change our
understanding of biological individuation? Simondon argues that a living
being requires a special topological arrangement: a membrane. ‘The living
 Gilbert Simondon: From Ontology to Ontogenesis 29

membrane [. . .] is characterized as what separates a region of interiority from

a region of exteriority: the membrane is polarized and therefore allows the
passage of some particular body centripetally or centrifugally while blocking
the passage of some other particular body’ (Simondon 2020a: 251). The
membrane functions as a polarising force that differentiates between what
is favourable and unfavourable for the organism. Moreover, the membrane
not only separates the interiority from the exteriority within the living being
but functions as a differentiating force that keeps the organism in a state of
metastability. As Sauvagnargues asserts, ‘this interiority and exteriority are
not absolute but metastable, dynamic, relative to each other, and their inter-
facing surface is itself in becoming, in relation’ (Sauvagnargues 2012b: 67).
That means that in a multicellular organism the limit between interiority
and exteriority is always relative, depending on its place in the organisation
of a living being.
As Simondon explains, in the topology of a living organism we find
various levels of interiority and exteriority. For example, the space of the
digestive cavities is a space of exteriority in relation to the bloodstream that
floods the intestinal walls, but blood is a milieu of exteriority in respect to
the endocrine glands that release the products of their activity into the blood
(Simondon 2020a: 252). This means that the structure of a complex organ-
ism is like a multiple folding where the internal milieu is enfolded into an
external milieu, which in its turn becomes the internal milieu to be enfolded
into a more complex external milieu. The membrane arranges a transduc-
tive mediation between different levels of interiorities and exteriorities. The
topological arrangement of living space implies that life is sustained through
metastability; in other words, one can never have a final and unifying vision
of living systems: ‘The totalizing vision and the elementary vision are equally
inadequate; we have to start with the basic function that depends on the first
topological structure of interiority and exteriority, and then we have to see
how this function is mediated by a chain of intermediary interiorities and
exteriorities’ (Simondon 2020a: 252). This is why vital, or biological, individ-
uation must be interpreted in terms of topological schemata that describe the
living being in terms of differentiation and metastability.
The topological arrangement of space is not the only requirement to
think the living being. Another requirement is the continuity of time, which
virtually condenses all stages of individuation into the lived present. It is
this arrangement of time that allows us to draw a line between the living and
the non-­living. For example, in the individuation of a crystal, the interiority
of an already formed crystal has become stable and inert and does not
provide any information for its further individuation. A crystal is growing
only at the edges, but this growth is not informed by its interiority and its
past. As Simondon points out,

in order for the crystal to individuate, it must continue to grow; this indi-
viduation is superficial; the past doesn’t serve a purpose in the crystal’s
30 Organism-­Oriented Ontology

­ ass . . . ­Conversely, in the living being [. . .] the whole content of the

m
interior space is topologically in contact with the content of the exterior
space at the limits of the living being . . . (Simondon 2020a: 253)

The interiority of a living being condenses all forms that have been pro-
duced by individuation in the past, and this condensed past is actively
related to individuating processes taking place in the exteriority of the living
being. This means that topology is a space without distance: the interior
space is actively present in the exterior space at the limits of a living being.
This reformulation of space is also applicable to time: the chronology of a
living being condenses and keeps in the present tense all layers of previous
successive individuations. As Simondon argues, ‘In the same way that there
are no distances in topology, in chronology there is no quantity of time’
(Simondon 2020a: 254). Thus, time is not continuous; time is defined as
discontinuity, contiguity and envelopment of different time layers, of differ-
ent moments of the past, which become contiguous in the interiority of a
living being. We can argue that the interiority of a living being transforms
the quantity of time into the quality of time in the sense that time that has
already passed can create the basis for future individuations. Every present
moment of a living being is interconnected with the past retained in its inte-
riority, and with the future coming from exteriority. As Simondon points
out, ‘the present is this metastability of the rapport between interior and
exterior, past and future; the exterior is exterior and the interior is interior
relative to this mutual allagmatic activity of presence. Topology and chro-
nology coincide in the individuation of the living being’ (Simondon 2020a:
254). In other words, Simondon’s theory of vital individuation proposes
new conceptions of space and time: topology as a theory of space without
distance, and chronology as a theory of time without quantity.
In this respect, the individuation of a living being can be compared to
a self-­organising autopoietic system, discussed by Maturana and Varela in
Autopoiesis and Cognition (1980). An autopoietic system, for example a cell, is
closed on the level of organisation; this condition is known as ‘operational
closure’. At the same time, an autopoietic unit is energetically open to the envi-
ronment from which it gets nutrients and energy. Thus, an autopoietic unit is
closed and open at the same time: it is closed on the level of organisation,
but open to the environment on the level of structure. However, even getting
the necessary support from the environment, the autopoietic system remains
closed in the respect that it constantly reproduces its internal structure.
In comparison to an autopoietic system, Simondon’s theory proposes a
more dynamic approach that explains not only the relationship between
a living being and its environment, but also its development into a more
complex system. As Mills points out,

Simondon’s theorization of individuation offers a novel way to think

about the openness of systems. Where in the case of autopoiesis the
 Gilbert Simondon: From Ontology to Ontogenesis 31

coupling of the system occurs at a single level of magnitude, for Simondon

the system maintains an ongoing relation to the broader environment
(pre-­individual) as a whole. That is to say that the individual ‘is sustained
by a double relationship’ [. . .] first with its milieu, which exists on the
same level of magnitude as it does, and second with the wider metastabil-
ity of the pre-­individual. (Mills 2016: 61–2)

In this respect, Simondon differentiates between the relationship with an

environment, which is entirely actual, and the relationship with the pre-­
individual, which is a potentiality of forces constantly feeding the process
of individuation. The pre-­individual here can be thought of as the potential
or the virtual force of individuation. As Mark B. N. Hansen observes,
Maturana and Varela’s theory of autopoiesis examines an actual relation-
ship between an individual and the environment, whereas Simondon adds
to this a crucial component – ‘continuity across the potentiality–actual-
ity divide’ (Hansen 2009: 134). In other words, besides the actual relation
between a living being and its environment, which occurs within a single
level or ‘order of magnitude’, Simondon adds a relation between an indi-
vidual and the pre-­individual potential, which occurs between two different
levels or two ‘orders of magnitude’ (Hansen 2009: 134). However, Simondon
insists that this potential is not virtual but perfectly real; it is a veritable
reality. This idea is elaborated further by Deleuze in his theory of the virtual
and the actual, as I will demonstrate in Chapter 3.

Psychical Individuation: The Transindividual

For Simondon, vital individuation is prolonged in psychical individuation:
the entrance into the psychical realm manifests itself as a new problem-
atic, charged with pre-­individual potentiality. The psychical reality is never
enclosed in itself and needs other individuals to resolve its problematic:
thus psychical life goes from the pre-­individual to the collective. To be
more precise, the collective is a transindividual reality that needs to be
distinguished from the social and the interindividual. The social expresses
the manner in which living beings exist in a society, human or animal; the
social encompasses the individuals that are fully formed and do not require
new individuations. Similarly, an interindividual relation expresses some
reciprocity and exchange between already formed individuals and therefore
does not initiate new individuations. By contrast, the transindividual col-
lective puts all individuals in relation to the pre-­individual charge, which
engenders a new tension, or a new problematic, which, in turn, initiates
new individuations. An individuated being always keeps a certain residue
of pre-­individual reality that allows it to reconnect to the transindividual
collective.
Psychical individuation, similar to vital individuation, is organised
around a certain polarity: psychical individuals are in contact with their
32 Organism-­Oriented Ontology

interiority, which is defined as an affect, and also maintain a contact with

their exteriority, which is defined as a sensation. Such an explanation of
psychical life questions all theories of consciousness and also the psychoan-
alytic notions of consciousness and the unconscious. As Simondon points
out, ‘At the limit between consciousness and the unconscious, on the con-
trary, there is the layer of subconsciousness, which is essentially affectivity
and emotivity. This relational layer constitutes the center of individuality’
(Simondon 2020a: 273). By placing affectivity and emotivity at the centre of
psychical life, Simondon opens a dimension that is common to all living
organisms: ‘no living being seems to be deprived of affectivo-­emotivity,
which has a quantum nature for highly complex beings such as humans
and also for beings that are only partially organized’ (Simondon 2020a: 274).
The affectivo-­emotive dimension forms the basis of intersubjective com-
munication, which might exist not only between humans but also between
animals. Thus, affect refers to non-­conscious activity, common to humans
and animals, which responds both to the internal disequilibrium within the
organism and to the external perturbations coming from the environment.
As Mills asserts,

Affect then is the fundamental way that an organism orients itself within
its environment. It operates between two different orders of magnitude
and is signified in each of them differently: from the perspective of the
organism it is signified as a change in its internal resonance and from an
environmental perspective it is signified by a change in the organism’s
behaviour. (Mills 2016: 74–5)

In this sense, affectivity for Simondon is a more fundamental characteristic

than perception: perception always presupposes a certain unity of a perceiv-
ing subject, whereas affectivity is a transductive operation, which constantly
changes and is changed both by internal impulses and external sensations.
Affectivity expresses the organism’s metastability, different phase shifts
taking place within the living being, which can never be unified: ‘it is always
both more and less than a unity given the metastability internal to the organ-
ism that always has the potential for further individuation, but also due to
its emergence from and continuing role in the broader individuation of the
environment’ (Mills 2016: 76, emphasis in original). Similar to the polarising
function of the membrane in living beings, affect expresses the dynamic
relationships between the organism’s interiority and exteriority.
Affective activity keeps the living being in contact with the pre-­individual
charge and it also relates the living being to the transindividual collective.
However, at some point this affective contradiction has to be overcome, and
this role is taken by emotion. As Simondon asserts,

Emotion arises when the integration of the current state into a single
affective dimension is impossible, just as perception arises when sensa-
 Gilbert Simondon: From Ontology to Ontogenesis 33

tions call for incompatible tropisms [. . .] Emotion is a discovery of the

unity of the living being, just as perception is a discovery of the unity
of the ­world . . . T
­ he interior universe is emotive, just as the exterior
universe is perceptive. (Simondon 2020a: 289)

Simondon even states that emotion, as much as perception, is ‘totalitar-

ian’ in the sense that it imposes on affection and sensation a certain form
of organisation, which creates a system or a structure. However, even if
emotion implies a certain structure, it never results in creating a unified
subject. Rather, it attunes the living being with the collective and thus can
be seen as a first step towards the transindividual collective. Therefore, the
next stage of the structuring activity is perception, which is understood as a
transductive operation between the organism and the objective world. For
Simondon, perception means not the relationship between a subject and
an object, as defined in phenomenology,6 but a transductive operation that
invents and creates this object. As Simondon points out,

Before perception, before the genesis of the form that perception precisely
is, the relation of incompatibility between the subject and the milieu only
exists as a p­ otential . . . ­Perception is not the grasping of a form but the
resolution of a conflict, the discovery of a compatibility, the invention of a
form. (Simondon 2020a: 259, emphasis in original)

To illustrate this statement, we can turn to Simondon’s example of bin-

ocular vision: the left retina and the right retina produce different two-­
dimensional images, which cannot overlap because they represent the
world as seen from different perspectives. However, this disparity between
two-­dimensional images is resolved in a tri-­dimensional perception that
integrates both images into a higher dimension of vision (Simondon 2020a:
229). In this sense, visual perception is a transductive operation that resolves
the disparity by inventing a new form.
In other words, perception is understood not as a subjective experience of
an external world, but as a transductive operation that organises both the
subject and the world. Following Norbert Wiener, Simondon argues that
perception is a struggle against the entropy of a system: ‘It is not enough
to simply say that perception consists in grasping organized wholes; in
fact, perception is the act that organizes wholes’ (Simondon 2020a: 269).
However, to perceive does not mean to receive the signals of i­nformation –
­neither the quantity nor the quality of information can explain perceptive

6
Simondon was influenced by his doctoral supervisor, Maurice Merleau-­Ponty.
Both Simondon and Merleau-­Ponty were seeking to demonstrate the relationship
between the human psyche and the biological body, although in quite different
ways. Merleau-­
Ponty suggested the notion of the lived body (chair), whereas
Simondon developed his theory of individuation.
34 Organism-­Oriented Ontology

activity. Rather it is the intensity, the grasping and organisation of inten-

sities that accounts for the creation of the subject–world system. In this
sense, the intensive diversity found in the subject–world system allows it to
resemble a supersaturated solution: ‘perception is the resolution that trans-
forms the tension that affected this supersaturated system into an organized
structure; it could be said that every veritable perception is the resolution
of a problem of compatibility’ (Simondon 2020a: 270). Similar to Merleau-­
Ponty, Simondon is attempting to demonstrate that neither the world nor
the subject (consciousness) can exist separately from one another, and that
every change in the problematic of the vital domain engenders changes in
the psychical domain. In other words, the problematic found in biological
individuation can be resolved only by entering a higher dimension of psy-
chical individuation.
Thus affect, emotion and perception form the background of psychical
activity. However, individual psychical activity never achieves a final res-
olution of the tensions, differences and disparities that come from vital
individuation. These tensions can be resolved only in collective psychical
individuation. Simondon argues that within the regime of psychical individ-
uation we can discern two types of relations: the interindividual relation (of
affectivity and perception) and the transindividual.

The interindividual relation goes from individual to individual; it does

not penetrate individuals; transindividual action is what makes it such
that individuals exist together as the elements of a system that contains
potentials and metastability, expectation and tension, then the discovery
of a structure and of a functional organization that integrate and resolve
this problematic of incorporated immanence. (Simondon 2020a: 339)

Biological individuation does not fully resolve tensions and disparities,

neither in humans nor in animals: ‘it is precisely based on this position of
the unresolved in man, within this not-­yet-­individuated charge of reality,
that man seeks out his fellow man to form a group in which he will find
presence through a second individuation’ (Simondon 2020a: 340). Thus,
the transindividual relation means a passage from one individual carry-
ing a certain pre-­individual charge to another individual carrying another
pre-­individual charge: in this sense, the transindividual is a relation that
cannot be associated either with any particular individual, or with the inter-
individual. In fact, the transindividual relation traverses every individual,
and therefore it can be interpreted as the operation of transduction that
resolves the problematic that the isolated individual is unable to resolve by
itself. The transindividual relation means that individuals are never fully
formed and that they are defined only in relation to one another and to the
pre-­individual potential or charge. The transindividual relation also implies
a mediation between individuals through the invention of technical objects
(to be discussed in Chapter 5), which in their turn also change and develop.
 Gilbert Simondon: From Ontology to Ontogenesis 35

Thus, the transindividual is a specific form of collective individuation that

keeps its members always unfinished and incomplete, in the condition of
metastable equilibrium.
As we can see, Simondon creates an original theory of the transindi-
vidual that replaces the conventional opposition or conflict between the
individual and the social. This opposition is replaced by the process of indi-
viduation, which has to resolve a tension between the pre-­individual, the
individuated individual and the transindividual collective. In this respect,
Simondon is critically opposing both psychology, which is concerned only
with the individual’s interiority, and sociology, which examines individuals
as being related to each other by external factors, such as identity or values.
By contrast, Simondon defines the psychical individual as a transductive
relation between the interiority (the individual and the pre-­ individual
charge) and the exteriority (the transindividual collective). It is important
to stress that Simondon regards psychical individuation as a prolongation
of biological individuation, and as the extension and elaboration of those
tensions that characterise biological existence. Simondon argues that the
subject is created by three successive phases: the pre-­individual phase, the
individuated phase and the transindividual phase, all of which correspond
to the concepts of nature, the individual and spirituality (Simondon 2020a:
348–9). In this sense, the individual should be defined not as a substantial
being, but as a being which carries within itself something non-­human
(nature, the pre-­individual charge), and which can resolve its tensions only
by going beyond itself towards the transindividual collective.
The continuity between the biological and psychical individuation is
revealed in Simondon’s lecture course Imagination et invention 1965–1966
(2008). In this course Simondon explains imagination as a cycle of images
that develops in the same ontogenetic way as the biological individual. The
ontogenetic cycle of images consists of four phases: anticipation, perception,
memory-­symbolisation and invention. The first phase of the cycle of images
refers to the biological domain and expresses the organism’s spontaneous
reaction to and anticipation of external stimuli. As Daniela Voss points
out, ‘The first type of image emerges in this interval between external stim-
uli and endogenic activity: it is an anticipation of possible movements or
motor r­esponses – t­hat is, a projection or anticipatory image that flows
from the body schema (schéma corporel) of the living being’ (Voss 2019: 12).
This first type of image refers to the spontaneous conduct of anticipation;
however, these reactions are virtual and tentative and as such they remain
in the interiority of the organism (Simondon 2008: 31). The second type
of image belongs to the psychical domain and expresses the perceptive-­
cognitive interaction between an organism and its milieu. ‘At this stage, the
living being performs a synthesis of inter-­sensory images, identifies objects,
receives and selects information’ (Voss 2019: 12). This phase is close to
what Jakob von Uexküll (2010) described as an Umwelt – the relationship
between a living being and its milieu. In this phase the organism does not
36 Organism-­Oriented Ontology

merely anticipate the stimuli, but is actually perceiving information from

its environment and is capable of responding to it. The third type of image
emerges from an affective-­emotive experience and is already organised in a
systematic way as a memory image. Simondon argues that memory images
are selected and filtered in such a way that certain images are transformed
into symbols.7 These symbols condense opposite and incompatible qualities
and thus create the oversaturation of memory images. This oversaturation
produces a metastable phase, which is the necessary condition for invention
and for the creation of a new system (Simondon 2008: 124). Similar to the
oversaturated milieu in a physical domain, which, after being triggered by a
seed, initiates the process of crystallisation, the oversaturation of memory
images initiates the process of invention, which is the fourth and final phase
of image development. Each of the first three phases is related to a specific
function (anticipation, perception, memory). However, the third phase is
saturated in such a way that it is unable to accept new information; hence
a new p ­ hase – t­ hat of i­nvention – e­ merges and starts a new cycle where all
phases begin anew. Invention produces a new detachable object (an artwork
or a technical object), which starts a new cycle of images.
Thus, for Simondon, imagination and invention are specific capacities
that define the interaction between an organism and its milieu. The genesis
of images clearly demonstrates the ontogenetic continuity between biologi-
cal, affective and psychical realms. All living beings of different complexity
participate in the formation of images and of surrounding milieus. This
conceptualisation radically changes the understanding of what imagination
is. As Kristupas Sabolius observes, for Simondon, ‘imagination is to be
discovered within material and biological functions of every living being,
not necessarily human’ (Sabolius 2019: 44). In this respect, imagination is
to be understood not as an exceptional human capacity but as a general
function of living organisms that defines their interaction with the milieu.
‘This amounts to say that, although we often tend to treat imagination as
the most distancing and dissociative function of mind [. . .] for Simondon,
it is what signals pre-­individual creativity of the world that surpasses any
individual mind, be it of human or of any other species’ (Sabolius 2019: 44).
In other words, imagination as the cycle of images is inevitably connected
to the pre-­individual potential and expresses the resolution of a certain vital
problematic. Human consciousness can be creative and inventive only to
the extent that it is able to make use of this pre-­individual potentiality.
Simondon’s theory of imagination implies that all living beings involved
in the creation of images possess a certain kind of c­ ognition – a­ nticipation,
perception, memory and invention. Living beings not only adapt to the
environment, but they can actively anticipate, perceive, recollect and

7
This type of image refers to the symbolic domain; in this respect Simondon opposes
his theory to Jacques Lacan’s notions of the Imaginary and the Symbolic, and also
to Jean-­Paul Sartre’s notion of imagination developed in The Imaginary (1940).
 Gilbert Simondon: From Ontology to Ontogenesis 37

invent. This insight will be important in discussing a certain kind of organic

consciousness espoused in the works of Ruyer in the next chapter. This
statement also allows us to extend the capacity of cognition and imagination
from humans to all living beings and to reconsider humans as a particular
phase in the continuum of living beings.

Conclusion
To conclude, we can argue that Simondon proposes an original theory
of individuation that allows one to compare physical, biological and psy-
chical domains. Simondon also proposes a quasi-­biological explanation
of technical objects, which will be discussed in Chapter 5. Simondon’s
theory of individuation, or ontogenesis, is important not only because it
allows the comparison of different domains but also because it suggests a
major reconceptualisation of the notion of an organism. For Simondon, the
ontological reality of an organism is becoming: an organism is examined
not as a biological individual, but as a process of individuation, continu-
ous folding and unfolding. The structure of an organism is like a multiple
folding of interiorities and exteriorities of different complexity. Thus, an
organism is understood as a process of folding and also as a folded multiplic-
ity composed of heterogeneous parts. This biological multiplicity is always
in a metastable position, meaning that it always contains potentials and
tensions that have to be resolved. A living being is defined as a potentiality,
or metastability, which can be resolved by becoming a new structure, a new
order of magnitude. By contrast, a stable equilibrium means that the tension
is lost and the potential for life is exhausted. In other words, an organism is
defined by this metastable condition, which allows it to develop and change.
This insight applies both to human and non-­human organisms: the human
individual is understood not as someone related to itself (as presumed in
psychology or psychoanalysis), or to other subjects (as presumed in soci-
ology); rather, it is in constant tension with the pre-­individual potential
and the transindividual collective. As such, a human individual is always
an uncompleted and unfinished entity that is constantly recreated in the
process of individuation.
 2
Raymond Ruyer: Organic Consciousness

Raymond Ruyer’s philosophy of biology takes the notion of an organism

as its central theme. As George Canguilhem observed in his ‘Note’ (1947),
the publication of Ruyer’s book Elements de psychobiologie was an important
event which helped to overcome the ‘oblivion of life’ in French philosophy.
In his two most important books, Neofinalism (2016) and The Genesis of Living
Forms (2020),1 Ruyer defines an organism as a primary consciousness, which
has the capacity of self-­organisation, self-­affection and self-­enjoyment. For
Ruyer, primary consciousness is a specific phenomenon characteristic both
of human beings and all living forms. What defines any living being is
the development of forms, or the process of morphogenesis, leading to
a certain purpose that is not determined in advance but self-­initiated by
an organism’s ‘mnemic themes’. Like Simondon,2 Ruyer argues against
the notion of bounded entities, understood as pre-­formed and pre-­given,
and asserts that morphogenesis is a self-­formative activity, which creates
without any pre-­ordered idea or plan. Ruyer’s morphogenesis, similar to
Simondonian ontogenesis, is a process that carries within itself the potential
for its transformation. Ruyer criticises contemporary theories of embryo-
genesis as being built on Newtonian physics, which construes living beings
as mechanisms placed in a neutral space. In this sense, Ruyer distinguishes
between the extensive space of physical entities and the intensive space of
living forms. In contrast to physical entities, Ruyer examines living organ-
isms as self-­formative and self-­surveying beings, which have the properties

1
Originally published as Raymond Ruyer, Néo-finalisme, Paris: PUF, 1952; trans-
lated into English as Neofinalism, trans. Alyosha Edlebi, Minneapolis, MN:
University of Minnesota Press, 2016. Raymond Ruyer, La Genèse des formes
vivantes, Paris: Flammarion, 1958; translated into English as The Genesis of Living
Forms, trans. Jon Roffe and Nicholas B. de Weydenthal, New York: Rowman and
Littlefield, 2020. Some translations of Ruyer were published in Parrhesia (Ruyer
2018) and Angelaki: Journal of the Theoretical Humanities (Ruyer et al. 2019).
2
Simondon and Ruyer were working at the same time and knew each other’s
works; Simondon refers to Ruyer’s ideas in his Sur la psychologie (1956–1967), Paris:
PUF, 2015.
 Raymond Ruyer: Organic Consciousness 39

of primary consciousness. Each living form, from the most primitive organ-
isms to those having a psychological consciousness and a brain, expresses
conscious activity and the capacity of maintaining and transforming its
form. This insight allows one to reconceptualise the notion of an organism
and also to relocate human consciousness from its exceptional position to
its place in the continuum of living beings. In this chapter I will concentrate
on some specific aspects of Ruyer’s theory of morphogenesis and its tension
between preformationism and finalism; then I will discuss the notions of
equipotentiality and of self-­survey, and finally emphasise the uniqueness of
his notion of primary consciousness.

Morphogenesis: Between Preformationism and Finalism

In his account of the development of living forms Ruyer distances himself
from earlier theories of both mechanism and vitalism, and refers to the
doctrine of organicism as an attempt to overcome the dispute between
them: ‘Organicism neither seeks to reduce the organism to physicochemi-
cal phenomena nor seeks to explain organic specificity by a distinct prin-
ciple (vital principle or soul), which would intervene dynamically in the
unfolding of physical phenomena [. . .] To see the organism as a whole is
the key’ (Ruyer 2016: 190, emphasis in original). However, even if organi-
cists solved the contradiction between mechanism and vitalism by refusing
to explain organisms either by alluding to mechanical properties or by
acknowledging some vital force, Ruyer does not think that their efforts
were successful.3 Organicists presume that the organism’s organisation is
a key factor of its unity and regulation. By contrast, Ruyer argues that the
notion of organisation cannot account for the development of forms; what
is needed is a principle of directed and purposeful activity. Ruyer asserts
that Kant’s account of organisms is close to that of organicism. However,
the principle of final cause or purposiveness that Kant proposes to define
organic beings can be applied to nature in general, but it cannot explain
the formation and behaviour of living beings. Similar to organicists, Kant
explains that a living being is a ‘cause and effect of itself’, in other words,
it is self-­organising. For Ruyer, the Kantian explanation of nature is deter-
ministic according to the faculty of understanding, and finalist according
to the faculty of reason, and these two faculties are united in the faculty of
judgement. As Ruyer points out, ‘this faculty is “referred to the supersen-
sible” and the unity arises “in an unknown way”. The final cause is not a
force; it is merely a legitimate and indispensible point of view, not only on
living beings but on the entire world’ (Ruyer 2016: 192–3). Ruyer thinks
that the concept of finality should be renounced and replaced with the idea
of a dynamic force. Such a dynamic force is consciousness, understood not

3
Ruyer turns organicism into a caricature by describing it as ‘an empty concept
that has no basis in reality; it is a “squared circle”’ (Ruyer 2016: 191).
40 Organism-­Oriented Ontology

as a transcendental principle but as an absolute form immanent in every

living being.
Thus, Ruyer invents the concept of an absolute form, which he distin-
guishes from molar structures.

In place of the distinction between the organic and the inorganic, Ruyer
proposes a new distinction that cuts across both these domains: a dis-
tinction between absolute forms (individual beings), on the one hand, and
molar structures (aggregate or mass phenomena), on the other. Absolute
forms include molecules, viruses, cells, embryos, and brains, while molar
structures are statistical aggregates of these individual forms, such as
clouds, gases, crowds, or geological formations. (Smith 2017: 117–18,
emphasis in original)

Similar to organicism, Ruyer is concerned with the nature of organisation, or

bonding, which for him is of two different types: absolute forms are involved
in constant formation that establishes an irreducible unity between their
parts, whereas the functioning of molar structures is a result of external
forces. For example, a rock or a cloud is a molar structure, or an aggregate,
because it is shaped by mechanical external forces and does not produce any
internal bonds; by contrast, absolute forms, such as molecules or organisms,
produce internal bonds that are maintained throughout all changes. In
other words, Ruyer establishes a fundamental distinction between function-
ing and formation: functioning is merely mechanical and it cannot explain
the self-­organising activities of living beings; by contrast, formation is an
incessant activity characteristic to individuals which can create, maintain
and repair themselves. As Smith points out, ‘This distinction in turn entails
a new distribution of the sciences: the primary sciences are those that focus
on absolute forms, while the secondary sciences are those that only study
individuals from their molar or statistical side’ (Smith 2017: 119). Thus, for
Ruyer, the main problem is not the distinction between the organic and
the inorganic, but that between self-­individuating forms and forms that are
individuated by other forces (to use Simondon’s vocabulary). The central
philosophical problem is to explain absolute form as a self-­formative force.
So what is an absolute form? And how can we explain its persistence?
How can we explain the obvious fact that, according to the theory of embry-
ogenesis, an organism may have different forms, from a fertilised egg to a
fully developed adult, and still be the same individual? Ruyer describes this
self-­organising activity as a process of morphogenesis, and, in this sense, he
reinterprets the traditional opposition between matter and form that has
guided philosophy since Plato and Aristotle. Ruyer’s theory of morpho-
genesis breaks with the metaphysical definition of form as something pre-­
given and already structured. In order to develop and change, a living being
should be independent both from a pre-­existent model and a pre-­defined
goal. As Jon Roffe points out, Ruyer conceives form not ‘in terms of a fixed
 Raymond Ruyer: Organic Consciousness 41

model, an eidos whose outline is given secondary material content in being

incarnated, but in terms of non-­determining developmental themes. These
themes, rather than preforming the individual in genesis, are non-­material
hinges or hooks around which improvisation takes place’ (Roffe 2017: 585,
emphasis in original). Form is understood as a formative activity which
creates connections and bonds between different parts of an individual,
and also between different phases or shapes of the same individual. In
this respect, form is understood not as something existing separately from
matter but as an active force that is always already embodied in matter. As
Ruyer points out,

form is inseparable from matter. Living matter only ever appears as

formed, just as the benzene molecule only ever appears, as matter, in its
well-­known hexagonal shape. Benzene is not an amorphous matter that
comes to be ‘informed’ by the shape of the hexagon, produced like an
Aristotelian form. It is this form itself, which is in turn derived from the
modes of bonding of carbon and hydrogen. In the same way, biological
forms arise without hiatus from molecular morphology. (Ruyer 2020: 31)

In other words, both inorganic and organic entities carry their forms in
themselves and actively participate in their own self-­forming. Matter and
form cannot be clearly separated, because matter is forming itself and
invents its own forms in the process of morphogenetic development.
Another important feature of absolute form is that Ruyer defines it in
terms of consciousness. ‘Consciousness is any active formation in its abso-
lute activity, and all formation is consciousness’ (Ruyer 2020: 162, emphasis
in original). This reference to consciousness does not imply a return to any
kind of vitalism, because consciousness is not a transcendent substance but
a form embodied in material forces. ‘Every form, from atoms to molecules,
viruses, bacteria and more complex organisms, is a self-­sustaining config-
uration of forces of connection. Each of these forms, according to Ruyer,
is a consciousness’ (Bogue 2009: 304). The notion of consciousness also
has to be separated from panpsychism, which expresses the attitude that
human consciousness can be extended to explain the existence of other
entities. Rather, Ruyer is trying to assert that consciousness is an organ-
ising activity or force that can account for the organisation of absolute
forms (from molecules to organisms). In contrast to molar structures, which
are observable and definable from the outside, absolute forms have their
organising principle in themselves, and also have the capacity of surveying
their own development. It is this capacity of self-­survey that helps form-­
consciousness to follow the individual’s internal state and to maintain its
integrity throughout all stages of its development.
To account for the process of morphogenesis, Ruyer introduces the
notion of a formative theme, which can be imagined as the main theme of
a melody. A melody can operate in two modes: the musical theme can exist
42 Organism-­Oriented Ontology

as an ‘ideal’, which is trans-­temporal and trans-­spatial, existing outside the

coordinates of time and space; and it can be actually performed in real time
and space while being open to improvisation and adjustments.4 In a similar
way, such an ideal melody can direct the morphogenesis of an organism;
however, its actual performance, or embodiment, is open to improvisations
and changes according to its environment and other factors. As Ruyer
points out, ‘morphogenesis can only be understood by invoking a non-­
mechanical model, by thinking of an individualised melodic theme which
can both be integrally repeated and distribute itself in variations through
which the initial, repeated theme serves as its own “development” (in the
musical sense of the term)’ (Ruyer 2020: 61). Thus, the ideal melody can be
understood as a potential or virtual idea in the Deleuzian sense, whereas its
performance can be understood as the actual process of differentiation.
At this point we have to ask: what is the ontological status of these trans-­
temporal and trans-­spatial themes in Ruyer’s theory? As we know, Ruyer
condemned mechanism, vitalism and organicism as incapable of explaining
the formative activity of living beings. However, this ‘ideal’ theme seems
to be very similar to a transcendent principle that is guiding any actual
development. As Bogue explains, ‘Ruyer’s concept of the developmental
theme does not imply a conventional idealism, for the theme, though “trans-­
spatial”, is always immanent within the material world’ (Bogue 2017: 524).
For example, an embryo contains all potential themes, which become more
and more restricted when an organism develops and takes some specific
form. However, this developmental theme is embodied within the organism
and disappears only when the organism exhausts its potential and vanishes.
Elizabeth Grosz also observes that even if the melodic theme pre-­exists its
development, it is to be understood not as a transcendent idea but as a phe-
nomenon immanent to the processes of development. The melodic theme
is like a score, a virtual whole that can be actualised in many different ways
in an actual performance:

The trans-­spatial theme pervades all of time, to the extent that it con-
stitutes the melody, the rhythm, through which each thing forms itself.
Primary form appropriates themes that have already been laid out for
it in advance, not a priori like a command, but more like the musical
performance of a score, which preexists and to some extent directs but
does not determine each performance. (Grosz 2017: 226)

4
As Ruyer points out, ‘truly epigenetic appearance in space and time and specific
complex structures all lead us to admit a non-­geometric “dimension” – a “non-­
spatial” region in which the “ideals” of specific forms subsist in a “semantic” ­state
. . . ­At the same time, these ideals act dynamically on that which actualises them
and are actively realised by it; in turn, these are adopted as its ideas’ (Ruyer 2020:
162, emphasis in original).
 Raymond Ruyer: Organic Consciousness 43

Thus the organism’s developmental theme is never separated from an actual

organism and is always immanent in all forms of its development.
Thus, the original notion of absolute form allows Ruyer to avoid the
danger of being trapped either in preformationism or in finalism. He dis-
tances himself from any form of preformationism, asserting that it is ‘the
biological form of the theory of functioning’ (Ruyer 2020: 157). This pre-
sumes that biological forms are given in advance and later develop only
in quantities. In contrast to this assumption, morphogenesis is understood
as a formative activity that creates and invents qualitatively new forms of
organisation. In this respect, genetics, or ‘gene-­centrism’, is also seen as a
certain kind of preformationism because it explains organic development as
an activation of commands coded in the genome.

We cannot claim today that the egg, with its genes and protoplasm,
­contains – ­like a kind of ‘written plan’, or like the record that only needs
to be p
­ layed – ­all the future forms of the adult organism and its nervous
system. The whole of experimental embryology, and all the studies of
instinct, prove that formational dynamic themes are truly formational
and organisational. They do not simply deploy structures, make structures
‘speak’, since these structures do not yet exist, and since it is precisely the
formational themes that give birth to them. (Ruyer 2020: 167)

In other words, absolute forms, or formational themes, are the only agents
of morphogenetic invention.
On the other hand, the creativity of the formative theme allows Ruyer to
avoid the trap of finalism. As Smith points out, ‘Ruyer is not a traditional
“finalist,” presuming a teleology or purpose throughout nature or for nature
as a whole. Rather, he defends a “neofinalism”’ (Smith 2017: 122). The devel-
opment of absolute forms is neofinalist in the sense that it implies creativity,
freedom and consciousness, and is not pre-­programmed in advance. As
Hansen explains, ‘in calling his finalism a “neofinalism,” Ruyer does not
simply mean to emphasize its rejuvenation of traditional commitments.
Rather, he seeks to highlight its fundamental relocalization of the operation
of ­finalism – ­from individual organisms and biological entities to the entire
system of biological operationality’ (Hansen 2016: xix). As Ruyer himself
explains in a text ‘Raymond Ruyer par lui-­même’ (2007), his attempts to
explain the formation of living beings in terms of finalism led him not only
to teleology but also to theology.5 Looking retrospectively at his own work,

5
‘In the end, this conception of consciousness-­activities in participation implies
a new finalism, not only at the level of individual activities, but in the system
that is itself comprised of all the individual activities. It is necessary, finally, to
postulate a region beyond the transspatial domain; in its dimension of “nature”,
obedient to non-­mechanical and non-­geometric laws that nonetheless remain
natural, this region can only be called theologic, since it was the source of all
44 Organism-­Oriented Ontology

Ruyer had to admit that a theological explanation at some point appeared

to be futile and insufficient to explain the formation of living beings.6 Ruyer
himself came to the conclusion that a teleological and theological expla-
nation contradicts his theory of morphogenesis, according to which living
beings are self-­forming and self-­maintaining entities.
To avoid the limitations of both preformationism and finalism, Ruyer
asserts the autonomy and self-­organisation of any living being: ‘The living
being is at once the agent and the “material” of its own action [. . .] The
living being forms itself directly in accordance with a theme, without the
theme first having to become an idea-­image or represented model’ (Ruyer
2020: 175). In this respect, Ruyer’s idea of a formative theme is very close
to Simondon’s thesis that ‘the living being is an agent and theatre of indi-
viduation’ (Simondon 2020a: 9). Actually, Ruyer’s formative theme can be
compared to Simondon’s notion of transduction: transduction is both the
process that differentiates and the new reality of what has been differenti-
ated. Similarly, for Ruyer, ‘organic morphogenesis [. . .] results not only in
the transformation of an initial form, and not only a brute increase in com-
plexity [. . .] but in an increase in complexity in a self-­sustaining, consistent,
unified totality capable of serving as the basis for a new formation in its
turn’ (Ruyer 2020: 2). The idea of a formative theme means that an organ-
ism carries within itself the themes of its own formation and organisation,
and, in this sense, serves as an immanent cause of its own development.

Equipotentiality
As we can see, the notion of finalism posed for Ruyer a certain kind of
theoretical impasse. Even after reformulating his project in terms of ‘neof-
inalism’, he still had to account for the formation of living beings and to
find the source of their creativity. If neither a predetermined form nor a final
cause can explain the process of morphogenesis, what is the driving force
of this formation? The embryologist Étienne Wolff, who was Ruyer’s com-
panion in wartime captivity,7 argued that one could avoid these difficulties
by replacing the notion of ‘final cause’ with the notion of ‘potentiality’
(Favre et al. 1988). The notion of potentiality (or, more precisely, equipo-
tentiality) is an important term in Ruyer’s works, where it is used in several

individualized activities, of all forms and all laws’ (Ruyer 2007: 10; cited from
Hansen 2016: xix).
6
As Ruyer observes, in trying to understand this ‘theology’, which he was
attempting to elaborate until 1946, he d ­ iscovered – a­ lthough it was not a pleasant
­discovery – t­ hat his attempts were futile and insufficient. This is why his research
conducted after ­1946 – ­on neofinalism, values, ­morphogenesis – ­is dissociated
from his theological works (Ruyer 2007: 10).
7
Ruyer and Wolff were prisoners of war in a camp in Austria during the Second
World War. In this camp they founded the Université en captivité, where Wolff gave
a course on biology that Ruyer attended for a year (Colonna 2007: 10–11).
 Raymond Ruyer: Organic Consciousness 45

different aspects. First, equipotentiality means that a part can stand for the
whole in the same organism. As Ruyer points out, ‘There is an ordinary
“equipotentiality” in countless adult tissues: we can live with a single lung,
a single kidney, and even with a fragment of a lung, which is in this sense
equivalent to the whole’ (Ruyer 2016: 60–1). The part takes on the role of
the whole, and continues to play the formative theme in the organism’s
development. However, as Ruyer observes, this type of equipotentiality is
purely quantitative or measurable: for example, the equipotentiality of the
pulmonary or renal tissue is quantitative in comparison to the qualitative
equipotentiality of the brain.
The second aspect of equipotentiality is related to the development of the
embryo and also to the development of the brain, which both imply a qual-
itative change. Ruyer observes that in the early stage of organisation embry-
onic cells are unspecified in their function and are capable of developing in
multiple ways. Today this phenomenon is known as the pluripotentiality of
stem cells. Ruyer suggests that embryonic equipotentiality expresses a certain
kind of organic consciousness that organises the embryo’s development. In
this respect, Ruyer establishes a parallelism between the equipotentiality
in the embryo and the equipotentiality of the brain because both of them
presume a ‘conscious’ and self-­forming activity. He observes that

we are forced to treat cerebral equipotentiality and embryonic equipo-

tentiality in the same way [. . .] Numerous signs indicate that these two
‘inobservable’ domains are one. The organic memory that guides the
differentiations of the embryo, the organic inventions that perfect the
species in the course of successive ontogeneses, closely resemble psycho-
logical and individual memory, consciousness, and the faculty of inven-
tion. (Ruyer 2016: 69)

In other words, both the embryo and the brain are saturated with potential-
ity, which guides their development. And they both possess a certain organic
consciousness that orchestrates their material becoming: ‘The brain is an
embryo that has not finished its growth; the embryo is a brain that begins to
organize itself before organizing the external world’ (Ruyer 2016: 69).
However, some important differences appear: first, the brain continues
to grow and differentiate even when its organic development is finished;
second, the differentiation of the brain is reversible, whereas the devel-
opment of the organism is irreversible. In other words, cerebral equipo-
tentiality is inexhaustible and persists during the entire process of an
organism’s development. Cerebral equipotentiality might be captured in
the provisional closure of the cortical network’s synaptic connections, but
physiologically it remains open (Ruyer 2016: 69). In other words, the cortical
network oscillates between a provisional closure (at the moment of a defi-
nite perception or action) and a physiological openness towards new per-
ceptions. In contrast to the quantitative or measurable e­ quipotentiality that
46 Organism-­Oriented Ontology

defines the development of pulmonary or renal tissue, which forms closed

and final structures, the equipotentiality of the brain is always involved in
a new thematic system and, in this sense, remains open: ‘Ever-­new thematic
systems [. . .] alter at every instant the “closures” of the neural network,
and this amounts to transforming the network into an organ with a new
structure’ (Ruyer 2016: 70). Thus, even if the brain’s activity can be captured
by a certain perception or an idea and form a provisional closure, it still
remains open for further differentiations. The neural network functions
like an operationally open system which permanently reorganises itself
through circular causality. By contrast, embryonic equipotentiality disap-
pears progressively: ‘The theme of organs, by taking shape, ceases to be a
theme to become a structure’ (Ruyer 2016: 70). When organic development
is finished, its potentiality vanishes and gives place to the closed structures
that it has established.
Another aspect of equipotentiality is related to the interaction between
different organisms. Ruyer refers to the early experiments in embryogenesis,
which proved that a certain degree of equipotentiality prevailed in cells
that were grafted into other embryos. Ruyer refers to the works of German
embryologist Hans Spemann, who experimented by transplanting certain
parts of an embryo into a specific region of another embryo. Spemann
was building his experiments on the premises of his predecessors, Wilhelm
Roux and Hans Driesch. Roux took two blastomeres of a frog’s egg after
the full accomplishment of its first cleavage, and killed one with a hot
needle. The remaining cell continued to develop but formed only half of
an embryo. Roux’s results were published in 1888; three years later Driesch
tried to repeat the experiment with sea urchin cells. He shook the germs
during their two-­cell stage and managed to separate the two blastomeres
from one another. He expected that the next morning he would see the
half-­organisation of his subject; however, he observed a typically whole
gastrula differing only by its small size from a normal one. Thus, in contrast
to Roux’s mechanistic explanation that a half would develop only into
a half, Driesch found that a half can also develop into a whole organism
by a simple process of rearrangement of its material (Driesch 2020: 41–3).
Driesch believed that there is a vital force in the organism that cannot be
exhausted by mechanical explanation. Thus, the same experiment ended
with different results, which Roux explained in terms of mechanism, and
Driesch interpreted in terms of vitalism.
Following the work of his predecessors, Spemann conducted a series
of experiments in which a selected part of one embryo was transplanted
into a specific region of another embryo. Together with Hilde Mangold he
conducted an experiment known as ‘the organiser experiment’. Mangold
took the tissue from the dorsal lip of the blastopore and grafted it into a
host embryo, which induced the formation of a secondary embryo. The
new embryo was composed of a mosaic of host and donor cells. ‘Therefore,
the transplanted dorsal lip and the host embryo both participated in the
 Raymond Ruyer: Organic Consciousness 47

formation of the secondary embryo. Because the tiny amount of tissue from
the donor embryo was powerful enough to cause the formation of a new
embryo, the dorsal lip was called the “organizer region”’ (Magner n.d.).
Repeating this experiment, Spemann discovered other organiser regions.
In 1935 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for his discovery of the ‘organiser
effect’ in embryonic development (Spemann 1935). The outline of his ideas
was later published in his Embryonic Development and Induction (1938).
Ruyer interprets Spemann’s experiments as an affirmation that embry-
onic development has a thematic character. As Grosz explains, ‘The trans-
planted blastopores were still living elements or fragments that invoke a
mnemic theme other than that which regulates the host species, bringing
into being a chimera that nevertheless obeys the overall form of the host’
(Grosz 2017: 233). The grafted cells still retain their equipotentiality and
develop according to the specific site where they are grafted on.

The embryonic host performs its melodic theme: the graft, while now
located in the embryonic host, continues to play its own melody, create its
own form according to its theme, even as the embryo continues to play its
own mnemic theme, with which the graft must now, in its own way and
through its own inventiveness, harmonize. (Grosz 2017: 234)

Thus, Ruyer takes Spemann’s experiments as proof that embryonic equi-

potentiality is bound up with the thematic character of development.
Embryonic cells are self-­organising and ‘conscious’ in the sense that they
operate as an autopoietic system, capable of maintaining its organisation
and, at the same time, reacting to the environment (even if this environ-
ment is another organism). The embryonic cells react to this environment
in such a way that they manage to incorporate these contingent elements
into the system and produce a new hybrid embryo. In this sense, a living
form can be interpreted as an organic consciousness that is able to maintain
its form and to transform this form by incorporating otherness.

Types of Forms, Types of Consciousnesses

As we have seen, Ruyer makes a comparison between embryonic equipo-
tentiality and cerebral equipotentiality: both the embryo’s and the brain’s
capacity of self-­organisation is seen as a certain form of consciousness.
Ruyer explains morphogenesis as a theory of forms, which derive from
each other and which relate to different types of consciousness. Form I,
primary consciousness, is the characteristic of all material entities at the
scale of atoms or molecules, and also of the most elementary organisms.
Even at this level, primary consciousness expresses a structuring activity.
Form II, secondary consciousness, is characteristic of all beings with motor
schema, which leads to becoming a perceptive or schematising conscious-
ness in humans and animals. Finally, there is Form III, human self-­reflective
48 Organism-­Oriented Ontology

consciousness, which develops thanks to the techniques of language and

symbolisation. What is important for Ruyer is that these three types of
consciousness derive from each other: ‘It is indeed necessary to grasp that
Form I is fundamental, and that forms II and III would be inconceivable
if they were not based on Form I, of which they are only particular cases.
The three types are distinct, but each is united with the one preceding it’
(Ruyer 2020: 150). In other words, there is a certain continuity between the
primary, secondary and self-­reflective human consciousness: the physiology
of the organism and its specific psychological and reflective phenomena are
interrelated by internal and external circuits.
Ruyer describes Form I, or primary consciousness, as a ‘consciousness
of transformation’: for example, a hormone exercises a chemical action on
the relevant tissue and deforms or transforms it in a certain manner. Thus,
primary consciousness already works as an ‘organiser-­effect’ inducing a cer-
tain transformation into the organism: ‘for the organism, being an absolute
form in spatio-­temporal self-­possession, trans-formation is given in itself, it
is subjectivity and primary consciousness as much as it is primitive form
trans-­formed’ (Ruyer 2020: 153, emphasis in original). Thus, Form I is a self-­
organising system that has the potential for qualitative change and internal
transformation. Besides that, the organism is not only in possession of itself,
but in relation to its vital domain: for example, an animal organises its domain
as a den, a burrow, as hunting terrain or terrain of refuge (Ruyer 2020: 154).
Following Jakob von Uexküll (2010), Ruyer argues that an animal has at its
disposal not the whole of the objective space but a piece of subjective time
and space that is called the Umwelt. The constitution of this subjective milieu
is characteristic of Form II, which expresses the emergence of perceptual
consciousness in higher animals. At this point there appears a certain dif-
ferentiation between an organism and its vital domain and the exchange of
information circulating between them. Thus, in Form II, the consciousness
of transformation is replaced by the consciousness of information (Ruyer
2020: 154). At this stage an organism projects itself into the environment in
such a way that its organic morphology is prolonged into the external mor-
phogenesis of the vital domain: for example, a burrow presupposes specific
organs suitable for digging, and a spider’s web presupposes certain glands for
excreting silk. In other words, an organism and its milieu are interconnected
in an informational network, which is ‘like a morpho-­genetic theme ordering
both the organic and extra-­organic, internal and external circuits, biotope
and psychotope, and which is to the interior what the skin is to the exterior’
(Ruyer 2020: 155). If Form I is actively transforming the organism’s internal
space, Form II is actively projecting the organism towards its environment,
orchestrating the organism’s externalisation towards the vital domain.
In its turn, Form III, which is self-­reflective human consciousness, presup-
poses a higher level of externalisation which is mediated by the techniques
of language and symbolisation. If animal life was guided by a signal or an
index, then human life is guided by a symbol that can be detached from
 Raymond Ruyer: Organic Consciousness 49

a vital domain. Vocal gestures become words, emotional gestures become

ritualised gestures, the expressivity of perceived forms becomes the free
creation of artistic forms. In this respect, symbolisation allows Form III, or
self-­reflective consciousness, to detach itself both from its primary organic
morphology and from its vital domain. As Roffe points out, ‘symbolisa-
tion at once projects the primary activity of the being into the world and
separates it from the ­need – ­in the social(ised) part of the ­environment
– ­for unrestricted direct engagement’ (Roffe 2017: 587). In other words, the
passage from Form II to Form III can be seen as increased externalisation
of morphogenetic themes. As Bogue observes, ‘The simpler the form, the
smaller its domain of space-­time control. The movement from Form I to
Form III is one of increasing mastery of space-­time, increasing flexibility
and increasing autonomy’ (Bogue 2009: 312). This increased exteriorisation
of Form III presupposes not only the mastery of symbols and language, but
also the use of tools and technologies.
As has already been established, the invention of tools is not something
specific only to human consciousness. According to Ruyer, ‘It is impossible
not to recognize that instinctive technology prolongs organogenesis: the spi-
der’s art of weaving clearly extends the formation of his silk ­glands . . . ­But
what is true for instinctive behavior is equally true for intelligent behavior’
(Ruyer 2016: 19). Humans also prolong their bodies through the invention
of clothing, weaving and the use of furs. In this respect, Ruyer differenti-
ates between three levels of exteriorisation: it is organogenesis, instinctive
behaviour and intelligent activity. Organogenesis produces organs within
the organism; instinctive behaviour produces the extension of organs (for
example, a spider’s web as the extension of silk glands); and intelligent activ-
ity creates tools and technologies that are detachable and extended towards
the world. For Ruyer, internal organs in some sense already serve as tools:
for example, the teeth are grinding tools, and the stomach is an automatic
mixer. Therefore, technological tools are seen as an extension of bodily
organs. Referring to André Leroi-­Gourhan, Ruyer argues that technological
invention should be regarded as an extension of instinctual behaviour by
which living beings strive to control the world: ‘It is because the tool and the
machine extend organic activity that they always remain subordinate to it
and have no persistence of their own’ (Ruyer 2016: 21). As Smith concludes,
‘Ruyer thus distinguishes three levels of technicity: bodily organs as an
originary technicity; externalized organs as an extended phenotype (webs,
dams, nests); and the detachable artifacts that enter into a circuit external
to the body’ (Smith 2017: 122).
Thus, technical invention is understood as a continuation of organic
invention, and they are both seen as manifestations of different types of
consciousness.

Long before we had formulated a definition of cybernetics, we had come

to realise that organic techniques could inspire industrial techniques,
50 Organism-­Oriented Ontology

and that the progress of industrial techniques could allow for a better
comprehension of organic techniques. All forms, whether of type I, II or
III, appear to depend on the same Reason. (Ruyer 2020: 171)

Usually we think that technological invention is achieved by human intel-

ligence and knowledge; however, what gets lost in this assumption is that
the human brain itself is an organic invention. Thus, human reflective con-
sciousness can define itself only because it is derived from primary organic
consciousness:

This is to simply forget that the human brain which invents itself is first
of all only an organic tissue, a network of cells, and that every human and
social deployment of invention is only auxiliary and accessory [. . .] The human
is only conscious, intelligent and inventive because all living individuality
is conscious, intelligent and inventive. (Ruyer 2020: 171, emphasis in
original)

Our brain has the capacity of perception and cognition only because
it is made of organic tissue and possesses the characteristics of primary
consciousness.
In this respect, Ruyer creates an original conception of consciousness
which is understood as a forming activity driving the process of morpho-
genesis. As Ruyer points out,

Consciousness is not a passive knowledge but the active unity of a

behaviour or a perception. Consciousness is always a forming activity.
It is always a dynamic effort of unification [. . .] This hypothesis, we must
underline, does not consist in saying that consciousness explains morpho-
genesis; it rather asserts that consciousness and morphogenesis are one
and the same. (Ruyer 2020: 160)

Consciousness is nothing other than a form, an active principle, which

refers neither to a transcendent realm, nor to a subjective consciousness of
any particular subject. However, what keeps the unity of this consciousness
throughout the process of morphogenesis? To answer this question we have
to explain the notion of self-­survey.

Self-Survey without a Self

Ruyer explains the notion of self-­survey in chapter 9 of Neofinalism, where
he reveals that primary consciousness is capable of surveying itself without
any distance or mediation. As Smith points out, ‘It is not an exaggeration
to say that the pages where Ruyer develops his concept of absolute survey
are among the most original passages in twentieth-­century philosophy’
(Smith 2017: 123). In this chapter, Ruyer asserts that consciousness knows
 Raymond Ruyer: Organic Consciousness 51

itself without making itself an object of external observation. Ruyer gives

an example of himself sitting at a table with a chequerboard surface. In
order to capture the entire surface, the ‘eye’ or a camera (a ‘mythical’ third
eye, usually used in photography or in cinematography) has to be in a
supplementary dimension (n+1), from which it can observe and perceive;
however, this act of perception requires another supplementary dimension
from which it can be perceived, so these supplements go on ad infinitum.
Another thing is that in this geometrical space the table’s chequerboard
squares are perceived as contiguous to each other, they are partes extra
partes, or parts that are external to each other. However, as Ruyer observes,
the laws of physics, which can be applied to perception operating in the
geometrical Cartesian space, cannot be applied to the visual sensation as
a state of consciousness. As he asserts, in his internal sensation the per-
ceived object and its perception form a single whole that is indivisible and
in no need of any supplementary dimension. For Ruyer, consciousness
simultaneously perceives the object, the act of this perception, and itself;
hence all these components merge into one sensation of self-­survey.8 This
internal sensation does not obey the laws of physics; thus the chequerboard
squares are perceived not as contiguous to each other, but given all at
once, so that the distance between them ‘is not a true distance that would
require physical means and energy to be overcome’ (Ruyer 2016: 94). There
is no true distance and no real distinction between the perceiver and the
perceived object; therefore all sensations are ‘absolute’, non-­dimensional
and indivisible, merged in self-­enjoyment.9 Self-­enjoyment in this context
means not pleasure but rather an internal immediacy without recourse to
objective geometrical space where it could be observed from the outside.
According to Ruyer,

My visual field necessarily sees itself through an ‘absolute’ or ‘nondi-

mensional survey.’ It surveys itself without positioning itself at a distance
and in a perpendicular dimension. It is therefore a gross error to imagine
the visual field in the occipital area as a kind of photograph, or as those
cinematographic montages in which a three-­dimensional scene suddenly
becomes an album page that begins to turn before us on the screen.
Between the ‘I-­unity’ and the visual field, there is only a purely symbolic
‘distance’. (Ruyer 2016: 97)

8
The term ‘survey’ (in French survol, which derives from survoler) literally means ‘to
fly over’ or ‘to skim or rapidly run one’s eyes over something’. Survol is sometimes
translated into English as ‘survey’ (Ruyer 2016; Deleuze and Guattari 1994) and
sometimes as ‘overflight’ (Bogue 2017; Grosz 2017).
9
As Ruyer points out, the term ‘self-­enjoyment’ is taken from the philosophy of
Samuel Alexander, Space, Time, and Deity: The Gifford Lectures 1916–1918, London:
Macmillan, 1927. Alexander opposes ‘enjoyment’ to ‘contemplation’ (Ruyer
2016: 266, n. 2).
52 Organism-­Oriented Ontology

In other words, the notion of absolute survey means that internal (visual)
perception doesn’t need any external observer and that a living system can
survey itself in self-­referential circuits. This ‘inner vision’ can be compared
with the self-­reflective circuits of I-­consciousness as described in idealistic
philosophy. However, what makes Ruyer’s insight so interesting is that he
ascribes this capacity not only to self-­reflective human consciousness but
also to the primary consciousness of simple organisms.
In this respect, the notion of self-­survey can be interpreted as a certain
kind of non-­human cognition, which is characteristic of consciousness of
any kind. As Ruyer points out, ‘why couldn’t the protozoan “see” itself
directly just as much as our cortical tissue? The protozoan has neither eyes
nor mirror; but neither does our cortex have an eye or a mirror to see what
the eyes have already brought it’ (Ruyer 2016: 97). In ‘seeing’ itself, the
protozoan cannot see external forms but is capable of seeing its ‘unity’ in
recursive self-­referential loops. This isomorphism between different kinds
of living systems allows Ruyer to conclude that ‘there is at bottom only a
single mode of consciousness: primary consciousness, form-­in-­itself of every
organism and at one with life’ (Ruyer 2016: 98). Secondary cerebral or per-
ceptual consciousness presents external objects to our consciousness, but
‘this particular content does not represent an essential trait of consciousness
and life. There is no reason to deny subjectivity, primary consciousness,
self-­survey, and the self-­enjoyment of their own form to our noncortical or
even nonneural cells or to our organism in general’ (Ruyer 2016: 98). In this
respect, self-­survey collects the different layers of biological multiplicity into
a ‘unity’ that might look very similar to the ways in which psychological or
self-­reflective consciousness maintains the unity of the human individual.10
However, what is important for Ruyer is to demonstrate that consciousness,
or absolute form, is present in any organic being that is capable of organis-
ing itself without an external mind or observer.
In this respect, Ruyer distinguishes between an external perception taking
place in a geometrical space and an internal sensation as a self-­survey. An
external (visual) perception is based on the extensive qualities of composites
and their parts (partes extra partes), which can be divided, measured, etc.,
whereas a sensation as a self-­survey is indivisible and thus ‘absolute’. It is
a unity of forces, a structuring activity, which forms and directs everything
from atoms to complex organisms. This structuring activity is consciousness,
which, for Ruyer, is defined by the capacities of self-­survey, self-­enjoyment
and self-­proximity. In this respect, consciousness first of all is ‘conscious’ of
its own form in self-­survey, and only then is it ‘conscious’ of anything else.

10
In Sur la psychologie (1956–1967), Simondon makes an interesting remark regarding
Ruyer’s La conscience et le corps: ‘Biology itself allows itself to be absorbed by psy-
chology; the intelligence of the amoeba is of the same type as that of man; and it is
from ours that we know it. Intelligence is one with life’ (Simondon 2015b: 127–8).
 Raymond Ruyer: Organic Consciousness 53

As Ruyer points out,

The fundamental paradox, which is the origin of all the others, is that a
domain of primary consciousness is in ‘absolute survey’ – that is to say
without any need of an external ­scanning – ­that it possesses a kind of
autovision without gaze [. . .] It is very difficult to admit that a protoplasm, a
molecular edifice, an embryo, an organic tissue or a cortex, are conscious
of themselves (possess their own form) before becoming, by added modu-
lation, conscious of the form of other beings, and without being obliged
to pass by this detour. (Ruyer 1966: 167; cited in Grosz 2017: 224)

This ‘autovision without a gaze’, characteristic of atoms, molecules, simple

organisms and also embryos and brains, is nothing other than the capacity
to create their form, maintain their internal bonds and connections. These
bonds are ‘non-­localisable’, because they are not stable structures but
activities and forces maintaining a given form. Here again, Ruyer makes a
distinction between structures and patterns, found in Cartesian space, and
the absolute forms, made of non-­localisable and non-­dimensional bonds.
From this we can conclude that Ruyer’s notion of consciousness is very
original: consciousness is not a property of any subject, and it is not directed
towards any object. Ruyer explicitly opposes his notion of consciousness to
the phenomenological notion of consciousness:

Contrary to those theories inspired by [. . .] Husserlian ideas, conscious-

ness is neither always nor essentially ‘consciousness of . . .’, consciousness
of a real or ideal object [. . .] Primary consciousness is neither conscious-
ness of a perceiving Mind-­subject nor the consciousness of an Object,
whether real or ideal. Consciousness is any active formation in its
absolute activity, and all formation is consciousness. (Ruyer 2020: 161–2,
emphasis in original)

The distinction between subject and object disappears and is replaced here
by the self-­reference of self-­observing systems. Consciousness (the observer)
is not beside or above the phenomena to be observed but acts itself as the
observing system. In this respect, Ruyer’s notion of self-­survey functions like a
self-­observing model of recursive cognition found in second-­order cybernetic
systems. What is original in Ruyer’s theory is that this capacity of self-­survey,
or self-­observation, is not only characteristic of the self-­reflective conscious-
ness of humans, but is extended to all organic forms. As Ruyer observes,

Consciousness, intelligence, invention, memory, and active finality are

tied to the organic form in general. The brain’s ‘superiority’ or its distinc-
tive character is that it is an incomplete organ, an always-­open network,
which thus retains equipotentiality, the active embryonic consciousness,
and applies it to the organization of the world. (Ruyer 2016: 75)
54 Organism-­Oriented Ontology

In other words, organic form can be defined as a self-­referential system,

which constantly changes through the interactions with the external world
but still maintains its organisation through self-­referential circuits.
Ruyer’s theory of consciousness not only questions conventional notions
of cognition and the brain but also redefines the notion of subjectivity. If
consciousness is defined not by someone’s capacity to perceive the world (or
self) as an external object but by immediate self-­survey and self-­enjoyment,
then the notion of subjectivity could be dramatically extended. What is
important to understand here is that the capacity of self-­survey is a kind of
recursive cognition characteristic of second-­order systems. In other words,
recursive cognition is the property of the system’s self-­referential process,
and therefore it has no need of a brain behind the brain or subject behind
the subject. As Grosz points out, this kind of consciousness is without
a ‘subject-­individual who would be the proprietor of the consciousness’
(Grosz 2012a: 6). Primary consciousness is not appropriated by any subject
or any individual, therefore it expresses a certain kind of ‘subjectless subjec-
tivity’ (Bains 2002). This ‘subjectless subjectivity’ embraces all living beings
capable of self-­referential organisation. Human consciousness thus appears
to be not the highest form of organisation but a transition phase in the
continuum of absolute forms. As Bogue points out,

Ruyer’s object is not to attribute all aspects of human consciousness to

other living forms, but instead to situate human consciousness within
a continuum of living forms from atoms to humans, such that human
consciousness is seen as a complex, highly specialised self-­aware version
of the consciousness evident in varying degrees of complexity throughout
the world of living forms. (Bogue 2017: 522)

In this sense, every living being is seen as an absolute form, capable of self-­
formative and self-­organising activity.
It is important to note that Ruyer is not trying to ascribe human con-
sciousness to all living beings and is aware of the ‘risk of naive anthropo-
morphism’. As he observes, the researcher’s aim is ‘not to define the atom,
the molecule, and the physical individuality as organisms or as psychological
consciousnesses, but instead to seek what is schematically common to the
molecule, the organism, and consciousness. In all these cases, the common
schema is a domain of absolute survey and activity’ (Ruyer 2016: 162).
In other words, what defines primary consciousness is self-­organisation, a
dynamic activity that has the power to change and to evolve using its force
of equipotentiality, and to harmonise these changes through the unity of
self-­survey. In this respect, the features of equipotentiality and self-­survey
define any consciousness (or absolute form) regardless of its complexity.
Ruyer asserts that the human brain has no monopoly over consciousness
but is rather immersed in general organic activity, which the brain might
appropriate only in some circumstances.
 Raymond Ruyer: Organic Consciousness 55

Ruyer’s theory of primary consciousness is very close to Maturana and

Varela’s theory of autopoiesis, also known as the Santiago theory. The
central insight of the theory of autopoiesis is that cognition is identical to
the process of life. ‘Living systems are cognitive systems, and living as a process
is a process of cognition. This statement is valid for all organisms, with and
without a nervous system’ (Maturana and Varela 1980: 13, emphasis in
original). All living beings are manipulating their environments to create
preferable conditions for their existence. This means that even the simplest
organisms, such as a bacterium or a plant, are capable of cognition and per-
ception, even if they do not have brains or minds. The notion of cognition
implies self-­awareness, perception, emotion and organic activity. It may
also include specific characteristics of human cognition, such as language
and conceptual thinking, but the notion of cognition is much broader and
doesn’t necessarily include thinking. Thus, the notion of cognition, similar
to Ruyer’s idea of primary consciousness, creates a kind of isomorphism
between living systems of different complexity, and, in this sense, asserts the
continuity of life forms.
Another point that allows us to compare Ruyer’s theory of primary con-
sciousness with the Santiago theory is the reconceptualisation of the mind
and body divide. Ruyer establishes a certain continuity between primary
organic consciousness, secondary cerebral consciousness and psychological
consciousness. Similarly, Maturana and Varela argue that cognition not
only operates in the brain but is embodied in the entire process of organic
activity. Their research indicates that in the human organism the nervous
system, the immune system and the endocrine system form a single cogni-
tive network (Capra 1997: 171). This insight allows one to conclude, first,
that cognition and knowledge are rooted in organic activity, and, second,
that there is a certain continuity between different levels of cognitive sys-
tems or different forms of consciousness. According to the Santiago theory,
primary organic activity and human consciousness are two sides of the same
phenomenon of life.

Conclusion
This overview cannot reveal the entire richness of Ruyer’s work. However,
Ruyer gives many important insights for organism-­oriented ontology. He
distinguishes between a structure and an absolute form: structures are
organised by external forces, whereas the absolute form is a forming activity,
capable of creating and maintaining itself. In this sense, the absolute form
is consciousness, capable of engendering changes using its potentiality and
of unifying these changes through self-­survey. Thus, not only organisms but
also atoms and molecules are interpreted as living forms in so far as they can
self-­organise and maintain their form. Simondon compares physical and
biological individuations in terms of analogy (he used the term ‘analogical
paradigmatism’), whereas Ruyer is looking for a homology of forms between
56 Organism-­Oriented Ontology

organic and inorganic beings. If we agree that different ­entities – ­from atoms
and molecules to complex o ­ rganisms – ­are homologous in respect to form,
that they are forming activity, then we can formulate a new understanding
of cognition. It is a non-­human cognition, to use N. Katherine Hayles’s
term, which blurs the distinction between human and non-­human, and also
between organic and inorganic. Of course, we understand that atoms are
not conscious of their forms in the same way as humans are. The theory of
forms doesn’t mean that differences do not exist; rather it demonstrates the
ways in which these different forms, or consciousnesses, are interconnected.
These different forms create various kinds of multiplicities, which leads us
to the discussion of Deleuze and Guattari’s works.
 3
Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari’s
Philosophy of Life

Simondon’s and Ruyer’s philosophy influenced Gilles Deleuze and helped

him to formulate his original theory of life. The traces of Simondon’s philos-
ophy can be felt in Deleuze’s Difference and Repetition, where the interaction
between the pre-­individual state and individuation is transformed into the
interplay between the virtual and the actual. Simondon’s ideas are also pres-
ent in Deleuze and Guattari’s book A Thousand Plateaus, where they directly
refer to Simondon while discussing the machinic phylum, an energetic power
of materiality. Ruyer’s works also appear in the footnotes of A Thousand
Plateaus and have a more visible presence in Deleuze’s book The Fold.1
Ruyer’s concept of self-­survey becomes an important theme in Deleuze and
Guattari’s What Is Philosophy?, where it is applied to describe the functioning
of the brain. Thus, Simondon’s and Ruyer’s ideas are creatively employed
in Deleuze’s (and Guattari’s) philosophical project where they develop,
evolve and create something new. In this chapter I will discuss those aspects
of Deleuze’s (and Guattari’s) philosophy that are related to the notion of an
organism as follows: individuation as differentiation in Deleuze’s Difference
and Repetition, the reconceptualisation of the notion of an organism in A
Thousand Plateaus, and the notion of the brain in What is Philosophy? Deleuze
and Guattari take into account different theories of development, such as
individuation and morphogenesis, to create a processual philosophy of life,
where all living beings share the same formative materiality.

1
In The Fold: Leibniz and the Baroque Deleuze introduces Ruyer as one of ‘Leibniz’s
great disciples’ and then gives one of his ‘monstrous’ interpretations in which
Ruyer’s living forms are described as monads (Deleuze 2006b: 116–18). As Bogue
points out, this interpretation is far-­fetched, because ‘Ruyer, though inspired
by Leibniz, formulates a much different monadology, one in which monads are
nothing but doors and windows, nothing but liaisons actively forming themselves’
(Bogue 2017: 534, emphasis in original). For this reason I will leave this interpreta-
tion aside.
58 Organism-­Oriented Ontology

Individuation as Differentiation
Simondon’s theory of individuation had a significant influence on Deleuze,
who wrote a review of Simondon’s book L’individu et sa genèse physico-bi-
ologique in 1966.2 As Deleuze points out, Simondon creates a profoundly
original theory of individuation that presumes the existence of a metastable
system. This metastable system, named as the pre-­individual state, contains
the disparation of at least two orders of magnitude, two disparate scales of
reality. This disparation, or difference, exists as potential energy, a poten-
tiality that structures and individuates reality. In this sense, Deleuze reads
Simondon’s theory of individuation as being methodologically close to his
own philosophical project: ‘It seems to us that Simondon’s perspective can
be reconciled with a theory of intensive quantities, since each intensive
quantity is a difference in itself [. . .] Like any metastable system, it is a
structure (not yet a synthesis) of the heterogeneous’ (Deleuze 2001: 44). For
Simondon, the pre-­individual state is the place of tension that is resolved
by initiating the process of individuation. Similarly, Deleuze argues that
difference is prior to identity, that it is difference that engenders change or
becoming. Difference appears between two orders of magnitude, between
different potentials, which create a tension or a ‘problem’. This tension
is solved by shifting into another system, which is now seen as different
from the previous one. In this sense, difference refers both to the difference
existing in the pre-­individual state and to that difference which appears
between different phases of individuation. As Deleuze points out, ‘What
Simondon elaborates is an entire ontology, one in which Being is never
One: as pre-­individual, it is a metastable more-­than-­one, superimposed and
simultaneous to itself; as individuated, it is again multiple because it is
“multiphasic”, it is a “phase of becoming that will lead to new operations”’
(Deleuze 2001: 49). Thus, according to Deleuze, Simondon defines being
as potentially multiple in its pre-­individual state and actually multiple or
‘multiphasic’ in the process of its individuation. Seen from a Deleuzian per-
spective, Simondon conceives of ‘a new moment of Being, the moment of
phased being, being coupled to itself’ (Deleuze 2001: 46, emphasis in original).
The tension between the pre-­individual state and the process of individ-
uation is the main focus of Difference and Repetition,3 where it is rephrased as

2
Gilles Deleuze, ‘Gilbert Simondon, L’individu et sa genèse physico-biologique.
Paris: PUF, 1964’, Review Philosophique de la France et de l’Étranger, 156, 1966,
pp. 115–18. Translated into English as ‘Review of Gilbert Simondon’s L’individu
et sa genèse physico-biologique (1966)’, Pli: The Warwick Journal of Philosophy, 12,
2001, pp. 43–9. Another translation into English is ‘On Gilbert Simondon’, in
Gilles Deleuze, Desert Islands and Other Texts 1953–1974, ed. David Lapoujade,
trans. Michael Taormina, Los Angeles: Semiotext(e), 2004, pp. 86–9.
3
Originally published as Gilles Deleuze, Différence et répétition, Paris: PUF, 1968.
Translated into English as Difference and Repetition, trans. Paul Patton, London:
Continuum, 2004.
 Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari’s Philosophy of Life 59

the tension between the virtual and the actual. Deleuze finds these tensions
not merely in the physical world of thermodynamics (as Simondon did),
but in what he calls ‘multiplicities’ – a term that comes from mathemati-
cian Bernhard Riemann and was later adopted by Husserl and Bergson. A
multiplicity is neither the one, nor the many, but rather it is a special form
of organisation. ‘The art of multiplicities’, as Deleuze defines it, is ‘the art
of grasping the Ideas and the problems they incarnate in things, and of
grasping things as incarnations, as cases of solution for the problems of
Ideas’ (Deleuze 2004a: 230). Thus, multiplicity is a special form of organisa-
tion that encompasses both Ideas or problems, which in their turn relate to
potentials or powers, and the solutions of these problems, which incarnate
these potentials and powers into real things (or living beings).
As Deleuze points out, multiplicities imply three conditions. First, multi-
plicities are indeterminable in the sense that they have no prior identity that
could determine them in advance. Multiplicities are made of a potential or a
virtuality: it is a difference freed from all subordination and open to all kinds
of actualisation. Second, multiplicities are made not of bounded identities
but of intrinsic relations. ‘In all cases the multiplicity is intrinsically defined,
without external reference or recourse to a uniform space in which it would
be submerged’ (Deleuze 2004a: 231). In other words, a multiplicity excludes
identity as a prior condition: a multiplicity is made not of an inter-­relation
between finite and bounded identities (or individuals, in Simondon’s terms)
but of intra-­relations of incomplete entities that are reciprocally determin-
ing each other. Third, multiplicities are defined by the coupling of a virtual
structure and an actual genesis:

the genesis takes place in time not between one actual term, however small,
and another actual term, but between the virtual and its a­ ctualisation –
­in other words, it goes from the structure to its incarnation, from the
conditions of a problem to the cases of solution, from the differential
elements and their ideal connections to actual terms and diverse real
relations which constitute at each moment the actuality of time. (Deleuze
2004a: 231–2)

In this sense, the actualisation of a virtual idea corresponds to the

Simondonian notion of individuation, which at some point results in creat-
ing a bounded individual. However, the actualisation of the virtual is much
more complicated than the individualisation of the pre-­individual, as I will
demonstrate later.
What is important for Deleuze is that multiplicities or Ideas correspond
to different regions of being; this multi-­dimensionality in some sense echoes
Simondon’s method of analogical paradigmatism. As Deleuze points out,
‘There are Ideas which correspond to mathematical relations and realities,
others which correspond to physical laws and facts. There are others which,
according to their order, correspond to organisms, psychic structures,
60 Organism-­Oriented Ontology

l­anguages and societies: these correspondences without resemblance are of

a structural-­genetic nature’ (Deleuze 2004a: 232). These correspondences are
not resemblances but analogies, which allow us to examine different regions
of knowledge. Deleuze refers to a linguistic multiplicity, which contains both
a virtual system of reciprocal relations between phonemes and their actual
incarnations in language; he also refers to a biological multiplicity of genes,
which, taken as a whole, constitutes an organism’s potential, and which can
be incarnated in actual organisms and determine their species. As Deleuze
points out, the same can be said about other multiplicities: ‘the psychic
multiplicities of imagination and phantasy, the biological multiplicities of
vitality and “monstrosity”, the physical multiplicities of sensibility and sign’
(Deleuze 2004a: 243). In other words, the notion of multiplicity is a special
form of organisation that allows Deleuze to compare physical, biological,
psychic and social systems.
For Simondon, the pre-­individual, or metastable, system is charged with
potential, which is defined as a disparity between two orders of magnitude.
This disparity, or tension, is solved by entering into a new phase, which
initiates the process of individuation. In Difference and Repetition Deleuze
creates a similar dynamic model: he refers to the virtual mode of differenti-
ation, charged with internal differences, and the actual process of genesis,
which incarnates these differential traits into actual beings.4 Thus the vir-
tual mode of ­differentiation – ­called different­iation – ­can be defined as a
differential relation taking place in a structure, where elements are in their
‘embryonic’ form. ‘The elements, varieties of relations and singular points
coexist in the work or the object [. . .] without it being possible to designate a
point of view privileged over others’ (Deleuze 2004a: 260). The actual mode
of ­differentiation – ­called differenc­iation – c­ an be imagined as a process, or
genesis, creating a series of qualities and extensions. ‘Whereas differentia-
tion determines the virtual content of the Idea as problem, differenciation
expresses the actualisation of this virtual and the constitution of solutions
(by local integrations)’ (Deleuze 2004a: 261). Thus, for Deleuze, the double
model of different/ciation combines the two aspects of individuation: that
of a virtual structure and an actual genesis.
However, the question is how this virtual Idea incarnates itself into dif-
ferent qualities and extensities? What forces those differential relations that
coexist within the virtual structure to differentiate themselves into actual
entities? Or, as Levi R. Bryant has asked, ‘why the virtual actualizes itself

4
The virtual has to be distinguished from the possible. As Deleuze points out, ‘The
possible is opposed to the real; the process undergone by the possible is therefore
a “realisation”. By contrast, the virtual is not opposed to the real; it possesses a
full reality by itself. The process it undergoes is that of actualisation [. . .] the real
is supposed to resemble the possible [. . .] The actualisation of the virtual, on the
contrary, always takes place by difference, divergence or differenciation’ (Deleuze
2004a: 263–4).
 Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari’s Philosophy of Life 61

at all?’ (Bryant 2011: 104). For Deleuze, the answer lies in the intensive
quantities: ‘Intensity is the determinant in the process of actualisation. It
is intensity which dramatises. It is intensity which is immediately expressed
in the basic spatio-­temporal dynamisms and determines an “indistinct”
differential relation in the Idea to incarnate itself in a distinct quality and a
distinguished extensity’ (Deleuze 2004a: 306–7, emphasis in original). In this
respect, Deleuze defines three ontological domains, which can be described
as the virtual, the intensive and the actual.
How does intensity fulfil this determining role? It is interesting that to
explain the role of intensification Deleuze refers back to Simondon and
explains intensification in terms of individuation:

The essential process of intensive quantities is individuation. Intensity

is individuating, and intensive quantities are individuating factors [. . .]
Gilbert Simondon has shown recently that individuation presupposes a
prior metastable ­state – ­in other words, the existence of a ‘disparateness’
such as at least two orders of magnitude or two scales of heterogene-
ous reality between which potentials are distributed [. . .] Individuation
emerges like the act of solving such a problem, o ­ r – ­what amounts to the
same t­ hing – ­like the actualisation of a potential and the establishing of
communication between disparates [. . .] In all these respects, we believe
that individuation is essentially intensive, and that the pre-­individual
field is a virtual-­ideal field, made up of differential relations. (Deleuze
2004a: 307–8)

In other words, Simondon’s notion of the pre-­individual potential is rein-

terpreted by Deleuze in terms of a virtual-­ideal field, and the notion of indi-
viduation is reinterpreted as an intensive quantity, which incites the process
of actualisation, leading to the creation of actual individuals (Bowden 2012:
144–9). However, we can notice that, for Simondon, the pre-­individual
expresses the potential that is given in advance and only waits to be realised
(for example, the supersaturated mother liquid waits to meet the piece of
dust to start the process of crystallisation), whereas for Deleuze the virtual
means a kind of potentiality that may or may not come into existence. It
seems that the metastable pre-­individual, as described by Simondon, has to
resolve the tension by necessity, whereas the virtual may or may not come
to actualisation, hence it comes into being by contingency.
Thus, to the question ‘why the virtual actualizes itself at all?’ Deleuze
has an answer: the virtual incarnates itself in things because of a specific
agent, which differentiates the differential. The virtual is fully differential in
itself (as in the case of mathematical differential relations, or as in the case
of genes creating a system of differential relations), before differentiating
itself in the actual. These differential relations are differentiated through
intensities, which are nothing other than the difference of difference, or a
second degree of difference. This intensification which is the driving force
62 Organism-­Oriented Ontology

of individuation is called ‘dramatisation’, whereas the agent behind this

drama is named as a dark precursor. As Deleuze points out, ‘Thunderbolts
explode between different intensities, but they are preceded by an invisible,
imperceptible dark precursor, which determines their path in advance but
in reverse, as though intagliated. Likewise, every system contains its dark
precursor which ensures the communication of peripheral series’ (Deleuze
2004a: 145–6, emphasis in original).5
The dark precursor, being invisible itself, incites the dramatisation of
spatio-­temporal dynamisms, which form different sequences or series within
the system. These series start communicating under the impulse of some
force, which relates different series to one another and thus creates differences
of differences, or second-­degree differences. ‘This state of affairs is adequately
expressed by certain physical concepts: coupling between heterogeneous sys-
tems, from which is derived an internal resonance within the system, and from
which in turn is derived a forced movement the amplitude of which exceeds that
of the basic series themselves’ (Deleuze 2004a: 143–4, emphasis in original).
Although Deleuze is using a vocabulary of physical systems, he points out
that such intensification, or spatio-­temporal dynamisms, are characteristic to
physical, biological, psychic, social, aesthetic and philosophical systems. For
example, embryology demonstrates that there is a certain spatio-­temporal
dynamism in the morphogenesis of an egg: ‘the augmentation of free surfaces,
stretching of cellular layers, invagination by folding, regional displacement
of groups’ (Deleuze 2004a: 266). The spatio-­temporal dynamisms appear only
at the edges of the living being, because only developing and plastic forms
can sustain these dramatic vital movements.
It is interesting that, in discussing these spatio-­ temporal dynamisms,
Deleuze invokes Ruyer and his notion of a morphogenetic ‘role’.

When a cellular migration takes place, as Raymond Ruyer shows, it is the

requirements of a ‘role’ in so far as this follows from a structural ‘theme’
to be actualised which determines the situation, not the other way round.
The world is an egg, but the egg itself is a theatre: a staged theatre in which
the roles dominate the actors, the spaces dominate the roles and the Ideas
dominate the spaces. (Deleuze 2004a: 269)

As was discussed in the previous chapter, Ruyer explains morphogenesis as

a musical theme, or a ‘role’, which is ideal, trans-­temporal and trans-­spatial,
and, at the same time, is an actual performance open to improvisations and

5
We can find a very similar description in Deleuze’s ‘Method of Dramatization’,
where a dark precursor is translated as an ‘obscure precursor’: ‘A lightning bolt
flashes between different intensities, but it is preceded by an obscure precursor,
invisible, imperceptible, which determines in advance the inverted path as in
negative relief, because this path is first the agent of communication between
series of differences’ (Deleuze 2004c: 97, emphasis in original).
 Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari’s Philosophy of Life 63

adjustments. Similarly, Deleuze describes differentiation as a virtual system

of differential relations and also as a series of actual differenciations which
are incited by spatio-­temporal dynamisms and a dark precursor. According
to Deleuze, ‘Ruyer, no less than Bergson, profoundly analysed the notions
of the virtual and actualisation. His entire biological philosophy rests
upon them along with the idea of the “thematic”’ (Deleuze 2004a: 279, n.
28). Like Ruyer, who differentiated between an ‘ideal’ virtual or potential
theme and its actual performance, Deleuze differentiates between virtual
multiplicity as an internal structure and actual multiplicity as a process of
morphogenesis.
Deleuze suggests that actualisation proceeds in the following way: 1) the
depth or spatium in which intensities are organised; 2) intensities form
disparate series and fields of individuation (individuating factors); 3) the
‘dark precursor’ which causes them to communicate; 4) the linkages, inter-
nal resonances and forced movements which result; 5) the constitution
of passive selves and larval subjects in the system and the formation of
pure spatio-­temporal dynamisms (Deleuze 2004a: 347–8). But what are these
‘passive selves’ and ‘larval subjects’? The passive selves are the perceivers
or ‘contemplators’ of these dynamic changes, whereas larval subjects are
‘the patients’ of dynamisms. In other words, the morphogenetic process
implies a certain form of consciousness, or cognition, which designates not
‘a substantial, completed and well-­constituted subject, such as the Cartesian
Cogito’ (Deleuze 2004a: 145), but rather, an incomplete and undefined sub-
ject, which is a patient of dynamisms. As Deleuze explains, vital dynamisms
would destroy any well-­constituted subject, hence only an embryo can sus-
tain them: ‘These are movements for which one can only be a patient, but
the patient in turn can only be a larva’ (Deleuze 2004a: 145). This larval sub-
jectivity resonates with Ruyer’s idea of primary or organic consciousness,
which is in the background of all formative activities. The notion of a larval
subject can also be compared to Varela’s notion of ‘selfless selves’ (Varela
1991), and more generally to the notion of an embodied self in the theory of
autopoietic systems. In this context the Deleuzian notion of ‘larval subject’
might be interpreted as a recursive cognition immanent in self-­organising
systems that do not need any external observer or ‘mind’.
And yet, even if the notion of a larval subject does not lead us to the
conventional notion of subjectivity, another term, that of a dark precursor,
looks like a conventional notion of cause.6 Thus, one can have the impres-
sion that the process of differentiation is not sufficient in itself, but needs a
quasi-­cause to be initiated. As Alberto Toscano points out,

6
Deleuze points out that the dark precursor ‘has no place other than that from
which it is “missing”, no identity other than that which it lacks: it is precisely
the object = x, the one which “is lacking in its place” as it lacks its own identity’
(Deleuze 2004a: 146).
64 Organism-­Oriented Ontology

it is quite difficult to see how this ‘differenciator’, albeit deprived of any

self-­identity, can refrain from constituting a totalizing structural principal
upon which differences themselves would in turn depend. In other words,
once the communication between series demands a paradoxical interme-
diary, how is one to stop the slide towards an ultimate Differenciator, a
pure principle of anarchic production? (Toscano 2006: 173, emphasis in
original)

It seems that, by introducing the notion of a dark precursor as a quasi-­cause,

Deleuze compromises the notion of multiplicity. However, we can argue
that the notion of a dark precursor functions not as a cause of production,
as Toscano suggests, but as a set of conditions that force individuation to
happen. As Manuel DeLanda points out, the dark precursor functions as a
‘quasi-­causal operator’, which breaks the determinism linking causes and
effects by necessity (DeLanda 2002: 52, n. 54; 101, n. 62). This new kind of
determination is named by Deleuze as ‘destiny’, meaning that connections
are ‘non-­localisable’, therefore not necessary. Also it is important to point
out that the process of actualisation may be accompanied by a process of
counter-­actualisation, which extracts virtual events from actual states of
affairs. In this respect, the Deleuzian notion of the virtual can be differenti-
ated from the Simondonian notion of the pre-­individual: for Simondon the
shift from the pre-­individual to the process of individuation is necessary,
one-­directional and irreversible, whereas for Deleuze the transition from
the virtual to the actual is quasi-­causal, multiple, and can be followed by
counter-­actualisation (Deleuze 2004b). This double relationship between the
virtual and the actual organises the whole theoretical structure of Deleuze
and Guattari’s A Thousand Plateaus.

The Deconstruction of an Organism

In Difference and Repetition Deleuze describes the conditions that make indi-
viduation happen, whereas in A Thousand Plateaus7 Deleuze and Guattari
concentrate on the interaction between different systems. As Toscano
points out,

The individuations that Deleuze and Guattari foreground in A Thousand

Plateaus are not of the sort that engender individuals; rather, they trav-
erse already constituted individuals, drawing them towards impersonal
becomings, compositions of one multiplicity with ­another . . . I­t is as if,
rather than reconfiguring the domain of transcendental production from

7
Originally published as Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, Capitalisme et schi-
zophrénie 2. Mille plateaux, Paris: Les Éditions de Minuit, 1980. Translated into
English as A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, vol. 2, trans. Brian
Massumi, London: Continuum, 2004.
 Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari’s Philosophy of Life 65

the inside, by revealing the anomaly and heterogeneity lying beneath the
individuated, Deleuze and Guattari were opening out a dimension beside
that of constituted beings, a fugitive world of pure intensities, alliances,
and transformations . . . (Toscano 2006: 176, emphasis in original)

In other words, in Difference and Repetition Deleuze was trying to answer the
question ‘why the virtual actualizes itself at all?’, whereas in A Thousand
Plateaus Deleuze and Guattari ask how the actual and the virtual are inter-
related. These two ontological modalities have many names, such as the
plane of organisation and the plane of consistency, the arborescent and the
rhizomatic, the molar and the molecular, the striated and the smooth, ­and –
­what is more relevant to our ­discussion – ­an organism and the body without
organs. It seems that Deleuze and Guattari remain hostile to the notion of
an organism and try to replace it with what they name the body without
organs. However, after a closer examination, it becomes clear that Deleuze
and Guattari are trying to question the conventional understanding of an
organism as an organised whole (as it was defined by Kant) and to recon-
ceptualise it in terms of an assemblage. As Bennett and Posteraro observe,

The organism might be understood as an assemblage in just this sense: it

consists of a coordination among various parts sourced from elsewhere,
acquired both vertically, by heredity, and horizontally, through its inte-
gration in an environmental haecceity; and it is structured on the basis
of an abstract diagram that outlines possible parts and the functions that
would enlist them. (Bennett and Posteraro 2019: 12)

Redefined in this way, the organism as an assemblage opens many productive

ways to examine complex phenomena, such as symbiosis or the holobiont,
and helps to contextualise the philosophical notion of an organism within
recent developments in biology, such as complexity theory, developmental
systems theory or the theory of symbiosis.
Thus, what do these two ­notions – ­an organism and the body without
­organs – m ­ ean for Deleuze and Guattari? As they explain in A Thousand
Plateaus, an organism is the result of a more general procedure of strati-
fication, which means organisation, coding and territorialisation (named
as ‘the judgments of God’). Deleuze and Guattari distinguish three major
strata: physicochemical (geological), organic and anthropomorphic. Every
stratification proceeds by double articulation: for example, in geological
stratification the first articulation is the process of sedimentation, which is
followed by a second articulation, such as folding. Organic stratification is
also implemented by a double articulation:

First, on the level of morphogenesis: on the one hand, realities of the

molecular type with aleatory relations are caught up in crowd phenom-
ena or statistical aggregates determining an order [. . .] on the other hand,
66 Organism-­Oriented Ontology

these aggregates themselves are taken up into stable structures that ‘elect’
stereoscopic compounds, form organs, functions, and regulations, organ-
ize molar mechanisms . . . (Deleuze and Guattari 2004: 47)

The organism appears as the result of active formation, organisation and

stratification; these procedures make obvious the fact that an organism is
not something ‘natural’ or ‘given’ but is artificially and forcefully imposed.
As such, an organism is seen as a certain limitation of life: ‘not all Life
is confined to the organic strata: rather, the organism is that which life
sets against itself in order to limit itself, and there is a life all the more
intense, all the more powerful for being anorganic’ (Deleuze and Guattari
2004: 554). In a similar vein, anthropomorphic stratification imposes on the
human body forms, functions, bonds, as well as dominant and hierarchised
organisations.
At the same time, stratification is opposed by another tendency, that of
destratification, which takes place in the plane of consistency, or the body
without organs, and which refers to ‘the unformed, unorganized, nonstrati-
fied, or destratified body and all its flows: subatomic and submolecular par-
ticles, pure intensities, prevital and prephysical free singularities’ (Deleuze
and Guattari 2004: 49). This plane creates the body without organs, which
does not refer to any actual organism or body but, rather, is a virtual state
in which organisms and bodies can be rearranged and rearticulated. For
example, an organism might return to a more powerful inorganic Life, or an
anthropomorphic body might return to non-­human becomings.
Thus, in contrast to morphogenetic development, discussed in Difference
and Repetition, Deleuze and Guattari argue that there are two planes, or
two ontological modalities: the plane of organisation and the plane of
consistency. The plane of organisation follows the lines of structural or
genetic development, creating organic forms and subjects. By contrast, the
plane of consistency, or the body without organs, produces neither forms
nor subjects, but the interrelations between unformed elements and parti-
cles of all kinds (Deleuze and Guattari 2004: 293–4). Structural or genetic
development is here replaced by assemblage-­like connections: ‘There are
only haecceities, affects, subjectless individuations that constitute collec-
tive assemblages. Nothing develops, but things arrive late or early, and
form this or that assemblage depending on their compositions of speed’
(Deleuze and Guattari 2004: 294). It is precisely the plane of consistency,
or composition, where the distinction between the natural and the artifi-
cial vanishes and where organisms and bodies can be rearranged in new
assemblages.
In this respect, the body without organs is a virtual tendency, which
haunts every actual body and organism. As Keith Ansell Pearson points
out, we can think of a body without organs not as an opposition to the rigid
organisation of organs, but as a tendency or a phase that an organism might
take on:
 Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari’s Philosophy of Life 67

there is a body without organs of the organism that belongs to its stratum.
The aim is not, therefore, to negate the organism but to arrive at a more
comprehensive understanding of it by situating it within the wider field
of forces, intensities, and durations that give rise to it and which do not
cease to involve a play between nonorganic and stratified life. Creative
processes inform both the body without organs and processes of stratifica-
tion. (Ansell Pearson 1999: 154, emphasis in original)

In other words, an organism might tend to become the body without organs
and vice versa: the body without organs might be captured and become
an organised organism. As Ansell Pearson observes, ‘The organism that
Deleuze and Guattari are attacking [. . .] is not a neutral entity but rather the
organism construed as a given hierarchized and transcendent organization.
It can only be represented in such terms by being abstracted from its molec-
ular and rhizomatic conditions of possibility’ (Ansell Pearson 1999: 154). To
become the body without organs would mean to open the body to its virtual
potentiality, to abandon the rigid forms of organisation, signification and
subjectification. However, that doesn’t mean that the body as an organism
should be dismantled. As Deleuze and Guattari observe, ‘Dismantling the
organism has never meant killing yourself, but rather opening the body to
connections that presuppose an entire assemblage, circuits, conjunctions,
levels and thresholds’ (Deleuze and Guattari 2004: 177). Thus, tearing the
body away from the organism would simply lead to death. Even Artaud was
aware that the body without organs should not lead to a suicidal collapse but
has to enhance those effects and intensities that are profitable for the body.
To create a body without organs is to open the body to new assemblage-­like
connections and increase its potentiality.
Thus, stratification and destratification, or the plane of organisation and
the plane of consistency, express two tendencies, which run over organisms
and bodies. As Deleuze and Guattari point out,

The plane of organization is constantly working away at the plane of

consistency, always trying to plug the lines of flight, stop or interrupt
the movements of deterritorialization, weigh them down, restratify them,
reconstitute forms and subjects in a dimension of depth. Conversely,
the plane of consistency is constantly extricating itself from the plane of
organization [. . .] breaking down functions by means of assemblages or
microassemblages. (Deleuze and Guattari 2004: 297–8)

Thus the body without organs is a tendency that expresses the very vitality
of life, whereas the organism expresses a still life, devoid of change and
potentiality. As Smith points out, ‘the body without organs is the model
of Life itself, a powerful non-­organic and intensive vitality that traverses
the organism; by contrast, the organism, with its forms and functions, is
not life, but rather that which imprisons life’ (Smith 2012: 209). Thus, the
68 Organism-­Oriented Ontology

notion of the body without organs can be interpreted as the model of Life,
a certain organic potentiality, which is liberated from the constraints of
evolutionary development. Deleuze and Guattari suggest the novel notion
of ‘involution’, which implies that an organism might develop not accord-
ing to the lines of filiation but in creative and non-­predetermined ways.8
However, involution does not mean a regression or a desire to vanish in an
undifferentiated primordial soup. Rather, it means that the relationships
between organic forms are established not according to lines of descent or
filiation but through assemblage-­like connections between heterogeneous
elements.
In this respect, Deleuze and Guattari’s notion of the body without organs
resonates with Lynn Margulis’s theory of symbiosis. Margulis argued that
biological innovation cannot be explained in terms of Darwinian evolution
and must have another ­origin – ­it is the symbiotic interaction between het-
erogeneous organic forms. For example, cellular mitochondria originated
from different bacteria that symbiotically merged about two billion years
ago. New alliances and cooperation between different living forms created
functional novelty, which isolated individuals would never have had. As
Barry Allen points out,

Microbial symbionts carry out many chemical reactions otherwise impos-

sible for their hosts to perform. Collectively they photosynthesise, fix
nitrogen, metabolise sulphur, synthesise amino acids, provide vitamins
and growth factors, and ward off pathogens [. . .] Virtually all mammalian
and insect herbivores would starve without cellulose-­digesting bacterial
symbionts. (Allen 2019: 27)

Margulis described many examples of such symbiotic cooperation, but her

favourite creature was Mixotricha paradoxica, a composite organism which
consists of a protist and four different types of bacteria, and which lives in
the gut of a termite (Margulis and Sagan 2001).9 This example questions the
notion of a biological individual and demonstrates that symbiosis creates
heterogeneous assemblages.
It seems that Deleuze and Guattari tend to generalise the notion of sym-
biosis, which they understand not only as biological cooperation but as a
certain form of ‘unnatural participations’ which are not merely biological
but also anthropomorphic: ‘what interests us are modes of expansion,
propagation, occupation, contagion, peopling. I am legion’ (Deleuze and

8
‘It is thus a plane of proliferation, peopling, contagion; but this proliferation of
material has nothing to do with an evolution, the development of a form or the
filiation of forms. Still less is it a regression leading back to a principle. It is on the
contrary an involution, in which form is constantly being dissolved, freeing times
and speeds’ (Deleuze and Guattari 2004: 294, emphasis in original).
9
The biological notion of symbiosis will be discussed in Chapter 7.
 Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari’s Philosophy of Life 69

Guattari 2004: 264). This is a kind of multiplicity which is created not by

development, but by the co-­functioning characteristic of machinic systems.
In a similar manner, living systems can be defined not only by their descent,
filiation or heredity (by their biological relations), but by assemblage-­like
connections.

We oppose epidemic to filiation, contagion to heredity, peopling by conta-

gion to sexual reproduction, sexual production. Bands, human or animal,
proliferate by contagion, epidemics, battlefields, and catastrophes [. . .]
Unnatural participations or nuptials are the true Nature spanning the
kingdom of nature’ (Deleuze and Guattari 2004: 266)

Filiation connects more or less homogeneous beings, while symbiosis

or contagion occurs between beings that are entirely heterogeneous:
they can be a human being, an animal, a bacterium, a virus, a molecule.
Heterogeneous becomings imply a multiplicity, which, in its turn, implies
a symbiosis: ‘Each multiplicity is symbiotic; its becoming ties together ani-
mals, plants, microorganisms, mad particles, a whole galaxy’ (Deleuze and
Guattari 2004: 275). However, it is important to ask if every symbiosis is
profitable, increasing the partner’s vital potential, or is lethally dangerous,
as in the case of c­ ontagion.
For Deleuze and Guattari, symbiosis is one of these ‘unnatural participa-
tions’, in which living beings affect each other in such a way that it increases
the partner’s potential and hence is seen as profitable and wanted. As Allen
points out, ‘The basic idea of symbiosis is an assemblage of heterogeneous
organic forms that persists for a long period relative to the generation times
of the interacting organisms, and which typically leads to the emergence
of novel metabolic capabilities in at least one of the partners’ (Allen 2019:
26). Allen argues that there is a difference between machinic assemblages
connecting humans and tools, and symbiotic assemblages connecting two
living beings:

Tools remain as they are unless we change them. Symbionts struggle

together, cooperatively, to become all that they can be. When I enrol a
tool, I become more effective at what I already am. When I form a symbi-
otic relation with a second centre of life I enhance my potential, acquiring
qualitatively new tendencies. (Allen 2019: 34)

And yet this distinction seems much more complicated. First, we should
ask, does symbiosis always work to increase the partner’s potential? Here
we can evoke parasitism, when the symbiotic relationship is partial and
profitable only to one partner, and also epidemics and contagion which
lead not to potentiality but to impotentiality, the deprivation of vital power.
Writing in the days of the COVID-­19 pandemic, it is obvious that certain
heterogeneous assemblages, such as between humans and viruses, might be
70 Organism-­Oriented Ontology

dangerous and lethal. It seems that the question of heterogeneous symbiotic

assemblages necessarily leads to the notion of immunity, which will be dis-
cussed in the final chapter.
Second, machinic assemblages are not just mechanical and repetitive,
as Allen presents. Deleuze and Guattari’s understanding of technicity is
informed by Leroi-­ Gourhan, who interprets technological artefacts as
biological phenomena. For example, in Gesture and Speech (1993), Leroi-­
Gourhan defines the hand–tool and mouth–speech poles as two impor-
tant directions in technological evolution. He interprets technology as an
externalisation of human organs: the hand itself might be used as a tool for
producing different operations; at the same time the hand can be used as a
motor force for externalised tools, such as forks or hammers. Similarly, the
mouth can be used as a tool for different operations, and, at the same time,
it becomes the force that allows the invention of language as an externalised
technology. In this sense, technology can be seen as an externalisation of
living beings and their body organs; in other words, biological evolution
is prolonged and extended in technological evolution. Ruyer is saying the
same thing when he distinguishes between three levels of technicity: bodily
organs as an originary technicity or proto-­technicity, externalised organs
as an extended phenotype (webs, dams, nests), and detachable artefacts or
technologies. However, Deleuze and Guattari are not completely satisfied
with the theories of exteriorisation, presuming that the body itself is consti-
tuted by its proto-­technicity. This is why they suggest replacing the notion
of exteriorisation with their original notion of assemblage. As Smith points
out,

Deleuze and Guattari created the concept of an assemblage as a corrective

to Leroi-­Gourhan’s ­analyses . . . ­The hand–tool pole is generalised into
the concept of a machinic assemblage of bodies, or form of content, and
the mouth–language pole is generalised into the concept of a collective
assemblage of enunciation (regime of signs), or form of expression . . . (Smith
2019: 268)

In other words, Deleuze and Guattari complicate the theory of exteriori-

sation by opposing technological lineage and the notion of an assemblage.
Thus, Deleuze and Guattari suggest a twofold schema, which consists
of a machinic phylum (phylum meaning a major taxonomic division of
living organisms) and technological assemblages. A machinic phylum is a
continuum, the flow of matter in continuous variation, as much artificial
as natural. This flow is cut by technological assemblages which are selected,
organised, stratified constellations (Deleuze and Guattari 2004: 448). ‘The
assemblages cut the phylum up into distinct, differentiated lineages, at the
same time as the machinic phylum cuts across them all [. . .] Leroi-­Gourhan
has gone the farthest toward a technological vitalism taking biological
evolution in general as the model for technical evolution’ (Deleuze and
 Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari’s Philosophy of Life 71

Guattari 2004: 449). Deleuze and Guattari evoke Simondon’s critique of

hylomorphism and support this critique by asserting that, instead of think-
ing form and matter as separate entities and imposing form upon a passive
matter, we should think the interaction between operations and materiality,
or between assemblages and machinic phylum. The machinic phylum is
a flow of materiality, ‘a vital state of matter as such, a material vitalism10
that doubtless exists everywhere but is ordinarily hidden or covered, ren-
dered unrecognizable, dissociated by the hylomorphic model’ (Deleuze and
Guattari 2004: 454).
The machinic phylum is the vital power of technology, which is caught
or stratified into distinct technological assemblages, in a similar way as
organic processes of individuation are stratified into distinct organisms. In
this respect, assemblages relate to the machinic phylum in the same way as
the organism relates to the body without organs. A body without organs
designates the same flow of materiality, both natural and artificial. It is a life
proper to matter, an inorganic life, which now is dissociated from organic
metaphors and associated with metallurgy and metal: ‘Metal is neither a
thing nor an organism but a body without organs’ (Deleuze and Guattari
2004: 454, emphasis in original). However, it is the same materiality that
makes the corporeality of every organism. In this respect, we can argue
that all assemblages, natural or artificial, symbiotic or technological, are
temporary constellations of this corporeality, which interrupt the flow of
vital materiality but are unable to stop it.

The Brain: Between the Mental and the Cerebral

The theme of vital activity reappears in Deleuze and Guattari’s What Is
Philosophy?,11 where they attempt to rethink philosophy, science and art.
What these three planes have in common is that they all relate to the
brain: ‘The brain is the junction – not the unity – of the three planes’ (Deleuze
and Guattari 1994: 208, emphasis in original). Philosophy creates concepts,
science creates prospects and functions, and art percepts and ­affects – ­and
yet all these activities are related not to mind or consciousness but to the
cerebral materiality of the brain. ‘If the mental objects of philosophy, art,
and science (that is to say, vital ideas) have a place, it will be in the deep-
est of the synaptic fissures, in the hiatuses, intervals, and meantimes of a

10
Deleuze and Guattari’s ‘material vitalism’ is very close to Jane Bennett’s ‘vital
materialism’. As Bennett points out, ‘when Deleuze and Guattari speak of a
material vitality, they do not mean simply to draw attention to a “Hobbesian”
movement of bodies in space [. . .] The aim is to articulate the elusive idea of a
materiality that is itself heterogeneous, itself a differential of intensities, itself a life’
(Bennett 2010: 56–7, emphasis in the original).
11
Originally published as Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, Qu’est-ce que la philo-
sophie?, Paris: Les Éditions de Minuit, 1991. Translated into English as What Is
Philosophy?, trans. Hugh Tomlinson and Barbara Burchill, London: Verso, 1994.
72 Organism-­Oriented Ontology

­ onobjectifiable brain’ (Deleuze and Guattari 1994: 209). The originality

n
of this statement should be discussed in the context of the mind and brain
divide: conventionally, mental activity is always related to the idealist
notion of the mind, whereas the brain is seen as a cerebral material object
existing among other objects. By contrast, Deleuze and Guattari suggest that
mental activity should be related to the brain, which, in its turn, should be
regarded not as an object, but as a subject. ‘It is the brain that thinks and
not ­man – ­the latter being only a cerebral crystallization [. . .] Philosophy, art,
and science are not the mental objects of an objectified brain but the three
aspects under which the brain becomes subject’ (Deleuze and Guattari 1994:
210). In this respect, Deleuze and Guattari create a connection between the
mind and the brain, the mental and the cerebral, and reassert the biological
roots of any conceptual or cognitive activity.
One of the important arguments that allows them to abandon the notion
of the objectified brain and assert the theory of the brain-­subject is the
brain’s capacity of self-­survey. As was already discussed in Chapter 2, for
Ruyer the notion of self-­survey is an essential characteristic of every living
being, which allows it to stay in immediate proximity to itself. The principle
of auto-­affectivity allows an organism to survey all of its components and to
maintain its smooth functioning. Deleuze and Guattari take the concept of
self-­survey from Ruyer’s theory of primary consciousness and apply it to the
functioning of the brain and, as a consequence of this, to any intellectual
activity.

What are the characteristics of this brain, which is no longer defined

by connections and secondary integrations? It is not a brain behind the
brain but, first of all, a state of survey without distance, at ground level,
a self-­survey that no chasm, fold, or hiatus escapes. It is a primary, ‘true
form’ as Ruyer defined it: neither a Gestalt nor a perceived form but a
form in itself that does not refer to any external point of view . . . (Deleuze
and Guattari 1994: 210, emphasis in original)

This means that to account for the functioning of the brain we do not
need another brain, a brain of higher dimension, such as ‘cogito’, or psy-
chological and reflective consciousness. The brain surveys itself without
the help of any supplementary dimension. Thus, the brain functions like
a self-­organising system which is self-­referential and self-­maintaining, and,
in this sense, it functions like any conceptual activity: ‘The concept is in
a state of survey [survol] in relation to its components, endlessly traversing
them according to an order without distance. It is immediately co-­present
to all its components or variations, at no distance from them, passing back
and forth through them’ (Deleuze and Guattari 1994: 20–1). It is important
to stress that concepts and brains are different aspects of the same cognitive
process: every concept presupposes the brain and the brain is the faculty of
concepts. In this respect, the brain is
 Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari’s Philosophy of Life 73

an absolute consistent form that surveys itself independently of any sup-

plementary dimension, which does not appeal therefore to any transcend-
ence, which has only a single side whatever the number of its dimensions
[. . .] and which makes of them so many inseparable variations on which
it confers an equipotentiality without confusion. (Deleuze and Guattari
1994: 210, emphasis in original)

This means that concepts and brains develop and create themselves in the
same manner as living beings, using their capacity of equipotentiality and
self-­survey.
In other words, Deleuze and Guattari assert a new type of cerebral con-
ceptuality, or cerebral cognition, which is defined immanently, through
equipotentiality and self-­survey, and without any recourse to transcendent
ideas, and without reference to a global embedding space. In this respect,
we can make a clear opposition between cerebral cognition, described by
Deleuze and Guattari, and the conventional understanding of brain activity
as perception. Cerebral cognition is immanent, in proximity with itself and
equipotential, whereas perception always needs an external space where the
objects of perception can be measured and quantified. As Grosz points out,
‘Perception requires an external perspective, and in many cases, it requires
actual physical distance, as in the case of seeing and hearing; it addresses
objects that can be positioned side-­by-­side; and it requires a delimitable
field within which these objects are positioned’ (Grosz 2012a: 6). As such,
perception needs a geometrical space which is measurable and divisible,
whereas cerebral cognition takes place in the inner space of self-­survey and
is defined by internal connections that relate to each other in such a way
that the nature of these relations is always changing. In other words, these
connections are not quantitative but qualitative: ‘The plurivocity of the
concept depends solely upon neighborhood (one concept can have several
neighborhoods). Concepts are flat surfaces without levels, orderings with-
out hierarchy’ (Deleuze and Guattari 1994: 90). Thus, cerebral cognition
is organised in recursive circuits which refer either to the system’s internal
structure (self-­surveying) or to other neighbouring regions. Cerebral activity
of the brain is described as a self-­organising system maintaining both its
internal coherence and its openness towards neighbouring systems.
Understood in this way, cerebral cognition is not an exceptional human
activity but a general characteristic of living and non-­living beings. Deleuze
and Guattari assert that cerebral activity can be extended to organic and
inorganic beings at different scales:

Of course, plants and rocks do not possess a nervous system. But, if nerve
connections and cerebral integrations presuppose a brain-­force as faculty
of feeling coexistent with the tissues, it is reasonable to suppose also a
faculty of feeling that coexists with embryonic tissues and that appears in
the Species as a collective brain . . . [. . .] Not every organism has a brain,
74 Organism-­Oriented Ontology

and not all life is organic, but everywhere there are forces that constitute
microbrains, or an inorganic life of things. (Deleuze and Guattari 1994:
212–13)

Hence, the brain is not the locus of subjectivity and consciousness, but a
form-­taking force, present in all life forms capable of self-­survey and equipo-
tentiality. The brain-­force establishes the brain’s relationship with itself, its
self-­awareness, and its capacity to follow its own development; and, at the
same time, it establishes the brain’s relationship with the outside world, its
capacity to affect and to be affected.
The brain-­force can be imagined as pure potentiality which resides in
every organic and inorganic being. Deleuze and Guattari discuss this point
when they refer to the concept of ‘vitalism’ and its two possible interpreta-
tions: ‘that of an Idea that acts, but is ­not – ­that acts therefore only from
the point of view of an external cerebral knowledge (from Kant to Claude
Bernard); or that of a force that is but does not a­ ct – ­that is therefore a
pure internal Awareness (from Leibniz to Ruyer)’ (Deleuze and Guattari
1994: 213). It is the second interpretation that seems to them imperative.
The ‘force that is but does not act’ can be imagined as pure contemplation
without knowledge, as a cerebral activity that can retain certain habits but
restrain itself from knowledge or action. Can this awareness without knowl-
edge still be attributed to Ruyer? Bogue is quite critical about this possibility
and points out that for Ruyer,

organic processes are always active, and the self-­enjoyment of living

forms is never associated with beatitude or contemplation, but only with
the autonomy and completeness of each living form [. . .] Living forms
are agents pursuing goals [. . .] Hence [. . .] Ruyer’s vitalism cannot be
described as that of a force that is but does not act. (Bogue 2017: 533)

It seems that by describing cerebral activity as a ‘force that is but does

not act’, Deleuze and Guattari want to assert the virtual, indeterminate
character of cerebral cognition. The virtual might be actualised in different
bodies and states of affairs, but it might go in an opposite d
­ irection – f­ rom
states of affairs to the virtual plane of immanence, the plane of the body
without organs. This indeterminate character of virtual conceptuality is
what sets apart Ruyer’s neofinalism and Deleuze and Guattari’s ontology.12
12
As Bogue points out, ‘Ultimately, it is Ruyer’s finalism that sets him apart
from Deleuze and from Deleuze and Guattari. Ruyer’s trans-­spatial is virtual,
but it is never without a purposive developmental theme. A living form is a
consciousness-­agent working through memory and creativity towards a goal [. . .]
By contrast, Deleuze and Guattari’s philosophy-­brain is a superject mind/spirit
(esprit) in absolute overflight at infinite speed, and their arts-­brain is an inject soul
(âme) of contraction and contemplation. Philosophy’s plane of immanence is
without direction or orientation’ (Bogue 2017: 534).
 Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari’s Philosophy of Life 75

For Deleuze and Guattari, actual morphogenesis is only one direction of

becoming; another direction moves towards indeterminate virtuality: ‘It
is the virtual that is distinct from the actual, but a virtual that is no longer
chaotic, that has become consistent or real on the plane of immanence that
wrests it from the chaos’ (Deleuze and Guattari 1994: 156). Although Deleuze
and Guattari relate these two directions to science and philosophy (science
moving towards the states of affairs, and philosophy towards the virtual),
we can presume that they allude to different tendencies of conceptuality.
The oscillation between the virtual and actual can be seen as the main
character of cerebral activity. It might be related to the brain’s plasticity or
potentiality, which, according to Catherine Malabou, designates the brain’s
capacity to receive form, to give form, or to destroy form. This virtual
indeterminacy of the brain will be discussed in the next chapter.

Conclusion
To conclude, we can observe that Deleuze’s notion of life undergoes a cer-
tain ‘evolution’. In Difference and Repetition Deleuze seeks to account for the
ontogenetic dimension of life and to explain the passage from the virtual to
the intensive and the actual. In A Thousand Plateaus, Deleuze and Guattari
create a different ontological mapping, where the virtual and the actual are
described as the plane of consistency and the plane of organisation, cutting
across each other. In What Is Philosophy? they assert the same ontological
scheme, which is now related to the functioning of cerebral activity that has
a different field of application: the plane of consistency is the field of philos-
ophy and art, whereas the plane of organisation is the field of science. The
field of conceptuality, and of cerebral cognition, might navigate through
these fields and proceed from the virtual to the actual and from the actual
to the virtual.
However, what makes Deleuze and Guattari’s theory so exceptional, and
also so different from Ruyer’s, is that they value the undetermined, virtual
character of life. In one of his latest texts, ‘Immanence: A Life’,13 Deleuze
introduces the notion of indeterminate life, a life which is freed from the
restraints of individuality and subjectivity. ‘A life contains only virtuals. It
is made up of virtualities, events, singularities. What we call virtual is not
something that lacks reality but something that is engaged in a process of
actualization following the plane that gives it its particular reality’ (Deleuze
2005: 31). A virtual life might do without any individuality; it also might
actualise itself into a certain individual, but it can also deindividualise itself
and become the body without organs or a machinic phylum. Following

13
Originally published as Gilles Deleuze, ‘L’Immanence: une vie’, Philosophie, 47,
1995, pp. 4–7. Translated into English as ‘Immanence: A Life’, in Gilles Deleuze,
Pure Immanence: Essays on Life, trans. Anna Boyman, New York: Zone Books,
2005, pp. 25–33.
76 Organism-­Oriented Ontology

Deleuze, Agamben interprets ‘a life’ as a principle of virtual indetermina-

tion, which is all inclusive:

a life . . . marks the radical impossibility of establishing hierarchies and

separations. The plane of immanence thus functions as a principle of
virtual indetermination, in which the vegetative and the animal, the
inside and the outside and even the organic and the inorganic, in pass-
ing through one another, cannot be told apart. (Agamben 1999: 233,
­emphasis in original)

‘A life’ is defined not by its capacity to take form to become an organism or

an individual, but by its undetermined potentiality and impotentiality.
 4
Catherine Malabou: Plasticity of Reason

The tension between preformationism and the freedom of morphogenetic

development, which we observed in examining Ruyer’s work, also guides
Catherine Malabou’s philosophy. Malabou examines this tension through
the notion of ‘plasticity’, which means the capacity of the living being
to receive form and to give form, and also the capacity to explode form.
Plasticity refers to the qualitative change that takes place both at the level
of cells (cell plasticity) and the brain (neuroplasticity), and that can be either
creative or destructive. It is destructive plasticity that is the most interesting
for neurological and philosophical investigations, because it reveals the
rupture between the cerebral and the mental, or between cerebral auto-­
affection and mental auto-­affection. In these cases, we discover something
that Malabou names the ‘cerebral unconscious’ – cerebral activity without
consciousness. These discoveries open a gap between the brain and the
mind, or between the biological and the transcendental origins of thinking.
Deleuze and Guattari already started questioning the central role of the
mind and asserted the importance of cerebral cognition. In a similar tone,
Malabou argues that reason, or the field of the transcendental, is not some-
thing pre-­formed and pre-­given but is subject to epigenetic development.
Reason is evolving, developing and changing in the same way as a living
being is. In this sense, Malabou refers to the ‘epigenesis of reason’, which
allows us to question the universal and necessary nature of transcendental
reason.

Plasticity and Potentiality

The notion of plasticity first appears in Malabou’s doctoral thesis on Hegel,
which was later published under the title The Future of Hegel.1 Although orig-
inating from a close reading of Hegelian dialectics, the notion of ­plasticity

1
Catherine Malabou, L’Avenir de Hegel, Paris: Libraire Philosophique J. Vrin, 1996.
Translated into English as The Future of Hegel: Plasticity, Temporality and Dialectic,
trans. Lisabeth During, London: Routledge, 2005.
78 Organism-­Oriented Ontology

is detached from the Hegelian vocabulary and, as Jacques Derrida pointed

out in his ‘Preface’, extended to the realm of the living in general (Malabou
2005: xxiii). Malabou discusses plasticity as a general characteristic of life
that defines the living being as capable of receiving form and also of giving
form to its environment. However, to exercise its vital functions, an organ-
ism has to transform the reservoir of energy into something else; in other
words, it has to make this energy explode to acquire new vital qualities. Here
the word ‘plasticity’ acquires a third meaning, that of explosive substance
(deriving from the French words plastiquer or plastiquage). In this sense,
plasticity means both the creation of forms and the annihilation of forms,
which is necessary for future transformations: ‘life is responsible for the
donation of the vital forms, but [. . .] each of these forms, to the degree that
it is made of a concentrated energy, provokes an explosion’ (Malabou 2005:
61). In this sense, plasticity refers to the potentiality of any living being,
and its capacity to trigger a change, to transform reservoirs of energy into
substances required for an organism’s development. In Philosophy of Nature
Hegel argues that an organism possesses a certain Bildungstrieb, a ‘plas-
tic instinct’, which allows it to transform its environment through active
power. Thus, the concept of plasticity encompasses three different aspects
of organic life: an organism takes form to become what it is; it gives form
to its environment and reshapes it according to its needs; and it explodes
form to transform the reservoirs of energy into the substances it needs for
its further development.
The notion of plasticity acquires slightly different connotations in
Malabou’s other books, where she relates the concept of plasticity to
the synaptic activity of the brain. In What Should We Do with Our Brain?2
Malabou examines the plasticity of the brain, which in some sense is similar
to the plasticity of an organism: it receives form in the sense that it is a self-­
organising system and gives form in the sense that it shapes and organises
the environment around itself. As Malabou points out,

It is precisely because [. . .] the brain is not already made that we must

ask what we should do with it, what we should do with this plasticity
that makes us, precisely in the sense of a work: sculpture, modelling,
­architecture. What should we do with this plastic organic art? (Malabou
2008: 7)

What should we do with this living brain which appears at the most ele-
mentary levels of life and is one of the fundamental characteristics of living
beings? Because the brain is in us, how do these new discoveries about the
plasticity of the brain correlate with our personality?

2
Catherine Malabou, Que faire de notre cerveau?, Paris: Bayard, 2004. Translated into
English as What Should We Do with Our Brain?, trans. Sebastian Rand, New York:
Fordham University Press, 2008.
 Catherine Malabou: Plasticity of Reason 79

Malabou points out that the new discoveries in neuroscience are very
rarely confronted with our philosophical knowledge of personhood and
subjectivity. Instead, one should ask what is the relationship between the
neuronal and the mental, or between the biological and the transcendental
origins of thought. The divide between different approaches became obvi-
ous in the discussion ‘What Makes Us Think?’, which took place between
neuroscientist Jean-­ Pierre Changeux and philosopher Paul Ricoeur in
1998.3 The discussion demonstrated the untranslatability of neuroscientific
discourse into philosophical discourse and vice versa. ‘Changeux’s position
is emblematic of the reductive “cognitivists” who “seek to elaborate a natu-
ral philosophy of mind by exposing the neuronal substrates of our mental
activities”, and Ricoeur exemplifies the “Continentals”, for whom contem-
porary neuroscience is quite simply a crude determinist threat to freedom
of thought and action’ (Watkin 2017: 95). Malabou critically deconstructs
both sides of this debate. On the one hand, she questions the unproblematic
continuity and linearity between the neuronal and the mental, which is
presupposed in neuroscience; on the other hand, she questions the unprob-
lematic ‘forgetfulness’ of continental philosophy, which does not bother to
take into account neuroscientific discoveries. We cannot deny the neuronal
substrate of our mind and think that our mind is rooted exclusively in
the transcendental. The neuronal patterns might be invisible to us when
they run smoothly and take the form of a habit, but they certainly become
visible in some specific cases when this smooth functioning is interrupted,
as in the case of neurodegenerative disease or brain damage. In these cases,
the plasticity of the brain acquires a third meaning, that of an explosion:
the continuity between the neuronal and the mental is interrupted, and the
damaged brain cannot reconnect with its previous form of personhood. It is
this rupture or discontinuity that is the main focus of Malabou’s philosophy.
In What Should We Do with Our Brain? Malabou discusses plasticity in two
respects: as cell plasticity and neuronal plasticity. In relation to cell plas-
ticity Malabou distinguishes between different types of stem cells: totipotent
(omnipotent) stem cells, which can give rise to any of the 220 cell types
found in an embryo as well as extra-­embryonic cells (placenta); pluripotent
stem cells, which can give rise to all the cell types of the body; and multipo-
tent stem cells, which can develop into a limited number of cell types in a
particular lineage. Thus, if totipotent stem cells express the potential to pro-
duce any type of cells found in embryos, pluripotent and multipotent stem
cells express the potential to replicate and differentiate in adults. The stem
cells’ capacity to replicate and differentiate themselves is called stem-­cell
plasticity. As Malabou observes, ‘In the first c­ ase – ­the capacity to differenti-

3
The discussion was published as Jean-­Pierre Changeux and Paul Ricoeur, What
Makes Us Think? A Neuroscientist and a Philosopher Argue about Ethics, Human Nature,
and the Brain, trans. M. B. DeBevoise, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press,
2002.
80 Organism-­Oriented Ontology

ate themselves into cells of the same ­tissue – ­stem cells are called multipotent.
In the second ­case – ­the capacity to develop themselves into types of cells
specific to other ­tissues – ­stem cells are called pluripotent’ (Malabou 2008: 16,
emphasis in original). Having in mind these different levels of potentiality,
Malabou argues that stem-­cell plasticity embraces both meanings, ‘closed’
and ‘open’: it is determination (to produce cells of the same type of tissue)
and freedom (the ability to differentiate and produce cells of other tissues).
‘According to this meaning, plasticity designates generally the ability to
change one’s destiny, to inflect one’s trajectory, to navigate differently, to
reform one’s form and not solely to constitute that form as in the “closed”
meaning’ (Malabou 2008: 17). Stem cell plasticity allows the living being to
acquire and maintain its proper form, and, on the other hand, it allows it to
change and improvise.
The same kind of plasticity that is characteristic of an organism at the level
of stem cells can be detected in the operation of synaptic connections taking
place in the brain. Malabou observes that the brain’s plasticity operates on
three levels: first, it is developmental plasticity, which appears in the brain of
the embryo, and which begins by establishing the neuronal connections and
then multiplying and modelling them. In this regard the brain is not some-
thing that is given from birth in its finished form; rather it is undergoing a
process of sculpting, which eliminates useless connections and strengthens
those that are useful. The elimination of useless connections taking place in
the brain reminds us of the biological phenomenon called apoptosis, or ‘cell
death’. As Claude Ameisen points out, ‘Cell death ­is . . . ­a tool allowing the
embryo to work out its form in its becoming, by eliminative procedure that
allies it with sculpture’ (Ameisen 1999: 30; cited in Malabou 2008: 19). When
neuronal sculpting is completed, the next phase of the modelling of the brain
depends on contacts with the external world: it is the relationship with the
environment that becomes crucial for the brain’s development. This means
that apoptotic sculpting is replaced by epigenetic sculpting, which now takes
the role of neuronal morphogenesis. ‘In both cases, the brain appears at
once as something that gets ­formed – ­progressively sculpted, stabilized, and
divided into different ­regions – ­and as something formative: little by little, to
the extent that the volume of connections grows, the identity of an individ-
ual begins to outline itself’ (Malabou 2008: 20). At this point developmental
plasticity is replaced by modulational plasticity, which works through the
brain’s connections with the external world.
Thus, the second level of neuronal plasticity is modulational plasticity,
which refers to the modification of neuronal connections in the adult
brain. The brain’s synaptic efficiency can dramatically increase (a long-­term
potentiation) or diminish (a long-­term depression). External stimuli, such as
learning, experience and imagination, can activate and increase the number
of synaptic connections. This capacity is characteristic not only of humans,
but also of animals: for example, birds’ behaviour, such as stockpiling food,
can significantly increase their neuronal connections. Similarly, human ani-
 Catherine Malabou: Plasticity of Reason 81

mals have the capacity to potentiate their brain activity during the processes
required for perception and learning. The idea of modulational plasticity
questions the old assumption that the brain of an adult is incapable of
changes; on the contrary, it is open to constant morphogenetic modulations.
In this respect, neuronal plasticity can be compared with stem-­cell plasticity:
‘one could claim that neuronal connections, because of their own plasticity,
are always capable of changing difference, receiving or losing an imprint, or
transforming their program’ (Malabou 2008: 24). Malabou argues that our
brain literally is what we do with it: by activating our brain, we can escape
biological determination and increase the potential for improvisation.
The third level of plasticity is so-­ called reparative plasticity, which
encompasses both neuronal renewal and the brain’s capacity to repair
itself after being damaged. Neuronal renewal or secondary neurogenesis
refers to the modification of synaptic connections in the adult brain and
in this respect is similar to the modulational plasticity discussed above.
Reparative plasticity refers to the brain’s capacity to recreate or invent new
connections after particular damage, such as a stroke or an amputation.
Thus, reparative plasticity reveals the brain’s capacity to create a ‘natural
prosthesis’, to invent new forms of self-­repair, which were not foreseen or
pre-­formed in advance. For example, certain neuronal connections that are
responsible for movement or cognition might be lost or destroyed after a
stroke. However, this loss can be compensated by activating different parts
of the brain which take on the role of damaged neuronal connections. As
Marc Jeannerod points out, ‘The patient, by himself or through rehabili-
tation, has learned to use nerve pathways that would not be there in the
normal state. This reorganization of motor function testifies once more to
the plasticity of brain mechanisms’ (Jeannerod 2002: 69; cited in Malabou
2008: 28). Another example that Malabou gives to prove the brain’s repara-
tive function is in a hand transplant operation: even if it is possible to
re-­establish the anatomical continuity between the donor’s hand and the
recipient’s forearm, there still remains the question whether it is possible to
re-­establish the neuronal connections between the transplanted hand and
the brain. However, the brain manages to restore the representation of the
hand in such a way that the transplanted hand is recognised as its own.
These examples demonstrate that the brain has the potentiality for creation
and invention, and can be modified in many different ways.
Thus, both the plasticity of stem cells and the plasticity of brain connec-
tions express potentiality as one of the most important characteristics of
every living being. It is important to stress that plasticity as potentiality is
not actualised according to a certain pre-­existing plan or form, but is open to
change, improvisation and even accidents. Similarly to Ruyer, who argued
that the living form initiates its own morphogenetic development, Malabou’s
philosophy reconceptualises developmental, modulational and reparative
plasticity as potentiality, which appears not only in the embryo but also
in adult individuals. Plasticity as potentiality allows one to ­interpret the
82 Organism-­Oriented Ontology

organism and the brain not as something that is actually given and finite, but
as an open system, virtually carrying within itself its future transformations.
In this respect, Malabou’s idea of plasticity as potentiality has an affinity to
the Deleuzian notion of the virtual, which in What Is Philosophy? was used to
describe the undetermined character of the brain. The virtual or potential
character of the brain implies not only the potential to be (or to form), but
also the potential not to be (or to deform). In other words, beside the three
types of plasticity that increase the number of synaptic connections, there is
a fourth type of plasticity that appears as an explosion, or a rupture. It is an
intermediary type of ­plasticity – ­never discussed by ­neuroscientists – w
­ hich
is situated between cellular plasticity and neuronal plasticity. In contrast to
neuroscientists, who believe in the smooth continuity between the neuronal
and the mental, Malabou argues that in this case there is a certain incommen-
surability, or rupture, which interrupts the smooth functioning of the brain.

Damasio: From the Neuronal to the Mental

Malabou formulates her position taking into account recent research in
neuroscience, and especially referring to the works of Antonio Damasio.
Damasio is a strong proponent of the univocity of life, asserting the con-
tinuity between different levels of organic organisation. In his latest book
The Strange Order of Things (2018), Damasio observes that all living beings,
from unicellular organisms to complex organisms with a central nervous
system, follow the fundamental principle of homeostasis: ‘Homeostasis is
the powerful, unthought, unspoken imperative, whose discharge implies,
for every living organism, small or large, nothing less than enduring and
prevailing’ (Damasio 2018: 25). Homeostasis is not only responsible for the
organism’s endurance and survival, but also establishes ‘a projection of life
into the future of an organism or a species’ (Damasio 2018: 25, emphasis in orig-
inal). In this sense, homeostasis works as a principle of potentiality, which
not only maintains the present condition, but also projects it towards future
developments. Both un-­minded bacteria and complex organisms such as
human beings, having their senses and feelings, seek for the flourishing
of life. Between the pure organic state and the mental state there is an
intermediary level of feelings, which, according to Damasio, are ‘the mental
deputies of homeostasis’: negative feelings express deficient homeostasis,
whereas positive feelings express the appropriate levels of homeostasis.
However, the notion of feeling here refers not to a mental state, but to the
non-­conscious biological or chemical processes taking place in our bodies.
As Damasio points out, ‘the term “homeostasis” refers to a nonconscious
form of physiological control that operates automatically without subjectiv-
ity or deliberation on the part of the organism. Obviously [. . .] it can even
operate well in organisms without a nervous system’ (Damasio 2018: 47). For
example, most organisms automatically control the level of sugar, tempera-
ture or water balance by alerting the compensatory mechanisms. Hence, it is
 Catherine Malabou: Plasticity of Reason 83

important to stress that homeostasis leads not to a perfect equilibrium (that

would lead to death), but to a state of flourishing and well-­being.
Thus, Damasio creates a strong analogy between unicellular organisms
and complex organisms with a central nervous system, as they are both
striving for homeostasis in a similar way; however, he observes that this
principle of homeostasis cannot be interpreted as a certain kind of ‘con-
sciousness’. In contrast to Ruyer, who argued that there is an organic, or
primary, consciousness characteristic of all living beings, even the most
simple ones, Damasio is reluctant to name homeostatic activity as ‘con-
sciousness’. He asserts that simple living beings respond to their environ-
ment; for example, plants respond to temperature, hydration and sunlight,
but this response is not conscious.

All of these creatures continually sense the presence of other living crea-
tures or of the environment. But I resist calling them conscious, in the
traditional meaning of the word, because that traditional meaning is tied
to the notions of mind and feeling, and in turn I have linked mind and
feeling to the presence of nervous systems. (Damasio 2018: 157, emphasis
in original)

Obviously, bacteria and protozoa have no nervous system and cannot

experience mental states. However, Damasio argues that between basic bio-
logical processes, such as cellular sensing, and mental states there is an inter-
mediary level of feelings. ‘Feelings are core mental states, perhaps the core
mental states, those that correspond to a specific, foundational content: the
internal state of the body within which consciousness inheres’ (Damasio 2018: 158,
emphasis in original). Feelings express the intimate relationship between
the body and the brain, which together with the network of the nervous
system form an organismic single unit. In other words, neither the nervous
system nor the brain can provide and produce mental phenomena if they
work separately, and only their permanent interaction creates a continuity
between the organism and the brain. As Damasio points out, ‘brains and
bodies are in the same mind-­enabling soup’ (Damasio 2018: 240), which
creates a kind of cerebral organism.
In his earlier book The Feeling of What Happens (1999), Damasio gives a
more detailed analysis of feeling and a more nuanced explanation of differ-
ent levels of consciousness. His basic insight is that feelings express a certain
type of organic consciousness, which exists ‘before’ subjective consciousness.
Damasio asserts that our brain, which is undoubtedly conscious, contains
some kind of non-­conscious mechanisms, which inform the brain about the
state of our organism. ‘These devices continually represent, nonconsciously,
the state of the living body, along its many dimensions. I call the state of
activity within the ensemble of such devices the proto-self, the nonconscious
forerunner for the levels of self which appear in our minds as the conscious
protagonists of consciousness: core self and autobiographical self’ (Damasio
84 Organism-­Oriented Ontology

1999: 22, emphasis in original). In other words, the proto-­self is a collection

of neural patterns which represent the state of the organism at multiple
levels of the brain, but represent that non-­consciously. These representations
create feelings, sensory patterns or images, which inform the brain about the
state of the organism and also help to create a ‘core self’, which collects these
feelings into a second-­order pattern and is conscious of them. This ‘core self’
is encapsulated in the ‘autobiographical self’, which includes both past expe-
riences and future anticipations. The ‘autobiographical self’ is an archive of
imaginary representations or storytellings through which the ‘self’ is end-
lessly presenting itself to itself. ‘The entire construction of knowledge, from
simple to complex, from nonverbal imagetic to verbal literary, depends on
the ability to map what happens over time, inside our organism, around our
organism, to and with our organism, one thing followed by another thing,
causing another thing, endlessly’ (Damasio 1999: 189, emphasis in original).
In this sense, Damasio asserts that there is a neural continuity between
the organism and the brain:

the relationship between organism and nervous system is incestuous. The

nervous system is, after all, inside the o­ rganism . . . T
­ he nervous system
interacts with varied parts of the body thanks to neural pathways, which
are distributed in all body structures, and thanks, in the reverse direction,
to chemical molecules, which travel in the circulating blood and can gain
direct access to the nervous system . . . (Damasio 2018: 126–7, emphasis
in original)

In other words, the body and the brain interact and form an organismic
single unit, which expresses itself as a feeling: a feeling is a perception not
of some object, but of body-­as-­subject; it is a feeling of what happens within
the body. The discovery of the continuity between the body and the brain
reveals ‘the strange order of things’: it appears that feeling and the sense of
‘self’ depend on the prior emergence of a nervous system and not on the
existence of the cerebral cortex. This discovery might change the common-­
sense idea about human exceptionalism, because humans are not the only
species that possess feelings and self-­awareness. As Damasio asserts,

the emergence of feeling and subjectivity is not recent at all, let alone
exclusively human [. . .] Not only are all vertebrates likely to be conscious
experiencers of a variety of feelings but so are a number of invertebrates
whose central nervous system design resembles that of humans as far
as spinal cord and brain stem are concerned. Social insects are likely to
qualify, and so do charming octopuses drawing on a very different brain
design. (Damasio 2018: 238)

Human exceptionalism is based on the presumption that subjectivity is

determined by the cerebral cortex of upper vertebrates, whereas Damasio
 Catherine Malabou: Plasticity of Reason 85

highlights that subjectivity depends on the auto-­affective capacities of the

cerebral organism, which inform the organism about ongoing life processes.
This auto-­affectivity is the precursor of feelings and subjectivity: ‘The fact
that we can find so much in common in the social and affective behaviors
of single-­celled organisms, sponges and hydras, cephalopods, and mammals
suggests a common root for the problems of life regulation in different
creatures and also a shared solution: obeying the homeostatic imperative’
(Damasio 2018: 239). Nervous systems are only servants to this primary
homeostatic imperative, which is the basis of any organic activity. This
insight helps to assert the continuity between all forms of life and to ques-
tion the exceptional place of human beings.

Malabou: Between the Neuronal and the Mental

Malabou is quite critical of this harmonious passage from the body as organ-
ism to the complexity of the brain. She argues that between the ‘proto-­self’
and the ‘conscious self’ there should be an intermediary plasticity, which
would represent the transition from the neuronal to the mental in terms
of negation and resistance. ‘There is no simple and limpid continuity from
the one to the other, but rather transformation of the one into the other
out of their mutual conflict’ (Malabou 2008: 72). Malabou argues that the
transition from the neuronal to the mental is more like a rupture, or an
explosion, than a continuum.

Only an ontological explosion could permit the transition from one order
to another, from one organization to another, from one given to another.
The neuronal and the mental resist each other and themselves, and it is
because of this that they can be linked to one another, precisely because
– contra ­Damasio – t­ hey do not speak the same language. (Malabou 2008:
72, emphasis in original)

In the same way that an organism has to destroy certain cells in order to
change and develop (the phenomenon of apoptosis), the neuronal network
also has to destroy itself to remain creative. Here is actualised the third
meaning of plasticity, which means destruction and explosion. In this sense,
there is a contradiction between the maintenance system, or homeosta-
sis, and the potential for change. Homeostasis has to be exploded if the
system is to change. As Malabou points out, ‘if we didn’t explode at each
transition, if we didn’t destroy ourselves a bit, we could not live’ (Malabou
2008: 74). Thus explosion is seen as the necessary condition for creativity
and freedom. However, this explosion does not necessarily lead to positive
changes, but might take a destructive turn: in some specific cases, such as
brain lesion or neurodegenerative disease, the neuronal and the mental
break apart.
86 Organism-­Oriented Ontology

Malabou discusses this rupture in The New Wounded,4 where she re-­
examines Damasio’s thesis about the continuity between the neuronal
and the mental. What is problematic in Damasio’s work is the question
of representation: if the ‘proto-­self’ is collecting data about the state of
the organism, why is this activity described as non-­conscious? Damasio
asserts that the ‘proto-­self’ consists of a multiplicity of neuronal patterns,
which map the state of the body at different levels. However, this map-
ping is not collected in the brain, but appears at different levels, from the
brain stem to the cerebral cortex. In other words, according to Damasio,
the organism is both being sensed and sensing at the same time: ‘These
structures are intimately involved in the process of regulating the state of
the organism. The operations of acting on the organism and of sensing
the state of the organism are closely tied’ (Damasio 1999: 154). The signals
coming from neuronal patterns produce certain images or a kind of internal
representation, which should not be confused with our conscious feeling of
self. ‘We are not conscious of the proto-self [. . .] The proto-­self has no powers
of perception and holds no knowledge. Nor is the proto-­self to be confused
with the rigid homunculus of old neurology’ (Damasio 1999: 154, emphasis
in original). Thus, the ‘proto-­self’ is a cerebral auto-­affection, or, in Ruyer’s
terms, a kind of self-­survey, which expresses an immediate proximity of an
organism to itself. Both for Ruyer and Damasio, this auto-­affection exists
before perception and knowledge, and does not presuppose any ‘subject’
behind it.
Malabou makes an interesting theoretical intervention here by suggesting
a relation between non-­conscious activity, taking place via neural patterns
and feelings, and the Freudian notion of the unconscious. Malabou suggests
the term ‘cerebral unconscious’, which would cover the entirety of these cer-
ebral processes that both inform the brain about ongoing organic activities
taking place in the organism, and translate this information into affects. As
Malabou points out,

The autorepresentative activity of the brain, ceaselessly mapped out

within psychosomatic states, thus scrutinizes its own inside, translates it
into images and affects itself with this activity, of which, we see, it is both
sender and receiver. The ‘cerebral unconscious’, then, designates less the
entirety of nonconscious processes than the auto-affection of the brain itself
in its entirety. (Malabou 2012a: 41, emphasis in original)

However, the notion of auto-­affection does not mean that the brain is ‘con-
scious’ of itself, or ‘perceives’ itself directly. Malabou makes a distinction
between subjective auto-­affection and cerebral auto-­affection. Subjective

4
Catherine Malabou, Les nouveaux blessés, Paris: Bayard, 2007. Translated into
English as The New Wounded: From Neurosis to Brain Damage, trans. Steven Miller,
New York: Fordham University Press, 2012.
 Catherine Malabou: Plasticity of Reason 87

auto-­affection in a traditional sense means that the subject is capable of

experiencing itself as self-­identical, of creating its subjectivity and identity
with the help of inner mental space. Cerebral auto-­affection means some-
thing different: it is the brain’s capacity to track organic processes taking
place within the organism. As Malabou points out,

Cerebral auto-­affection, which designates the set of homeostatic processes,

thus characterizes the brain’s capacity to experience the altering character of
contact with itself. Emotion plays a fundamental role within the consti-
tution of this cerebral psyche: the brain affects ­itself – ­that is, modifies
­itself – w
­ ithin the constant flow of vital regulation. (Malabou 2012a: 42,
emphasis in original)

However, the question is who is the holder of these affects and what kind of
representation does this cerebral auto-­affection presuppose? If the organism
is both the sender and the receiver of these affects, how can this auto-­
affectivity be translated into the language of mental states?
Malabou argues that this is a kind of blind spot: our psyche cannot
directly access the unconscious, and, in a similar way, our subjective con-
sciousness cannot access our organic consciousness or the ‘proto-­self’.
Thus, cerebral auto-­affectivity does not create any kind of identity or self-­
reflectivity, and in this respect it should be distinguished from subjective
auto-­affectivity, which is the essence of our subjective identity. In the struc-
ture of subjective auto-­affectivity the subject reflects itself as being identical
to itself, whereas in the structure of cerebral auto-­affectivity the feeling of
‘what happens’ does not lead to subjective identity or self. As Malabou
points out,

No one can feel his or her own brain; nor can he or she speak of it, hear it
speak, nor hear himself or herself speak within it. Cerebral auto-­affection is
necessarily and paradoxically accompanied by a blindness, an inability of
the subject to feel anything as far as it is concerned [. . .] Cerebral auto-affection is
the unconscious of subjectivity. (Malabou 2012a: 42–3, emphasis in original)

In other words, the ‘cerebral self’ remains unconscious and is not fully
represented in the subjective self.
And yet we might ask if this recourse to psychoanalysis is justified and if
the term ‘unconscious’ is the right one, because the ‘cerebral self’ is quite
‘conscious’ and well informed about its own activity. We can agree with
Malabou that the ‘cerebral self’ does not represent itself in the sense that
it has no language, but this does not mean that it is deprived of representa-
tion. Malabou admits this by pointing out that cerebral auto-­affection is not
verbal but of specular nature: ‘To speak of cerebral auto-­affection, therefore,
is to admit that the brain is capable of looking at itself, touching itself as it
constitutes its own image. Homeostatic regulation has a specular structure; it
88 Organism-­Oriented Ontology

operates as a kind of mirror within which the brain sees itself live’ (Malabou
2012a: 42). The brain sees itself but does not speak to itself; in other words,
it functions in a different register than the unconscious, which, according to
Lacanian psychoanalysis, is structured like a language. For this reason, we
can argue that Malabou’s suggestion of naming it the ‘cerebral unconscious’
might not be the right one, because the cerebral and the mental are not
translatable one into the other. As Damasio points out, any organism, and
the brain as a kind of cerebral organism, is capable of mapping and image-­
making, which provides information about the current state of affairs.
The cerebral organism is always busy with making a ‘movie-­in-­the-­brain’
(Damasio 2018: 146), which provides the internal representation of ‘what
happens’. This idea is very close to Ruyer’s insight about self-­survey as an
organism’s sort of inner cinematography, as a vision without a gaze, which
creates the condition of immediate self-­proximity. This inner representation
can be imagined as ‘cerebral cinematography’, which does not need any
actual observer in the sense of a bounded individual. The cerebral organism
is both the film that is screened and the observer who is watching this film.
As Damasio points out, it expresses ‘the never-­ending background music
of life, the continuous execution of life’s score, complete with changes of
pace and rhythm and key, not to mention volume’ (Damasio 2018: 107).
Thus there is a clear disparity between cerebral auto-­affectivity as the inner
representation of life processes and subjective auto-­affectivity, which creates
the sense of the individual self.
This incommensurability between the neuronal and the mental is
disclosed in such cases as brain lesions or neurodegenerative ­diseases –
­dementia, Parkinson’s or Alzheimer’s. Malabou is interested in these cases
because here the ‘cerebral self’ and the ‘subjective self’ break apart: the
importance of cerebral auto-­affectivity reveals itself only in a negative and
destructive way and exposes the fragility of every subjective identity.

Cerebral auto-­affection is a process that becomes all the more fragile and
all the more exposed to the extent that the event of its destruction constitutes
the only proof of its existence for the subject. The importance of this auto-­
affection can be revealed only negatively, through an ­accident – ­a wound,
damage, or t­ rauma – t­ hat happens to interrupt or disrupt its functioning.
(Malabou 2012a: 46, emphasis in original)

In these cases, the ‘cerebral self’ is undergoing a radical change and cannot
reconnect to its former subjective personality. Although change is a neces-
sary component of the notion of plasticity, this time we have a different kind
­ estructive plasticity. In Ontology of the Accident5 Malabou
of ­plasticity – d

5
Catherine Malabou, Ontologie de l’accident, Paris: Éditions Léo Scheer, 2009.
Translated into English as Ontology of the Accident: An Essay on Destructive Plasticity,
trans. Carolyn Shread, Cambridge: Polity, 2012.
 Catherine Malabou: Plasticity of Reason 89

defines destructive plasticity as a phenomenon that appears only through a

negation or rupture:

Something shows itself when there is damage, a cut, something to which

normal, creative plasticity gives neither access nor body: the deserting
of subjectivity, the distancing of the individual who becomes a stranger
to herself, who no longer recognizes anyone, who no longer recognizes
herself, who no longer remembers her self. (Malabou 2012b: 6, emphasis
in original)

Destructive plasticity tears apart the ‘cerebral self’ and the ‘subjective self’
and presents itself as a scar, a radical change that is irreversible, and whose
effects are unrepairable.
However, as was discussed above, this destruction is a necessary com-
ponent of plasticity and change. To get a new form, to acquire a different
identity, we have to undergo a change, to destroy our old forms and iden-
tities. As Malabou points out, ‘The fact that all creation can only occur
at the price of a destructive counterpart is a fundamental law of life. It
does not contradict life; it makes life possible’ (Malabou 2012b: 4). This
imperative for destruction is obvious even at a cellular level: in order to
develop and acquire a new organic form, an organism has to destroy its
previous form. Malabou refers again to the biologist Ameisen, who notes
that ‘the sculpting of the self assumes cellular annihilation or apoptosis, the
phenomena of programmed cellular suicide: in order for fingers to form, a
separation between the fingers must also form. It is apoptosis that produces
the interstitial void that enables fingers to detach themselves from one
another’ (Malabou 2012b: 4–5). In this respect, destruction is a necessary
part of any creation. However, the annihilation of cerebral connections
looks much more horrifying because it destroys the ‘feeling of what hap-
pens’ and disconnects the ‘cerebral self’ from the ‘subjective self’. Damasio
gives many examples of such disconnections referring to his experience in
treating neurological cases, and also interpreting some fictional examples,
such as Samuel Beckett’s character from Happy Days. He refers to the char-
acter of Winnie as expressing a certain wakefulness and purposeful activity,
which seems to be running automatically (Damasio 1999: 92). And yet, even
while demonstrating a certain attention and purposefulness, this activity
lacks core consciousness which could collect her reactions into a coherent
unity of ‘subjective self’. Similarly, patients with neurological diseases can
express a certain purposeful behaviour, physical and affective activity, but
this cerebral activity is not related to the subjective self.
Having these examples in mind, we can redefine the meaning of posi-
tive and destructive plasticity. It seems clear that change is the necessary
condition of plasticity: in order to change and evolve, we have to destroy
ourselves to some extent, to deform in order to get another form. However,
this deformation might be irreversible and might not lead to another form,
90 Organism-­Oriented Ontology

as in cases of neurodegenerative diseases or brain lesions. In these cases

the change is permanent, and the potential for plasticity is lost. Destructive
plasticity is reductive because it exhausts the virtuality or potentiality of
what might happen. However, without engaging in destructive plasticity, we
could not open the potential for creative plasticity and transform ourselves
into something new. In this sense, the notion of plasticity is involved in a
certain kind of Hegelian dialectic (from which it actually originated) because
it is constantly torn between the necessity to maintain homeostasis and the
potentiality to develop into new forms.

Epigenesis and Reason

The notion of plasticity brings into light another dialectical ­contradiction
– ­that between preformationism and epigenesis. This dialectic is the cen-
tral theme in Malabou’s Before Tomorrow: Epigenesis and Rationality,6 where
she discusses the divide between the transcendental and the biological, or
between the laws of rationality, or reason, and the laws of biological devel-
opment, or epigenesis. ‘Epigenesis’ is an Aristotelian term referring to the
process of development through which cells differentiate and organs are
formed. British biologist Conrad Waddington coined the term ‘epigenetics’
in 1940 to refer to a branch of molecular biology that studies the relations
between genes and the individual features they produce, or between geno-
type and phenotype (Malabou 2016a: 78–9). Genotype marks the genetic
constitution of an organism, whereas phenotype is the sum of character-
istics, which appear as a consequence of the organism’s interaction with
the environment. In this sense, epigenetics is a theoretical model, which
explains the development of an organism not in relation to its genetic deter-
mination but through its interaction with external factors throughout life.
In this respect, the theory of epigenetics undermines preformationism, the
belief that a living being is pre-­programmed by its genetic features, and
expresses the dialectic between determinism and freedom.
What makes Malabou’s approach so interesting is that she takes a biolog-
ical theory of epigenetics and applies it to reason itself. Is the transcendental
innate or is it acquired? In other words, can we speak about the ‘prefor-
mationism of reason’, or, by contrast, should we insist on the ‘epigenesis
of reason’? As a starting point for these questions Malabou takes the 27th
paragraph of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, where Kant uses the term ‘epigen-
esis’ to describe the agreement between a priori categories and the objects of
experience. There are two ways in which the agreement is possible: either the
experience makes these concepts possible or these concepts make the expe-
rience possible. The first way is negated because a priori concepts cannot be

6
Catherine Malabou, Avant demain. Épigenèse et rationalité, Paris: PUF, 2014.
Translated into English as Before Tomorrow: Epigenesis and Rationality, trans.
Carolyn Shread, Cambridge: Polity, 2016.
 Catherine Malabou: Plasticity of Reason 91

generated from experience: ‘The first is not the case with the categories (nor
with pure sensible intuition); for they are a priori concepts, hence independ-
ent of experience (the assertion of an empirical origin would be a sort of
generatio aequivoca)’ (Kant 1998: 264, B 167, emphasis in original). Thus, only
the second way ­remains – ­that the condition of possibility of our experience
lies in pure concepts, ‘as it were a system of the epigenesis of pure reason’
(Kant 1998: 265, B 167, emphasis in original). In other words, in describing
the two ways of necessary agreement, Kant uses two biological concepts:
generatio aequivoca and epigenesis. Referring to the conflict between these two
ways, and prioritising the second, Kant contrasts it with a ‘middle way’, that
of a ‘preformation-system of pure reason’ – in this case the categories ‘were
rather subjective predispositions for thinking, implanted in us along with
our experience by our author in such a way that their use would agree exactly
with the laws of nature along which experience runs’ (Kant 1998: 265, B 167,
emphasis in original); however, ‘in such a case the categories would lack the
necessity that is essential to their concept’ (Kant 1998: 265, B 168, emphasis
in original). Thus, in defining the agreement between the categories and the
objects of experience, Kant examines three biological categories – generatio
aequivoca, preformation and epigenesis – which all relate to biological theories
of generation (equivocal generation, preformationism and epigenesis).
As Malabou points out, generatio aequivoca, or equivocal generation, is
a biological theory that explains the generation of life through the spon-
taneous differentiation of inorganic matter. This is a kind of miraculous
transformation whereby a being made of organic matter originates from
inorganic matter. This model of generation is dismissed as an instance of
occasionalism. The categories, and the agreement between the categories and
the objects of experience, cannot arise out of nothing. As Malabou observes,

This approach postulates the existence of a birth foreign to its source,

offspring born of nothing. By contrast, the categories are well and truly
the categories of the understanding, born of it and belonging wholly to it.
Equivocal generation, which contradicts the very idea of generation, is a
theoretical monstrosity that warrants no further consideration. (Malabou
2016a: 22, emphasis in original)

In a similar way, Kant dismisses a ‘middle way’ of preformation, according

to which there is an ideal correspondence between our categories and the
objects of experience, presuming that this correspondence is innate to our
mind. Preformationism in biology presupposes that the form of an organism
is given in advance, and that in the course of its development it changes
only in quantity following the pre-­given plan. The ‘preformation-­system of
pure reason’ would imply that

the pure elements of cognition are innate logical tendencies, placed in us

by God and arranged in such a way that their use corresponds exactly
92 Organism-­Oriented Ontology

to their objects [. . .] Following this ‘middle way’ produces the assertion

that the mind is originally ‘predisposed’, according to the economy of a
relation settled in advance . . . (Malabou 2016a: 22)

To accept this theory would mean that our understanding is pre-­formed by

God, in other words, that our understanding is devoid of any spontaneity
and freedom. The laws of nature and causality would be imposed on us in
advance, and that would make our subjective decision a mere illusion.
This is why Kant supports the theory of epigenesis as the only possible
way to reflect the transcendental. The biological theory of epigenesis dis-
misses preformationism and emphasises the role of the unforeseeable in
the generation of living beings. In a similar way, the agreement between the
categories and the objects of experience has to be reflected not as something
originating from matter of a different nature (as in equivocal generation),
or as given by God in advance (as in preformationism), but as something
which has the principle of differentiation and development in itself. As
Malabou points out, ‘the agreement must be thought by analogy with an
embryo developing by itself, through the process of gradual cellular differen-
tiation and complexification’ (Malabou 2016a: 25, emphasis in original). In
this respect, the theory of epigenesis allows Kant to reject both the theory of
equivocal generation and preformationism, and to argue that pure reason is
driven by self-­generating and self-­differentiating vital force.

The agreement between the categories and objects can only be thought
as the product of a dynamic, creative, and self-­forming relation. It can
come neither from a prior accord (preformationism) nor from a magical
animation of the inorganic (equivocal generation). The understanding
imposes, of itself, a form on the given and thereby constitutes knowledge
as the product of its own activity. (Malabou 2016a: 25–6)

This allows us to assert that Kant introduces the principle of self-­generation

into the core of reason.
However, the question is what is the relationship between Kantian epi-
genesis and the recent developments of epigenetics? Is the Kantian reference
to epigenesis just an analogy, a figure of thought, or is there a deeper link
between the transcendental and the biological? Malabou argues that recent
debates between genetics and epigenetics are reminiscent of the debates in
the Kantian era. In the second half of the twentieth century the field of
biology was dominated by genetics, which presumed that all features of
the organism are pre-­formed in the genetic code. In this sense, genetics can
be seen as the ‘resurgence of preformationism’ (Malabou 2016a: 80). The
genetic approach is questioned by epigenetics, which presumes that, despite
its genetic determination, the organism is changing through its interaction
with the environment. In this sense, ‘the debate between preformationism
and epigenetism has shifted and now occurs between genetic determinism
 Catherine Malabou: Plasticity of Reason 93

and epigenetic shaping’ (Malabou 2016a: 82). Recent research in biology,

such as Mary-­Jane West-­Eberhard’s (2003) theory of developmental plas-
ticity, provides strong evidence that developmental and external factors
play a crucial role in the passage from the genotype to the phenotype.
Malabou seeks to create a kind of ‘critique of neurobiological reason’,
which would take into account both recent research in neurobiology
and the transcendental notion of rationality. Neuroscientist Jean-­Pierre
Changeux pointed out that the brain’s complexity is much greater than
genetic complexity: the brain’s complexity is always increasing, whereas
the DNA content is quite limited. This discontinuity is accounted for in
Changeux’s theory of the epigenesis of neuronal networks (Changeux et
al. 1973), which interprets the brain’s activity as a process of selection and
stabilisation. According to this theory, the brain develops in three stages:
the first stage is growth, when the brain produces multiple neurons and
synapses; the second is the transient redundancy stage, when the most
efficient synaptic connections are selected, and others are eliminated; and
the third is the stage of selective stabilisation, when the connections that
are most frequently used are stabilised. The theory asserts that the brain is
constantly changing through its relations with the external world, such as
experience and learning, and, in this sense, it becomes the principle of its
self-­generation.
However, Malabou is quite critical towards this neurobiological approach
because it fails to make a connection between the biological question of neu-
rological development and the transcendental nature of reason: ‘the problem
is that the neurobiological viewpoint simply erases the transcendental. A
bridge is thrown directly between epigenesis, understood as organic growth,
and brain epigenetics, understood as a selection-­stabilization process of
neuronal connections, without going through the transcendental question
of the formation of reason and rationality’ (Malabou 2016a: 152). Even
if neuroscientists can explain the formation of a synaptic network, they
cannot account for the transcendental nature of rationality. The philosoph-
ical or the transcendental aspect of the brain is always omitted. Therefore,
Malabou argues for the need to create an epigenetic philosophy, or an
epigenetic paradigm of rationality, which could reconcile ‘the biological and
the transcendental without granting either one the supremacy of a proper
meaning’ (Malabou 2016a: 160).
Malabou asserts that the Kantian attempt to explain the transcendental
through the biological notion of epigenesis already anticipates an epigenetic
philosophy. She points out that to explain the transcendental in §27 of
Critique of Pure Reason, Kant addresses the three examples of generation
and prioritises epigenesis as the best analogy to explain the agreement
between the categories and objects of experience. It is important to point
out that the same theories of generation appear in §81 of Kant’s Critique
of the Power of Judgement: this time they appear not as mere analogy, but as
laws which can explain the growth of a living being. For Kant, there are two
94 Organism-­Oriented Ontology

theories explaining the generation of a living being – ‘occasionalism’ and

‘prestabilism’. According to ‘occasionalism’, ‘the supreme world-­cause, in
accordance with its idea, would immediately provide the organic formation
to the matter comingling in every impregnation’. However, ‘If one assumes
the occasionalism of the production of organic beings, then everything
that is natural is entirely lost, and with that is also lost all use of reason for
judging the possibility of such a product’ (Kant 2000: 291, 5:422). Therefore,
Kant turns to ‘prestabilism’, according to which ‘an organic being produces
more of its kind and constantly preserves the species itself’ (Kant 2000: 291,
5:422). Kant explains ‘prestabilism’ in two ways:

it considers each organic being generated from its own kind as either the
educt or the product of the latter. The system of generatings as mere educts
is called that of individual preformation, or the theory of evolution; the system
of generatings as products is called the system of epigenesis. (Kant 2000:
291, 5:423, emphasis in original)

Kant argues that the theory of epigenesis has a great advantage over other
theories, ‘because it considers nature, at least as far as propagation is con-
cerned, as itself producing rather than merely developing those things that
can initially be represented as possible only in accordance with the causality
of ends’ (Kant 2000: 292, 5:424). Thus, if in the first Critique the biological
principle of epigenesis appears as a mere analogy, then in the third Critique
epigenesis is introduced as the biological principle of life and living beings.
In other words, the relationship between the transcendental and the bio-
logical undergoes a transformation from the first to the third Critique: ‘The
meaning of the epigenesis of and in critical philosophy derives from the
long rational maturation of the relation between the transcendental and
that which appears to do without it, to resist it: the living organism, which
self-­forms and has no need for categories’ (Malabou 2016a: 161). This dia-
lectical link between the transcendental and the biological allows Malabou
to conceptualise the epigenesis of neurobiological reason, in other words, to
state the self-­generative and self-­organising power of rationality.
By asserting the self-­organising power of reason and rationality, Malabou
also redefines the nature of causality: if the transcendental field is subject
to the epigenesis common to all living beings, then it is freed from the laws
of logical necessity and is opened to contingency. In contrast to Quentin
Meillassoux, who asserted in After Finitude (2008) that contingency can be
explained only mathematically, Malabou argues that contingency can be
explained biologically. ‘Kant allows us, from finitude, to discover a mean-
ing of contingency that is more innovative and radical than the one that
Meillassoux proposes’ (Malabou 2016a: 172). The epigenesis of reason not
only allows us to embrace the contingency characteristic of the organic world
but also clarifies the durational, gradual and processual nature of reason: we
can observe and follow ‘the gestation and embryogenesis of reason itself’
 Catherine Malabou: Plasticity of Reason 95

(Malabou 2016a: 173). As Jennifer Mensch argues in Kant’s Organicism,

‘Kant found epigenesis to be attractive for thinking about reason because it
opened up possibilities for thinking about reason as an organic system, as
something that was self-­developing and operating according to an organic
logic’ (Mensch 2013: 144). The theory of epigenesis allowed Kant to think
of reason as ‘cause and effect of itself’, as a self-­organising creature open for
change and contingency.

Conclusion
The epigenetic approach to reason, or, more generally, the biologisation
of reason, might have important biopolitical consequences. Following
Foucault, Malabou argues that the epigenesis of reason allows us to question
the universal and necessary nature of transcendental reason and to replace
it with the plastic, contingent and arbitrary character of ‘biological reason’.
The biologisation of reason allows one to think beyond formal structures
and universal values and, as Malabou writes, ‘authorizes subjects to shape
and form themselves as such’ (Malabou 2019: 131). In this respect, the
biologisation of reason might be seen as a successful strategy of resistance
to biopolitical power. Both Foucault and Deleuze argued that when biopo-
litical power takes life as its object, it is the vital power of life that allows us
to resist power. In a similar vein, Malabou argues that recent developments
in biology, such as epigenetics, cloning or gene editing, demonstrate that the
biological dimension of our lives should be understood not as determina-
tion but as a potential for freedom and change.
In her text ‘One Life Only: Biological Resistance, Political Resistance’,
Malabou points out that ‘a resistance to what is known today as biopower
[. . .] might emerge from possibilities written into the structure of the living
being itself, not from the philosophical concepts that tower over it; that
there might be a biological resistance to the biopolitical’ (Malabou 2016b:
429). This is what can be inferred from the notion of plasticity: plasticity
refers to biological creativity and the capacity of a living being to receive
form and give form, to change and develop. Living beings are not predeter-
mined in advance but rather constitute formative activity which carries its
forms within itself. As Malabou points out, ‘Plasticity is in a way genetically
programmed to develop and operate without program, plan, determinism,
schedule, design, or preschematization. Neural plasticity allows the shaping,
repairing, and remodelling of connections and in consequence a certain
amount of self-­transformation of the living being’ (Malabou 2015: 43–4).
In this sense, the divide between the transcendental and the biological is
undermined, because the biological does not follow any transcendental
law but develops according to its own immanent potentiality. Biological
plasticity allows us to imagine different forms of life and subjectivity, free
to take any shape or form and to avoid the pressure of normativity. Where
plasticity deserts, biopolitics takes over.
 5
General Organology:
Between Organism and Machine

In this chapter I will discuss the theory of organology, which examines

the interaction between an organism and a machine. We can argue that
organology appears as an attempt to overcome the opposition between
mechanism and vitalism: mechanism explains living beings according to the
laws of physics and chemistry, whereas vitalists argue that to understand
living beings we have to presume the existence of some non-­physical force.
In the first part of the twentieth century we can see an attempt to overcome
this ­opposition – ­this is the theory of organicism. Both vitalists and organ-
icists stress the teleological behaviour of organisms; however, they differ in
how they explain the organising principle of organisms: vitalists assert some
non-­physical entity, a vital force, whereas organicists insist that wholeness
and organisation can be explained without such notions (Haraway 2004:
34). Organismic biologists assert that to understand the phenomenon of
life we have to explain its ‘organisation’ or ‘organising relations’. These
organising relations are immanent in the physical structure of the organism,
therefore living beings can be defined in terms of ‘self-­organisation’ (Capra
1997: 25). This attention to the patterns of organisation, which was implicit
in living beings, became the main question of cybernetics, which examines
the self-­organising functioning of a new generation of machines. Norbert
Wiener defined cybernetics as the science of ‘control and communication
in the animal and the machine’ (Wiener 1985). Cybernetics overcomes the
opposition between mechanism and vitalism by analysing both living and
non-­living beings as self-­organising structures supported by information
and feedback.
Besides these influential theoretical stances, we can discern another cur-
rent named ‘organology’. The term ‘organology’ was proposed by Georges
Canguilhem in his text ‘Machine and Organism’.1 Canguilhem traces the

1
Published in Georges Canguilhem, La connaisance de la vie, Paris: Librairie
Philosophique J. Vrin, 1965. Translated into English as Knowledge of Life, trans.
Stefanos Geroulanos and Daniela Ginsburg, New York: Fordham University
Press, 2008. The same idea appears in Canguilhem’s ‘Note’ where he argues
 General Organology: Between Organism and Machine 97

term to Bergson’s Creative Evolution, saying that it is a treatise on organology,

although Bergson never used the term. Thus, organology not only examines
the relationships between machines and organisms, but also treats machines
as an extension of the human organism and its organs. Referring to his pre-
decessors, such as Ernst Kapp, Alfred Espinas and André Leroi-­Gourhan,2
Canguilhem argues that tools and technologies can be understood as exten-
sions of biological organisms.
As Canguilhem points out, ‘machines can be considered organs of the
human species. A tool or a machine is an organ, and organs are tools or
machines’ (Canguilhem 2008: 87). Thus, explaining organs or organisms
through mechanical models can be considered tautological. In contrast to
machines, which are quantitatively measurable and have a defined pur-
pose, organisms are self-­organised and develop according to their internal
transformations. The most important thing is that no machine can create
another machine or replace itself (as was already asserted by Kant), hence
the invention of any machine should be inscribed into the history of human
beings and life in general. As Canguilhem points out, ‘it seems legitimate to
hold that biological organization must necessarily precede the existence and
meaning of mechanical constructions’ (Canguilhem 2008: 91). This insight
allows Canguilhem to examine machines through the model of biological
organisation.
In a similar way, Simondon discusses technical objects as belonging to
general ontogenesis, which encompasses both living and non-­living beings.
Later this idea is significantly elaborated by Bernard Stiegler, who creates
his own theory of ‘general organology’ and asserts that human life can be
maintained only through the invention of tools and the organisation of the
inorganic. The notion of organology is further re-­examined by Yuk Hui,
who argues that technical objects are becoming organic in the sense that
they incorporate organic properties, such as recursivity and contingency.
Thus, ‘general organology’ can be seen as a theory which explains technol-
ogy through the model of the organism and inscribes technology into the
continuum of living beings.

Simondon on Technical Objects

Simondon used the word ‘organology’ occasionally in Communication et
information (Simondon 2015a: 167), without giving much attention to the
term. However, as Guillaume le Blanc has suggested, organological thought

that the Bergsonian motif of an ‘organology’ should ‘inscribe the mechanical

within the organic’, to ‘return mechanism to its place in life and for life’ and ‘to
reinsert the history of mechanism into the history of life’. See Canguilhem 1947.
2
Ernst Kapp, Grundlinien einer Philosophie der Technik, Braunschweig: Georg
Westermann, 1877; Alfred Espinas, Les origines de la technologie, Paris: Alcan, 1897;
André Leroi-­Gourhan, Milieu et techniques, Paris: Albin Michel, 1945.
98 Organism-­Oriented Ontology

stretches from Bergson to Simondon, passing by Canguilhem (Le Blanc

2010: 203, n. 2; cited in Hui 2019: 148). Canguilhem was the supervisor
of Simondon’s supplementary thesis On the Mode of Existence of Technical
Objects, published immediately after its defence in 1958. In this supple-
mentary thesis Simondon attempts to describe the ontogenesis of technical
objects and explain the relation between technical objects and living beings.
Simondon examines technical objects as a part of general ontogenesis, which
includes physical, biological and psychosocial phenomena. The develop-
ment of technical objects is compared to an evolution of living beings as
described by Jean-­Baptiste Lamarck (Simondon 2008: 173), including simple
as well as complex organisms, such as humans. A technical object is seen as
a mediator between a human and a machine, between the biological and the
artificial. As Simondon points out, ‘The opposition drawn between culture
and technics, between man and machine, is false and has no f­ oundation . . .
­Behind a facile humanism, it masks a reality rich in human efforts and nat-
ural forces, and which constitutes a world of technical objects as mediators
between man and nature’ (Simondon 2017: 15). Simondon argues that there
is something inherently human inside t­echnics – a­ human thought or an
­invention – ­and that human thinking itself contains something technical
or ­machinic – t­ his idea is later taken up and elaborated by such thinkers as
Derrida and Stiegler.
Simondon was influenced by cyberneticians of his time, especially
Norbert Wiener and his notion of feedback. However, he criticises cyber-
netics and its general idea that there is an identity between a technical object
and a natural object, or, more specifically, a living being. For Simondon,
cybernetics is inefficient in postulating the identity between living beings
and self-­regulating technical objects (Simondon 2017: 51). This relationship
is much more complicated with regard to their general tendencies: living
beings tend towards individuation, whereas technical objects tend towards
concretisation. The genesis of technical objects moves from the abstract to
the concrete by resolving disparities and ‘tending toward internal coherence,
toward a closure of the system of causes and effects that exert themselves in
a circular fashion within its bounds’ (Simondon 2017: 49). Both biological
individuation and technical concretisation imply a process that resolves
disparities between different systems. As Mills points out, similar to the
process of individuation of living beings, ‘the development of the technical
lineage is the progressive resolution of problems through concretization.
As such the concretization of the technical object is also, in a sense, its
naturalization’ (Mills 2016: 109). However, technical objects can become
more concrete but they never become individuals because they need an
inventor to be completed. In other words, Simondon defines concretisa-
tion as an invention, which needs a human being to intervene, and which
appears as a leap from one technical system to another. A good example
of concretisation is the invention of the Guimbal turbine: this is a turbine
that uses a river both as a driving force and as a cooling agent to reduce
 General Organology: Between Organism and Machine 99

overheating caused by the Joule effect, which might otherwise burn out the
engine (Hui 2019: 191). In this example concretisation refers to a technical
invention that resolves the specific problem of overheating. It is important
to point out that this invention not only resolves technical problems but
also connects a technical object and a natural milieu.
This issue needs special consideration because, in the process of concre-
tisation, the technical object not only evolves into a new invented object,
but, according to Simondon, creates an ‘associated milieu’: ‘This simultane-
ously technical and natural milieu can be called an associated milieu. It is
that through which the technical object conditions itself in its functioning’
(Simondon 2017: 59). In other words, to become viable, a technical object
needs to resolve disparities and also to invent a new milieu which is a
condition of its functioning. ‘The technical object is thus its own condition, as a
condition of existence of this mixed milieu which is simultaneously both techni-
cal and geographical’ (Simondon 2017: 58, emphasis in original). Simondon
argues that technical objects and their natural milieus get into a relation of
recurrent causality, which implies that, once constituted, technical objects
are open to new processes of concretisation. The term ‘recurrent causality’
here means ‘a causality that comes back to itself to act on itself’; in other
words, it is a feedback, or, in Simondon’s terms, an internal resonance (Hui
2019: 190). The capacity to come back to itself defines a technical object as
a self-­organising system that supports and conditions its own existence. In
this sense, a technical object can be compared to a living being: ‘The reason
the living being can invent is because it is an individual being that carries its
associated milieu with it; this capacity for conditioning itself lies at the root
of the capacity to produce objects that condition themselves’ (Simondon
2017: 60). Both living beings and technical objects are self-­determining and
self-­referential systems which define themselves through interaction with an
associated milieu.
This leads us to the question of invention, which means both the inter-
action between an organism and its milieu, and the interaction between a
technical object and its inventor (or human mind). For Simondon, inven-
tion can occur only through recourse to pre-­individual potentiality which,
as was discussed in Chapter 1, is an indefinite origin of every process of
individuation. According to Simondon, ‘what is determinant and plays an
energetic role are not forms but that which carries the forms, which is to say
their ground; the ground [. . .] is what harbors the dynamisms’ (Simondon
2017: 60). The notions of form and ground refer to Gestalt psychology,3
which is considered to be insufficient to explain the process of imagination.

3
Simondon is using the notions of fond and forme taken from Gestalt psychology:
forme (form or figure) acquires meaning only in relation to a certain fond (back-
ground). Simondon modifies the meaning of fond: it refers not to the background
but to the system of virtualities and potentials.
100 Organism-­Oriented Ontology

As Simondon points out,

the ground is the system of virtualities, of potentials, forces that carve

out their path, whereas forms are the system of actuality [. . .] Forms are
passive in so far as they represent actuality; they become active when they
organize in relation to this ground, thereby bringing prior virtualities into
actuality. (Simondon 2017: 61)

Thus, the ground can be related to the pre-­individual state, which harbours
virtualities and potentialities, and which can acquire an actual form through
the interaction with a milieu. Similar to a living being, which acquires its
actual form through interaction with its pre-­individual potential and the
potentialities found in its milieu, a technical object acquires an actual form
through interaction with the potentiality of the inventor’s imagination and
the potentialities arising from the natural milieu. In both cases invention
belongs to the living being (human or non-­human inventor) who has access
to the potentialities of the pre-­individual and transforms them into actual
forms.
The question of invention is also discussed in Simondon’s lecture course
Imagination and Invention 1965–1966. As was demonstrated in Chapter 1,
Simondon creates an original theory of imagination and invention that
relates to a wide range of biological phenomena, from simple organisms to
humans. What is original in Simondon’s theory is that creativity is explained
through the cycle of images, which reaches its resolution by creating an
artefact or a technical object. Technical objects are understood as a part of
general ontogenesis because they develop and evolve as if they were living
beings. The most interesting thing here is that the impulse for the invention
of new forms is found not in the inventor’s mind or consciousness (there is
no preformationism of technical objects), but in the metastable equilibrium
of living beings. Simondon describes this as the third phase of the cycle,
when memory images reach a certain oversaturation by condensing opposite
and incompatible qualities. This oversaturation produces a metastable phase
which is the necessary condition for invention and structural change, allow-
ing the recreation of these qualities within a new system (Simondon 2008:
124). The oversaturation of memory images is transformed into a symbol
image which at some point cannot accept any information, and therefore
the cycle starts anew. Similar to a living being which develops through inter-
action with the potentiality found in its milieu, a technical object develops
through the interaction between the oversaturated field of imagination and
the potentiality of the associated milieu. Human invention can be successful
only to the extent to which it participates in a general process of ontogenesis.
Another important point is that both living beings and technical objects
develop through recursive causality; in other words, they constantly return
to themselves in order to enter a different level of organisation. This means
that a technical ­object – i­ n a paradoxical w
­ ay – i­ s liberated from the Cartesian
 General Organology: Between Organism and Machine 101

model of linear causality which used to be the essential trait of technicity.

The principle of recursive causality incorporates contingency, usually asso-
ciated with the natural, or organic, world. As Hui points out, ‘Recursivity is
not only a mechanism that can effectively “domesticate” contingency . . .; it
is also a mechanism that allows novelty to occur, not simply as something
coming from outside but also as an internal transformation’ (Hui 2019: 138).
Thus, the principle of recursivity allows contingency to be integrated within
the system; in this respect, both living beings and technical objects can effec-
tively use contingency in order to produce something new (Hui 2019: 138).
The machine, similarly to a living being, is able to fight against entropy:

the machine, being a work of organization and information, is, like life
itself and together with life, that which is opposed to disorder, to the
leveling of all things tending to deprive the universe of the power of
change. The machine is that through which man fights against the death
of the universe; it slows down the degradation of energy, as life does, and
becomes a stabilizer of the world. (Simondon 2017: 21)

By integrating contingency and fighting entropy, technical objects belong to

the realm of life.
However, writing in 1958, Simondon didn’t anticipate second-­order cyber-
netics and could not have been acquainted with self-­organising machines.
Therefore, he outlines some important differences between machines and
living beings: a living being can solve its vital problems by taking recourse
to virtuality. And yet, ‘There is no true virtuality in a machine; the machine
cannot reform its forms in order to solve a problem’ (Simondon 2017: 156).
The functioning of a machine is always actual, whereas a living being has the
faculty to modify itself according to the virtual: ‘this faculty is the sense of
time, which the machine does not have because it does not live’ (Simondon
2017: 157). A living being has the faculty to change itself according to the
virtuality or potentiality found in the milieu, whereas a machine can act
upon itself only in its actuality. An animal, or a living being in general, is a
transducer as far as it stores chemical substances and then transforms them
into something else during the course of vital operations. A living being
intervenes between the potential energy and actual energy and acts as a
transducer: ‘the living thing is that which modulates’ (Simondon 2017: 156,
emphasis in original). Similarly, a human, or an inventor, acts as a trans-
ducer in relation to machines, converting the potential energy into actual
functioning. The true analogy between human and machine is not on the
level of corporeality (the machine neither nourishes itself nor perceives) but
between the mental functioning of the human and the physical functioning
of the machine. ‘To invent is to make one’s thought function as a machine
might function, neither according to causality, which is too fragmentary,
nor according to finality, which is too unitary, but according to the dyna-
mism of lived functioning, grasped because it is produced, accompanied in
102 Organism-­Oriented Ontology

its genesis’ (Simondon 2017: 151). The functioning of an inventor’s mind

and the functioning of a machine are analogous in the sense that they are
dynamisms producing new forms.
This intervention into the realm of technical objects changes the nature
of the human s­ubject – b ­ oth individual and collective. Simondon argues
that the relation between an inventor (a subject) and a technical object
creates a special mode of relationship which he calls transindividual: ‘the
technical object insofar as it has been invented, thought and willed, and
taken up [assumé] by a human subject, becomes the medium [le support] and
symbol of this relationship, which we would like to name transindividual’
(Simondon 2017: 252, emphasis in original). Technical invention creates a
special inter-­human relation; however, this relationship connects individu-
als neither by means of their unique individuality, nor by their identity, but
by the pre-­individual reality which is contained in every individual. Thus,
the transindividual relation connects individuals through the mediation of
the technical object which, in its turn, always carries something of human
nature, if by ‘nature’ we understand this pre-­individual charge contain-
ing potentialities and virtualities (Simondon 2017: 253). In this sense, the
transindividual relationship encompasses something non-­human (the pre-­
individual charge) within the human and vice versa: ‘there is something
of human nature in the technical being’ (Simondon 2017: 253). Hence, a
human being existing in the transindividual mode is always incomplete,
unfinished, always negotiating both with its pre-­individual potentiality and
with other incomplete individuals through the act of technical invention.

Stiegler’s General Organology

Simondon’s ideas are elaborated further in Stiegler’s Technics and Time 1:
The Fault of Epimetheus4 and his other works. Stiegler argues that between
the inorganic beings of the physical sciences and the organised beings of
biology, there is a third type of being, that of technical objects, which can
be described as inorganic organised beings (Stiegler 1998: 17). As far as both
organic biological beings and inorganic technical objects are organised in
one or another way, the question is to what extent the analogy between
biological and technological development can be applicable. Following
Leroi-­Gourhan, Stiegler analyses technical objects in terms of technological
lineage or technological phylum (meaning a major taxonomic division of
living organisms). The comparison between technological and biological
facts, between technical objects and living beings, is crucial for Stiegler’s
hypothesis. He argues that a technical object is ‘organized inorganic matter

4
Bernard Stiegler, La technique et le temps, 1: La faute d’Epiméthée, Paris: Galilée, 1994.
Translated into English as Technics and Time, 1: The Fault of Epimetheus, trans.
Richard Beardsworth and George Collins, Stanford, CA: Stanford University
Press, 1998.
 General Organology: Between Organism and Machine 103

that transforms itself in time as living matter transforms itself in its interaction with
the milieu. In addition, it becomes the interface through which the human
qua living matter enters into relation with the milieu’ (Stiegler 1998: 49,
emphasis in original). In other words, a human (as a living being) interacts
with a technical object and through the technical object it interacts with its
milieu.
Thus, the technical object is understood as an extension of a living being;
in other words, as an exteriorisation of the human body with the help of
prosthetic devices. Relying on the investigations of Leroi-­Gourhan, Stiegler
makes an analogy between an organ as a part of a living organism and an
organon qua technical instrument. For Stiegler, a human being is always
already externalised by means of tools and technologies, but it is precisely
this exteriorisation by which interiority is constituted. In a paradoxical and
quasi-­Derridean manner, Stiegler argues that interiority and exteriority are
related in a double bind, because human interiority is created by means of
exteriority (by tools as technical objects).

The movement inherent in this process of exteriorization is paradoxical:

Leroi-­Gourhan in fact says that it is the tool, that is, tekhnē, that invents
the human, not the human who invents the technical. Or again: the
human invents himself in the technical by inventing the ­tool – ­by becom-
ing exteriorized techno-­logically. (Stiegler 1998: 141, emphasis in original)

In this sense, the origin of technics and the origin of the human coin-
cide in a single moment, that of exteriorisation, which is at the same
time the moment of interiorisation. Stiegler compares this moment with
Simondon’s notion of transductive relation: transduction is an activity
which propagates (differentiates) itself in a certain domain and also the
materiality of what is differentiated. In a similar vein, exteriorisation for
Stiegler is a differential interaction with the milieu and also the result of
this interaction.
Another important point is that exteriorisation is a relation that takes
place not only in space but also in time, and creates the structure of antic-
ipation. A technical object is not ‘passive’ or adaptive as a living being is,
but implies an anticipation as a projection towards the future: ‘Anticipation
means the realization of a possibility that is not determined by a biological
program’ (Stiegler 1998: 151). In his description of time Stiegler relies heavily
on Husserl’s and Heidegger’s phenomenological analyses and, in this sense,
he is a docile disciple of a metaphysical tradition. Stiegler believes that a
technical object (and also a subject) exists in the temporality of Dasein,
described by Heidegger, and that a technical object as a specifically human
phenomenon cannot be reconciled with biological determinism and genetic
programming. The temporality of the technical object is closely related
to memory, which can be exteriorised with the help of technical devices.
Stiegler asserts that exteriorisation can be thought of as grammatisation,
104 Organism-­Oriented Ontology

since grammē, or writing in general, is the first form of externalised memory,

as was demonstrated in Derrida’s grammatology.5 Writing is the first instru-
ment that allows one not only to exteriorise memory, but also to share it with
other members of society. In this sense, exteriorisation qua grammatisation
is a form of transindividuality, as discussed by Simondon, which relates
individuals through the invention of technical objects. Grammatisation is
seen as a ‘general history of life’, which allows ‘the pursuit of life by means
other than life’, namely, technics.
Stiegler discusses technicity not only in terms of space (as exteriorisation
and interiorisation), but also in terms of temporal structure. For Stiegler,
it is temporal structure that defines technicity as an exceptional human
phenomenon that allows it to exceed biological determinism and genetic
programming. In Technics and Time, 3: Cinematic Time and the Question of
Malaise,6 Stiegler develops Husserl’s analysis of internal time-­consciousness.
Husserl examines different modes of consciousness, such as the capacity to
remember, which is named as retention, and the capacity to anticipate the
future, which is named as protention.7 Husserl demonstrates these different
aspects of time by providing the example of a melody: listening to a melody
we perceive the present moment, the now, which in a few seconds passes
away but is retained in our ­memory – i­t is a retention. At the same time,
while listening to the present melodic phrase, we anticipate the next phrase,
which is not yet present but forthcoming. This imagination, or anticipation,
is a protention. Husserl names these time modes as primary retention and
primary protention. However, if we are not listening to the melody in the
actual present moment but are trying to recollect it in our memory, we also
have to retain those phrases which have already been pronounced and to
anticipate those which will come, even if these processes are taking place in
our memory. Husserl names these time modes as secondary retention and
secondary protention.
In addition to this schema, Stiegler suggests what he names as tertiary
­retention – ­a retention that is inscribed not in the actual perception (primary
retention), or in our imagination (secondary retention), but in a technologi-
cal memory of technical objects. It is an artificial, or technological, memory,
such as writing or recording, which compresses primary and secondary

5
Jacques Derrida, De la grammatologie, Paris: Les Éditions de Minuit, 1967.
Translated into English as Of Grammatology, trans. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak,
Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1974.
6
Bernard Stiegler, La Technique et le temps, 3: Le temps du cinéma et la question du mal-
être, Paris: Éditions Galilée, 2001. Translated into English as Technics and Time, 3:
Cinematic Time and the Question of Malaise, trans. Stephen Barker, Stanford, CA:
Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2011.
7
Edmund Husserl, Zur Phänomenologie des inneren Zeitbewusstseins 1893–1917, in
Husserliana, Bd. 10, The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1969. Translated into English
as The Phenomenology of Internal Time-Consciousness, ed. Martin Heidegger, trans.
James S. Churchill, Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1964.
 General Organology: Between Organism and Machine 105

retentions in a recording device which can be detached from an actual

individual. As Stiegler points out,

we would then have to say that consciousness is always in some fashion a

montage of overlapping primary, secondary, and tertiary memories. Thus,
we must mark as tertiary retentions all forms of ‘objective’ memory: cin-
ematogram, photogram, phonogram, writing, paintings, ­sculptures – ­but
also monuments and objects in general, since they bear witness, for me,
say, of a past that I enforcedly did not myself live. (Stiegler 2011: 27–8)

Technological memory can be externalised and shared by other individuals

(it is transindividual in the Simondonian sense) and even by other gener-
ations (it is transgenerational). In this sense, tertiary retention avoids the
limitations characteristic of other kinds of retentions. As Hui points out,

The third memory is a compensation to the retentional finitude of the

organism, since an organism cannot retain all its experience and cannot
transfer this experience to the next generation without having exterior-
ized them as symbols and tools. Furthermore, the secondary retention,
which we call memory, can be effectively activated only through the ter-
tiary retention, since it is the tertiary retention (for example, writings or
images) that provides the force of synchronization and the diachroniza-
tion of memory. (Hui 2019: 202, emphasis in original)

In this sense, tertiary retention exceeds both the biological limitations of the
organism and the existential finitude of the individual.
Thus, exteriorisation creates temporality, which, according to Stiegler, is
exceptionally human, distinguishing human beings from other species. ‘The
temporality of the human, which marks it off among other living beings,
presupposes exteriorization and prostheticity: there is time only because
memory is “artificial,” becoming constituted as already-­there since [. . .] its
“having been placed outside of the species”’ (Stiegler 1998: 172, emphasis in
original). Stiegler believes that at the moment of exteriorisation (qua tempo-
ralisation and grammatisation) the human being is released from biological
determinism and genetic programming, and is ‘born’ as an individual with
its unique experience (which is defined as epigenesis). However, with the
help of the third memory, or tertiary retention, this individual enters into
the field of transindividual memory, which is always-­there, collecting the
experience of past generations. In this sense, Stiegler differentiates between
three types of memory: the genetic memory of the biological individual, the
epigenetic memory of the existential individual, and the epiphylogenetic
(techno-­logical) memory, which is transindividual and which designates
technicity in general (Stiegler 1998: 177). For Stiegler, genesis is a ‘program’
in a quasi-­deterministic biological sense, whereas epigenesis is the develop-
ment of a unique individual which, unfortunately, is finite and disappears
106 Organism-­Oriented Ontology

when its life ends. It is only with epiphylogenesis, that is, with technological
artificial memory, that epigenesis can be retained and memorised: ‘this epi-
genetic sedimentation, a memorization of what has come to pass, is what is
called the past, what we shall name the epiphylogenesis of man, meaning the
conservation, accumulation, and sedimentation of successive epigeneses,
mutually articulated. Epiphylogenesis is a break with pure life’ (Stiegler 1998:
140, emphasis in original). Epiphylogenesis, or tertiary retention, allows one
to access a past that one never lived in and share it with other individuals
and other generations.
As far as epiphylogenesis is a memory shared with other individuals
and other generations, it is transindividual in the Simondonian sense.
Technological memory, or tertiary retention, is the necessary condition for
organising society. Thus, on the one hand, Stiegler differentiates between
different kinds of memory (biological, existential and technological); on the
other hand, he relates these diverse modes of being into a unified theory
of ‘general organology’, which includes biological organs, technical objects
(organon) and the organisation of society.8 The concept of general organol-
ogy is synonymous with the term epiphylogenesis, which encompasses bio-
logical memory, individual memory and the transindividual technological
memory. In his book For a New Critique of Political Economy,9 Stiegler asserts
that general organology is

a theory of the articulation of bodily organs (brain, hand, eyes, touch,

tongue, genital organs, viscera, neuro-­vegetative system, etc.), artificial
organs (tools, instruments and technical supports of grammatization) and
social organs (human groupings [. . .] political institutions and societies,
businesses and economic organizations [. . .], and social systems in gen-
eral). (Stiegler 2010: 34)

Similarly to Simondon, Stiegler establishes a kind of analogical paradigma-

tism between biological, psychosocial and technical individuation. However,
Stiegler thinks that ‘general organology’ is a better term than Simondon’s
‘mechanology’. Stiegler argues that ‘General organology is a method of
thinking, at one and the same time technical, social, and psychic becoming,
where technical becoming must be thought via the concept of the technical
system, as it adjusts and is adjusted to social systems, themselves constituted
by psychic apparatuses’ (Stiegler 2017: 130). In other words, Stiegler uses the

8
As Yuk Hui points out, Stiegler developed the term ‘organology’ in 2003, when he
was the director of IRCAM at the Centre Georges Pompidou; however, for him
the term is derived less from Bergson’s and Canguilhem’s philosophy of life and
more from musicology (Lovink 2019; Hui 2019: 200).
9
Bernard Stiegler, Pour une nouvelle critique de l’économie politique, Paris: Éditions
Galilée, 2009. Translated into English as For a New Critique of Political Economy,
trans. Daniel Ross, Cambridge: Polity, 2010.
 General Organology: Between Organism and Machine 107

notion of general organology as a kind of pharmacology which helps to diag-

nose the divergence between technological individuation and psychosocial
individuation observed in contemporary society.10 Although admitting that
technology has a crucial role in constituting the individual and the society,
Stiegler assumes that technologies might be poisonous (pharmakon) in the
sense that they create prostheses for memory and thus increase the proletar-
ianisation of knowledge. However, these pharmacological ambitions, being
at the same time diagnostic and therapeutic, compromise Stiegler’s project
as far as they rest on a humanistic presumption that there is an ‘authentic’
experience and knowledge.
To conclude, we can argue that Stiegler elaborates Simondon’s ideas and
asserts that human development and technical epiphylogenesis are insepa-
rable. At the same time, he moves away from the originality of Simondon’s
project by taking a diagnostic and therapeutic stance. As Mills observes,

A key difference between the two thinkers is that Simondon doesn’t

describe technics as being originary for h ­ umanity . . . T
­ his also means
that technics doesn’t constitute the pre-­individual for Simondon, as it
does for Stiegler, for whom the history of the human is also the history of
technology and vice versa. (Mills 2016: 162)

For Simondon, the technical object is part of a general ontogenesis; there-

fore it is determined by pre-­individual potential and by the associated
milieu, whereas a human being, an inventor, is only a part or a side-­effect
of this development. By contrast, for Stiegler, a human being and a tech-
nical object are co-­constituted: a human being originates at the moment
when it is externalised in technical tools and prostheses. In this respect,
human development is co-­constitutive with technological development.
This approach is radically different from Simondon’s belief that a technical
object has its own ‘mode of existence’ and that it is quasi-­autonomous from
the human being. As Mills points out, ‘Stiegler’s organology shares some
aspects of Simondon’s mechanology but ultimately betrays Simondon’s
core insight that the technological mode of individuation is in a very real
way independent’ (Mills 2016: 170). For Simondon, the technical object
is defined in relation to the pre-­individual potential of the inventor, and
also through its interaction with an associated milieu. In other words, for
Simondon, technics is always associated with nature (a good example of this
10
As Stiegler points out, ‘general organology defines the rules for analyzing, think-
ing, and prescribing human facts at three parallel but indissociable levels: the
psychosomatic, which is the endosomatic level, the artifactual, which is the exo-
somatic level, and the social, which is the organizational level. It is an analysis of
the relations between organic organs, technical organs, and social organizations.
As it is always possible for the arrangements between these psychosomatic and
artifactual organs to become toxic and destructive for the organic organs, general
organology is a pharmacology’ (Stiegler 2017: 130).
108 Organism-­Oriented Ontology

is the interaction between a river and a machine in the Guimbal turbine),

whereas for Stiegler, the dimension of nature is seen as a certain kind of
limitation.
At this point we have to say that the initial hypothesis about the analogy
between the development of organised biological beings and organised inor-
ganic beings (technical objects) is compromised, since Stiegler presents tech-
nicity in exceptional humanistic terms. However, if we take into account
the recent discoveries in developmental biology, we can argue that biolog-
ical individuals also have the capacity to anticipate and memorise, and
are capable of using tools as the exteriorisations of their bodies. Thus, the
invention of tools is not something exceptionally human and can be found
in the realm of animals. If we consider Uexküll’s works, we can see that,
for example, a spider uses its web as a certain kind of prosthetic device that
allows it to interact with the milieu. The spider’s web is configured in a ‘fly-­
like’ mode; in other words, it already anticipates a fly and this anticipation
is crucial in constructing web technology. In a similar way, Ruyer argued
that technological inventiveness is a continuation of organic inventiveness:
first tools appear as internal organs; then internal organs are externalised
into the world (a spider’s web as the extension of silk glands); and finally
they become detachable artefacts. Biological inventiveness is prolonged in
technological inventiveness. Therefore we can argue, contra Stiegler, that
technological invention is not an exceptional human capacity; animals are
also capable of exteriorisation, temporality (memory and anticipation) and
tool invention.

Hui’s Cosmotechnics
Simondon’s and Stiegler’s ideas are significantly elaborated in Hui’s
Recursivity and Contingency, which can be described as a new theory of
organology. Hui asserts that organology can be interpreted as a continu-
ation and elaboration both of organicism11 and cybernetics (or mechano-­
organicism). Cybernetics, as it is defined by Norbert Wiener, asserts that the
physical functioning of the living individual and the operation of some of
the newer communication machines are parallel in their analogous attempts
to control entropy through feedback (Wiener 1989: 26). This analogy allows
Wiener to define both an organism and a machine with the help of the
concept of feedback, which means the circularity between a being (living

11
As Hui points out, ‘in between vitalism and mechanism there is also the “third
way” known as organicism, associated with authors such as Ludwig von Bertalanffy,
Joseph Needham, Joseph Woodger, and Conrad Waddington [. . .] and many
others. The organicists wanted to overcome the opposition between vitalism and
mechanism, and show that, for example, a cell can neither be reduced to physico-­
chemical explanations nor be understood as a mysterious vital force, but rather
comprises different forms and levels of organization’ (Hui 2019: 70).
 General Organology: Between Organism and Machine 109

or mechanical) and its environment. Having in mind this circularity, Hui

makes an interesting comparison between the reflective judgement found
in German idealist philosophy (from Kant to Fichte and Hegel), when
the mind comes back to itself to determine itself, and the recursive move-
ment operating in cybernetic machines. According to Hui, cybernetics is
a continuation of metaphysics rather than its end, as suggested by Martin
Heidegger (1976). In other words, like the reflective judgement in transcen-
dental philosophy which constantly comes back to itself to determine itself,
feedback in cybernetics refers to a self-­regulatory process, during which a
machine adapts itself to a spontaneous finality. In this sense, the concept of
recursivity (and feedback) questioned linear causality and introduced a new
temporal structure, ‘one that was no longer based on a linear form but was
rather more like that of a spiral’ (Hui 2019: 238). This means that recursivity
is closely related to contingency: in the mechanical mode of operation,
based on linear causality, a contingent event may lead to a collapse, whereas
in a recursive mode of operation contingency is integrated in such a way
that it enriches the system and allows it to progress and develop. As Hui
asserts, cybernetic machines are becoming-­organic in the sense that they
integrate contingency and r­ ecursivity – t­ he features that characterise living
organisms.
However, cybernetics (or mechano-­ organicism) is criticised by many
authors, including Simondon, for reducing the functioning of both living
beings and machines. As I pointed out earlier, Simondon argues that it is a
mistake to postulate an identity between a living being and a self-­regulating
technical object, because it is only a tendency and not an entirely concrete
existence: ‘one mustn’t go right to the limit and speak of technical objects as
if they were natural objects’ (Simondon 2017: 51). Machines cannot create
other machines, and behind every machine there is always a human living
­being – i­ t is precisely this human–machine relation that is missing in the dis-
course of cybernetics. For this reason, Hui suggests moving from cybernetics
to ­organology – a­ s a philosophy of life.

As the first principle of organology, it is important to avoid drawing

an equivalence between machine and ­organism – ­a common mistake of
­reductionism – a­ nd measuring the progress of technology according to
its closeness to ‘human intelligence’ [. . .] Conventional Cartesian mecha-
nism is based on the belief in a linear logic immanent in the living form,
thus leading to the mechanization of the organism, and by doing so the
analogy between mechanism and organism is taken as an equivalence. (Hui
2019: 146, emphasis in original)

In contrast to cybernetics, organology examines not the equivalence

between machine and organism but the possibility of their coexistence. At
the same time, organology has to be differentiated not only from cybernetics
(organo-­mechanism) but also from organicism. Organicism examines only
110 Organism-­Oriented Ontology

organic entities and the forms of their organisation in terms of an organic

whole, whereas organology examines the relations between the organic and
the inorganic and their forms of hybridisation. ‘This could be seen as a fun-
damental difference between organicism and organology; that is, whereas
organicism studies the relations between different parts in the ­system – ­for
example, an o ­ rganism – o
­ rganology extends beyond organic form to rein-
tegrate the inorganic into an organized whole’ (Hui 2019: 174). The organic
life (including human life) can be maintained only through the organisation
of the inorganic, through the invention of machines and tools. To put it in
Stiegler’s words, organology examines the inorganic as the pursuit of life by
other means than life.
Stiegler’s organology examines technical objects in terms of the organised
inorganic, whereas Hui suggests that organology should rethink technical
objects in their organising capacity. ‘What we are witnessing today is a
shift from the organized inorganic to the organizing inorganic, meaning that
machines are no longer simply tools or instruments but rather gigantic
organisms in which we live’ (Hui 2019: 28, emphasis in original). In this
respect, Hui incorporates Stiegler’s project into his own organology, and
yet the ontological weight is balanced differently: for Stiegler, a human
being creates technology to extend and expand its own subjectivity; for
Hui, both human beings and technologies coexist inside a general cyber-
netic organism which can be imagined as a smart home, smart city or the
Anthropocene as a technological project. A good example of such a gigantic
cybernetic organism is James Lovelock’s Gaia theory, which defines the
Earth as a self-­regulating system incorporating both organic and inorganic
sub-­systems into an organised whole. ‘The inorganic is no longer organized
by the human body as was the case with simple tools, but rather constitutes
an enormous technical system we can only live inside of, while submitting
to its rules’ (Hui 2021: 224). Thus, the ‘new organology’ has two important
consequences: first, the new cybernetic machines are becoming organic in
the sense that they incorporate organic f­eatures – r­ ecursivity and contin-
gency; second, these machines are no longer individual machines but gigan-
tic technological systems which are exponentially growing with the help of
recursive operations (Hui 2021: 52). In this respect, the opposition between
machine and organism becomes irrelevant and obsolete.
This evolution of technological systems and their capacity to expand
with the help of recursive operations and algorithms forces us to invent a
new computational hermeneutics and reconsider our conceptual apparatus.
These new forms of technology imply a new mode of determination, which
is associated not with what is most possible but with what is most proba-
ble. Critically revisioning Stiegler’s project, Hui points out that Stiegler’s
schema of temporality can be described in terms of recursivity because
primary retention and protention are becoming more complex in second-
ary retention and protention, which, in their turn, can be enriched and
extended in tertiary retention.
 General Organology: Between Organism and Machine 111

Primary, secondary, and tertiary retention together with primary and

secondary protention thus form a circuit in which the soul is no longer
simply a movement that returns to itself to determine itself, but rather
the soul, whose activity is the noesis, is also a tekhnesis, whose organization
depends on the third memory. (Hui 2019: 201, emphasis in original)

Our capacity to anticipate rests on the organisation of our memory (sec-

ondary retention), which can be effectively activated only through artificial
technological memory (tertiary retention). However, what is missing in
this scheme of recursive circularity is the element of tertiary protention
(Hui 2016: 221–52). Tertiary protention would refer to a certain temporal
structure of anticipation created not by humans but by digital technology.
Tertiary protention also presents a new form of determination which is
‘always preemptive, in the sense that the machine has already anticipated
what the options will be: in this case, freedom means choice. This precisely
means that it is a reduction of the contingent to the most probable’ (Hui
2019: 211, emphasis in original). Tertiary retention conceptualises artificial
memory retained in machines, whereas tertiary protention conceptualises
anticipations generated artificially by machines.

The preemption of the tertiary protention is possible only because of the

computational hermeneutics, which is essentially recursive: it constantly
evaluates the past in order to anticipate the future, which in turn deter-
mines the present. Human beings are reintegrated into the temporality of
machines, not only as individuals but also as collectives and communi-
ties. (Hui 2019: 243)

This new structure of temporality forces us to imagine different forms

of knowledge where human anticipation and technological pre-­emption
become indistinguishable.
This indistinguishability between human intelligence and artificial intel-
ligence is also discussed in Malabou’s latest book, Morphing Intelligence:
From IQ Measurement to Artificial Brains.12 Malabou argues that the latest
advances in artificial intelligence, such as the creation of IBM’s SyNAPSE
chip, or the Blue Brain project, forced her to rethink her earlier assump-
tions, elaborated in What Should We Do with Our Brain? Malabou’s notion of
brain plasticity was built on the presumption that biological organisms, in
contrast to machines, are capable of reorganising themselves in their form-­
taking activity. The plasticity of the biological brain cannot be measured or
calculated in quantitative terms because it is capable of qualitative change.

12
Catherine Malabou, Metamorphoses de l’intelligence: Que faire de leur cerveau
bleu?, Paris: PUF, 2017; translated into English as Morphing Intelligence: From IQ
Measurement to Artificial Brains, trans. Carolyn Shread, New York: Columbia
University Press, 2019.
112 Organism-­Oriented Ontology

However, recent developments in artificial intelligence, namely the creation

of a new type of chip, a ‘neuro-­synaptic processor’, prove that artificial
intelligence is also capable of a certain form of plasticity, or epigenesis. ‘The
subtlety of algorithmic calculation today derives precisely from the fact
that it is capable of simulating noncalculation, that is, spontaneity, creative
freedom, and the directness of emotion’ (Malabou 2019: 150). Machines
appear to be more and more natural and can even simulate spontaneous
behaviour. To the common-­sense conclusion that AI simply ‘mimics’ the
biological brain, Malabou opposes a much more interesting idea: that AI is
not only imitating the biological brain but, through this imitation, relates to
its own ‘technological self’ (Malabou 2023). Thus we can follow not only an
epigenesis of organisms but also an ‘epigenesis of technology’, which means
that technology develops by relating to nature and also to its ‘technological
self’. Technology mimics itself and comes back to itself through nature, and
this is exactly the same phenomenon that Hui describes as recursivity. It is a
new kind of intelligence, or cognition, which no longer draws on the human
imagination but develops in a quasi-­autonomous way.
In this sense, both Malabou and Hui oppose Stiegler’s conviction that
human intelligence is non-­calculable and qualitative, and in this respect
can be opposed to calculable machines. Hui asserts that instead of creat-
ing a false opposition between the organic and the machinic, we have to
reconceptualise the becoming-­organic of machines. ‘The inorganic is no
longer organized by the human body as was the case with simple tools, but
rather constitutes an enormous technical system we can only live inside
of, while submitting to its rules’ (Hui 2021: 224). It is obvious that these
gigantic technological s­ ystems – c­ ybernetic ­organisms – g­ o beyond humans
and machines. However, this new scale should be reconsidered not as a
deprivation or a degradation of human rationality, but as an opportunity
to think about another ­dimension – ­that of nature or cosmos. In this
respect, Hui is closer to Simondon’s project than Stiegler’s. Simondon
not only attempted to reconcile technics and culture, but also examined
the relation between technics and nature. What is left out in Stiegler’s
project is the relationship between technics and nature, because technics is
described in purely humanistic terms. For Simondon, a technical object is
defined through its relation to a geographical world with which it creates
an associated milieu (Simondon 2017: 59). Hui elaborates this insight fur-
ther by suggesting that nature and technics not only define each other in
some specific phases of technical invention, but create a priori conditions
for each other:

I suggest, firstly, to consider the technical a priori in the concept of nature,

which allows us to abandon a pure and innocent image of nature and
gives us a ‘second nature’; and, secondly, the cosmic a priori in technologi-
cal development, meaning that technics are always already cosmotechnics
from the beginning. (Hui 2017: 11, emphasis in original)
 General Organology: Between Organism and Machine 113

Hui returns to Simondon’s example of the Guimbal turbine: the turbine

produces so much heat that it would destroy itself, therefore it needs a natu-
ral element, namely, a river, to be integrated. The current of the river forces
the turbine to move and, at the same time, it cools it down and prevents it
from overheating. In this sense, the technical and the geographical milieus
are connected by recurrent causality: the stronger the current, the more
heat the turbine produces, and because the water flows faster, the cooling
process is more efficient (Hui 2019: 191). In this sense, we can argue that the
technical object adapts to the environment and also adopts it as a necessary
part of its functioning. Hui defines this process of adaptation–adoption
in terms of cosmotechnics: ‘it means the unification of the cosmic order
and moral order through technical activities. Human activities, which are
always accompanied by technical objects such as tools, are in this sense
always cosmotechnical’ (Hui 2017: 4).
In other words, cosmotechnics refers to a new notion of organology which
makes connections not only between living beings and technical objects,
but also between technical objects and ‘natural’ cosmic forces, which are
understood as technical a priori. This new notion of organology understood
as cosmotechnics allows us to reconceptualise the relation between ‘nature’
and technology and can be seen as a critical response to the Anthropocene.
If the Anthropocene reduces all natural potentials to ‘resources’ which
can be exploited without limitations, then cosmotechnics implies an ethi-
cal balance between cosmic order and technological order. Relying on the
Oriental tradition, Hui argues that both cosmic forces and technical objects
can coexist in cosmotechnics and maintain their quasi-­autonomous status.
In this context cosmotechnics can be seen as a new organology that makes
connections between natural objects, organising organic beings (humans)
and organised/organising inorganic beings (technical objects and cyber-
netic machines which are becoming organic).
However, what is missing in this new organology is the concern with real
­organisms – ­organised organic beings. While discussing the integration of
the natural world in the functioning of the Guimbal turbine, Hui asks: ‘how
about those other living beings, for example fishes swimming in the river?’
(Hui 2017: 16). As Hui admits himself, this question remains outside the
scope of the Simondonian opposition between nature and technics. The
same criticism can be directed to Hui’s new organology: on the one hand, it
is a timely attempt to rethink the becoming-­organic of the machines; on the
other hand, his new organology is reluctant to discuss real organisms.

Conclusion
To summarise, we can argue that the theory of organology, extending from
Simondon to Stiegler and Hui, is a thinking about technology through other
means than technology. For Simondon, mechanology is understood as a
connection between technical objects, natural forces and the p ­ otentiality
114 Organism-­Oriented Ontology

of an inventor. For Stiegler, general organology designates a connection

between technical objects, the human psyche and social systems. Hui defines
new organology as cosmotechnics, which brings together the cosmic, the
moral and the technological order. In this respect, organology allows one
to resolve the dispute between mechanism and vitalism by demonstrating
that living beings and technical objects are interrelated in many different
but at the same time systemic ways. Organology examines living beings
and technical objects as being integrated into an associated milieu through
which they adapt and attune to each other. This approach to technology
clearly differs from that of cybernetics because it examines technical objects
according to those features that they share with organic beings, such as
development (genesis, epigenesis, epiphylogenesis), recursivity and contin-
gency, multiplicity, and the potentiality for change. These features, already
discernible in Simondon’s philosophy, are what differentiates organology
from cybernetics and information theory: they explain technical objects not
in quantitative but in qualitative terms (Massumi 2012: 32).
These qualitative features allow one to inscribe technical objects into the
evolution of living beings. Stiegler elaborates this qualitative turn by assert-
ing that epiphylogenesis of technological objects is a transindividual and
transgenerational process which overcomes the genesis of organisms and
the epigenesis of human individuals. Hui extends this qualitative dimen-
sion even further by asserting that new cybernetic machines are becoming-­
organic in the sense that they incorporate recursivity and contingency. In
this respect, organology can be seen as the potentialisation of technologies,
and, at the same time, the potentialisation of life. As Stiegler points out,
organology is a n ­ egentropy – ­a fight against entropy and the disintegration
of ­life – a­ nd a pursuit of life by other means than life.13 Thus, organology
can be seen as an alternative to the Anthropocene, which is a purely tech-
nological project in the sense that it covers a belief that the ecological crisis
(the exhaustion of natural forces) can be solved with the help of technolog-
ical means, such as geoengineering. In contrast to this, organology proposes
to rethink the organic condition of philosophising and in this way suggests
the possibility of qualitative change.

13
Stiegler challenges the Anthropocene with his notion of the ‘Neganthropocene’:
the Anthropocene is the time of entropy, whereas the Neganthropocene should
explore the organological reorganisation of matter giving rise to a new form of
life, namely, negentropy (Stiegler 2018: 42).
 6
Planetary Organism

The theory of organology, relating biological (organised organic), tech-

nical (organised inorganic) and cybernetic (organising inorganic) beings,
leads to a more general methodological question: how can these different
levels of organisation be combined with each other? How can we imagine
and explain their interactions on a planetary scale? Gaia theory is one
of the attempts to reconcile different kinds of organological development
into a consistent whole. However, the Gaia theory itself was developing
and changing in trying to explain these planetary interactions either in
terms of a superorganism, or as a cybernetic machine. In this chapter I
will discuss the development of the Gaia hypothesis as it was defined by
James Lovelock in the 1970s and later elaborated in his collaboration with
biologist Lynn Margulis. Margulis’s research in symbiogenesis and her
interest in Maturana and Varela’s theory of autopoiesis helped to reshape
Gaia theory from first-­order systems theory to second-­order systems theory.
In contrast to a first-­order systems theory which is concerned with the
processes of homeostasis, second-­ order systems incorporate emergence,
complexity and contingency.
The recent discontent with the conceptualisation of the Anthropocene
has forced many contemporary philosophers and theorists to return to
the notion of Gaia. In recent years many thinkers, such as Bruno Latour,
Isabelle Stengers and Donna J. Haraway, have addressed Gaia theory in one
or another respect. In this chapter I want to compare the original Gaia theory
with these new interpretations, which come from different backgrounds and
employ different methodologies. Gaia is interpreted either as an autopoietic
or sympoietic system, or, by contrast, as an ‘outlaw’, an anti-­system. Despite
these different interpretations, the recent theoretical interventions can be
read as various versions of second-­order systems theory. In this respect,
even Latour’s and Stengers’s takes on Gaia, defining it as an ‘outlaw’ or an
anti-­system, can be interpreted as a specific kind of systems thinking.
116 Organism-­Oriented Ontology

The Gaia Hypothesis

The Gaia hypothesis was formulated by the chemist James Lovelock in the
1970s and was later significantly remodelled through Lovelock’s collabora-
tion with biologist Lynn Margulis. The first insights of the Gaia hypothesis
emerged during the 1960s in a NASA laboratory, where Lovelock was
assigned to examine the physical and chemical properties of Mars and
determine the planet’s suitability for life. It was noticed that Mars is in a
chemical–physical balance, which leads to a perfect equilibrium. Lovelock
turned the question about life on Mars upside down: he started from the
obvious fact that there is life on Earth and that Earth expresses a disequi-
librium of atmospheric phenomena. Thus, if the disequilibrium of atmos-
pheric phenomena is related to the existence of life on Earth, then a perfect
equilibrium of atmospheric processes on Mars leads to the conclusion that
there is no life there. Later this assertion was confirmed by the Viking
mission in 1976. But what is important in formulating the Gaia hypothesis
is not the possibility of life on Mars but the first part of this e­ quation – t­ he
relationship between life and the disequilibrium of atmospheric processes
on Earth. Lovelock formulated a hypothesis that living organisms (the
biota) are able to regulate temperature and other planetary conditions in
the same way that they are able to regulate their own body temperature.
He asserted that chemical, physical and biological processes taking place
on Earth seek for a homeostasis, or the optimal conditions for life, that is
achieved through feedback loops operated automatically by the biota. In
other words, he formulated the hypothesis that the Earth as a whole is a
living and self-­organising system.
To test this hypothesis, Lovelock and his former student Andrew Watson
developed a model called D ­ aisyworld – ­a computer model of a planet,
warmed by increasing heat from the sun. The Daisyworld is a simplified
model, where the environment is reduced to a single ­property – ­temperature
– and the biota is reduced to two species, namely, black daisies and white
daisies. The crucial question Lovelock asked himself was would the evolu-
tion of the Daisyworld ecosystem lead to the self-­regulation of the climate
(Harding 2014: 166)? Thus, as the climate on this simulated planet warms
up and becomes suitable for life, black daisies appear first, because they
can absorb solar energy better than white daisies. As the temperature on
the planet increases, the black daisies disappear and white ones appear.
The white daisies reflect the solar energy and hence cool down the planet.
Thus, throughout the evolution of Daisyworld the temperature was kept
constant:

When the sun is relatively cold, Daisyworld increases its own temperature
through solar energy absorption by the black daisies; as the sun gets
hotter, the temperature is gradually lowered because of the progressive
predominance of energy-­reflecting white daisies. Thus Daisyworld, with-
 Planetary Organism 117

out any foresight or planning, regulates its own temperature over a vast
time range by the dance of the daisies. (Harding 2014: 167)

The purpose of this model was to demonstrate that feedback loops interlink-
ing non-­living and living systems (temperature and plants) can regulate the
climate and achieve the most favourable conditions for living organisms.
These experiments asserted the idea that all life and its environment
are coupled in such a way as to form a self-­regulating system. Lovelock
formulated this idea and presented it publicly for the first time in 1969
in Princeton. His friend, the novelist William Golding, author of Lord of
the Flies, suggested the name Gaia (the Greek word for mother Earth) as
a suitable title for his theory. In 1972 Lovelock published a first paper on
his theory titled ‘Gaia as Seen Through the Atmosphere’ (Lovelock 1972).
At the same time a microbiologist, Lynn Margulis, was working on similar
questions and investigating the smallest micro-­organisms. Margulis argued
that the Earth’s atmosphere is transformed by biological organisms and
that bacteria play a crucial role. All life is dependent on the metabolism of
microbes which modulate the biosphere in which we live.

During the first billion years of evolution, b

­ acteria – t­ he most basic forms
of ­life – ­covered the planet with an intricate web of metabolic processes
and began to regulate the temperature and chemical composition of the
atmosphere so that it became conducive to the evolution of higher forms
of life. (Capra and Luisi 2014: 351)

Thus, Margulis helped Lovelock to revise his theory and propose that Gaia
is not a single superorganism but a symbiogenesis of a variety of organisms.
In Symbiotic Planet: A New Look at Evolution, Margulis points out that

Gaia, the living Earth, far transcends any single organism or even any
population [. . .] The sum of planetary life, Gaia, displays a physiology
that we recognize as environmental regulation. Gaia itself is not an
organism directly selected among many. It is an emergent property of
interaction among organisms, the spherical planet on which they reside,
and an energy source, the sun. (Margulis 1998: 119)

Gaia can be seen as a self-­regulating system, which connects the metabolic

processes of micro-­organisms and the atmospheric processes of the Earth in
feedback loops. As Greg Hinkle, a former student of Margulis, pointed out,
‘Gaia is just symbiosis as seen from space’ (Margulis 1998: 2); in other words,
it is a symbiosis extended to a planetary scale.
Both Lovelock and Margulis describe Gaia as a metastable system, stable
in its instability. Gaia is an emerging property, incessantly creating new
environments and new organisms. For example, Margulis argues that
bacteria can regulate the atmosphere by taking chemical elements they
118 Organism-­Oriented Ontology

need for their bodies from the air and volcanoes. ‘Eventually, blue-­green
bacteria wrenched hydrogen atoms from water (H2O). Oxygen was expelled
as a metabolic waste product. This waste, at first disastrous, eventually
powered life’s continued growth [. . .] The oxygen we need to breathe began
as a toxin; it still is’ (Margulis 1998: 121). Thus, Gaia is seen as ‘a genius
of recycling’, because the waste produced by one species becomes the food
for another. Oxygen makes up one-­fifth of the Earth’s atmosphere and,
combined with other gases, is highly explosive. However, the ecosystem
reduces these gases faster than they can react, thus maintaining an opti-
mal equilibrium. As Margulis observes, ‘The entire planetary surface, not
just the living bodies but the atmosphere that we think of as an inert
background, is so far from chemical equilibrium that the entire planetary
surface is best regarded as alive’ (Margulis 1998: 122–3). In this respect,
there is no clear separation between the organic and the inorganic, because
the Earth’s atmosphere is not simply chemical or geological, but rather
geophysiological: it expresses the features of a living organism which can
manipulate and change its environment.
The Gaia hypothesis was strongly criticised by scientists. Many critics
claimed that Gaia theory was unscientific because it was implying a cer-
tain teleology. As Capra and Luisi point out, ‘The scientific establishment
attacked the theory as teleological, because they could not imagine how
life on Earth could create and regulate the conditions for its own existence
without being conscious and purposeful’ (Capra and Luisi 2014: 165). The
most important issue here is the question, in what sense is Gaia considered
to be alive? As Capra and Luisi point out, there are several criteria that
define a system of life: the first is self-­organisation, the capacity to assume
an organised structure thanks to the inner rules of the system; the second is
autopoiesis, when the self-­organising structure can regenerate from within
all its own components; and there is the level of the living organism, when
autopoiesis becomes associated with cognition (Capra and Luisi 2014: 165).
The first and second criteria are met by both living and non-­living systems.
Thus, only the third criterion would characterise Gaia as a­ live – ­the assump-
tion that Gaia is driven by purposeful, directed and cognitive behaviour.
Margulis affirms this possibility without any hesitation:

Life produces fascinating ‘designs’ in a similar way by repeating the chem-

ical cycles of its cellular growth and reproduction. Order is generated by
nonconscious repetitious activities. Gaia, as the interweaving network
of all life, is alive, aware, and conscious to various degrees in all its cells,
bodies, and societies. (Margulis 1998: 126)

In fact, synthetic biology confirms that life is built on these repetitive pat-
terns and can be reproduced artificially.
Another answer to this criticism is Margulis’s notion of proprioception
or the self-­awareness characteristic of living beings. Similarly to Ruyer, who
 Planetary Organism 119

argued that every organism has a primary consciousness, Margulis intro-

duces the notion of proprioception, the sensing of self. ‘Proprioception, as
self-­awareness, evolved long before animals evolved, and long before their
brains did. Sensitivity, awareness, and responses of plants, protocists, fungi,
bacteria, and animals, each in its local environment, constitute the repeating
pattern that ultimately underlies global sensitivity and the response of Gaia
“herself”’ (Margulis 1998: 126). Like simple organisms, plants and animals,
which are aware of themselves without any reflective consciousness, Gaia
also has this primary sensitivity or proprioception, which occurs in the
absence of any central ‘head’ or ‘brain’. In this respect, Margulis indicates
that Gaia exerts a certain ‘planetary cognition’ which makes it similar to an
autopoietic system.

Gaia and the Theory of Autopoiesis

At the same time as Lovelock and Margulis were trying to conceptualise
the Gaia theory, the Chilean biologists Humberto Maturana and Francisco
Varela were working on the theory of autopoiesis. The concept of auto-
poiesis was coined in the 1970s and it refers to the minimal organisation
of life, such as a cell (auto means ‘self’ and refers to self-­organising systems,
and poiesis means ‘making or creating’). The first publication on the theory
of autopoiesis, entitled ‘Autopoiesis: The Organization of Living Systems’,
appeared in English in 1974 (Varela et al. 1974) with the help of Heinz von
Foerster, a founder of cybernetics. Autopoiesis refers to the minimal organ-
isation of a living system, which is capable of maintaining itself in a closed
circular process of self-­production, and is also capable of interacting with an
environment in order to get nutrients and energy. In this respect, an autopoi-
etic organisation is defined by several features. The first is self-­maintenance,
which means that the cell’s main function is to maintain its individuality
despite the many chemical reactions taking place in it (Maturana and Varela
1980). This also means that an autopoietic entity is autonomous, capable of
reproducing itself from within. In this sense, an autopoietic organisation
is operationally closed. Second, an autopoietic unity interacts with the
environment and gets information or energy from it. What distinguishes
living systems from non-­living systems is that the interaction between a
living system and its environment creates a ‘structural coupling’: ‘a living
system relates to its environment structurally – that is, through recurrent
interactions, each of which triggers structural changes in the system. For
example, a cell membrane continually incorporates substances from its
environment; an organism’s nervous system changes its connectivity with
every sensory perception’ (Capra and Luisi 2014: 135, emphasis in origi-
nal). In other words, every encounter with the environment produces a
structural change in the system, which then again becomes autonomous.
In this sense, autopoietic entities are ‘structurally determined’, that is, they
are determined not by external forces (as in the case of n ­ on-­living systems)
120 Organism-­Oriented Ontology

but by their own internal structure. This leads to the third characteristic of
living e­ ntities – ­life is an emergent property that cannot be reduced to the
properties of the components (Capra and Luisi 2014: 133). Emergence can
be seen as the necessary condition of self-­organisation.
Thus, an autopoietic entity is self-­maintaining and autonomous, it is
structurally coupled with its environment and is constantly creating emer-
gent properties that change its internal structure. Such a definition might
seem contradictory, because autonomy and coupling with the environment
seem to go in different directions. However, what it is important to under-
stand is that this self-­transcending movement is the necessary condition of
life. As Evan Thompson observes,

The self-­transcending movement of life is none other than metabolism,

and metabolism is none other than the biochemical instantiation of the
autopoietic organization. That organization must remain ­ invariant –
­otherwise the organism d ­ ies – ­but the only way autopoiesis can stay
in place is through the incessant material flux of metabolism. In other
words, the operational closure of autopoiesis demands that the organism
be an open system. (Thompson 2009: 85, emphasis in original)

Thus, the main feature of autopoietic systems is that they have to change
in order to be a­ live – ­a total closure or homeostasis would lead to death.
This feature is also something that is shared by second-­order systems. As
Cary Wolfe points out, ‘all autopoietic entities are closed [. . .] on the level
of organization, but open to environmental perturbations on the level of
structure’ (Wolfe 1995: 53, emphasis in original). In this sense, autopoie-
tic systems are structurally open and organisationally closed at the same
time.
The notion of structural coupling allows one to distinguish between
living and non-­living systems. If a non-­living entity is disturbed by the
environment, it will react according to a linear line of cause and effect,
which is more or less predictable; if a living being is disturbed, it will respond
with structural changes that are unpredictable (Capra and Luisi 2014: 136).
In this sense, Maturana and Varela argue that the interactions between
a living system and its environment are cognitive interactions, and the
structural changes that a living being is undergoing are acts of cognition.
In Autopoiesis and Cognition (1980), Maturana and Varela assert that the
process of cognition, or the process of knowing and learning, is coextensive
with the process of life. ‘Living systems are cognitive systems, and living as a
process is a process of cognition. This statement is valid for all organisms, with
and without a nervous system’ (Maturana and Varela 1980: 13, emphasis in
original). In other words, the capacity of interaction is seen as a cognitive
activity which can be discerned at all levels of life, from cells to human and
non-­human animals. ‘The interactions of a living ­organism – ­plant, animal,
or ­human – w ­ ith its environment are cognitive interactions. Thus life and
 Planetary Organism 121

cognition are inseparably connected. ­Mind – ­or, more accurately, mental

­activity – ­is immanent in matter at all levels of life’ (Capra and Luisi 2014:
254). In this sense, cognition is a characteristic not only of animals with
reflective consciousness, such as humans, but also other living beings with
or without a nervous system and brain.
Extending the notion of cognition to all processes of life, Maturana and
Varela assert the continuity of life and mind. This reminds us of Ruyer’s
notion of primary consciousness, discussed in Chapter 2. Primary con-
sciousness is characteristic of simple organisms without brains and it con-
veys the capacity of self-­survey and self-­enjoyment (Ruyer), or ‘the feeling
of what happens’ (Damasio). Similarly, Margulis argued in her text ‘The
Conscious Cell’ (2001) that micro-­organisms possess a certain ‘microbial
consciousness’, which later evolves and transforms itself into the nervous
system of higher vertebrates. However, in this context ‘consciousness’ refers
not to a self-­reflective consciousness of complex animals and humans, but
to consciousness as sentience. As Thompson points out, ‘One might sum-
marize these threads by saying that consciousness as sentience is a kind of
primitively self-aware liveliness or animation of the body’ (Thompson 2009: 84,
emphasis in original). N. Katherine Hayles (2017) also adds a significant
elaboration to this problem by proposing a tripartite framework of cogni-
tion: this is awareness, or consciousness in a conventional sense, the non-­
conscious cognition (associated with Damasio’s notion of ‘proto-­self’ and
Maturana and Varela’s notion of cognition), and the material processes
taking place within the body. What makes the notion of non-­conscious
cognition so interesting is that it includes not only cognitive capacities of
living organisms, but also cognitive processes of computational media. In
this respect, Maturana’s and Varela’s positions differ: Maturana reserved
the term exceptionally for living beings, whereas Varela extended it to tech-
nological systems and compared cellular automata and the emergence of
cognition in biological cells (Varela et al. 1991).
In this respect, Maturana and Varela’s theory of autopoiesis and cog-
nition could be seen as a universal methodology applicable to different
fields of organisation, such as an ecosystem or a social domain. Although
theorists were reluctant to extend the concept of autopoiesis to other fields,
some applications were very successful. For example, sociologist and system
theorist Niklas Luhmann interpreted autopoiesis as a general form of system
building by using a self-­referential closure, and argued that general principles
of autopoietic organisation can be applied to social systems (Luhmann 1990:
2). In a similar way, autopoietic organisation was applied to Gaia theory. In
1988 Lovelock, Margulis and Varela met at a Gaia theory symposium in
Italy, where Varela made an explicit connection between the self-­referential
system and Gaia theory.

The quality we see in Gaia as being living-­like, to me is the fact that

this is a fully autonomous system [. . .] it is a system whose fundamental
122 Organism-­Oriented Ontology

organization corresponds to operational closure [. . .] It is this quality of

self-­identity that I see in Gaia [. . .] So it seems to me that autonomy, in
the sense of full operational closure, is the best way of describing that
living-­like quality of Gaia, and that the use of the concept of autonomy
might liberate the theory from some of the more animistic notions that
have parasitized it. (cited in Thompson 1991: 211)

Varela made an important observation that Gaia is not alive but living-­like;
thus it can be credited as a scientific theory and not as a New Age animistic
interpretation. The next important point is that Varela acknowledged that
Gaia can be described in terms of autopoiesis. In this sense, autopoiesis
is understood as a general mode of systemic self-­ reference, which can
be applied both to living and living-­like systems. Margulis seems to take
Varela’s point into account when she writes that

The simplest, smallest known autopoietic entity is a single bacterial

cell. The largest is probably ­Gaia – ­life and its environment-­regulating
behavior at the Earth’s surface. Cells and Gaia display a general prop-
erty of autopoietic entities: as their surroundings change unpredictably,
they maintain their structural integrity and internal organization, at
the expense of solar energy, by remaking and interchanging their parts.
(Margulis 1997: 267)

In this sense, Margulis adopted the theory of autopoiesis and reframed Gaia
theory in terms of an autopoietic system.
As Bruce Clarke observed, Varela’s critique of Gaia theory at the 1988
symposium engendered a conceptual shift from first-­order cybernetics to
second-­order cybernetics, from homeostatic regulation to autopoietic recur-
sivity (Clarke 2012: 71). Similarly, Onori and Visconti agreed that, influenced
by Margulis’s investigations into autopoietic systems, Gaia theory moved to
second-­order cybernetics (Onori and Visconti 2012: 381). First-­order cyber-
netics refers to operational circularity in natural and technological systems,
whereas second-­order cybernetics turns the logic of operational circularity
upon itself. As Clarke asserts, ‘First-­order cybernetics is hetero-­referential, it
concerns “objects” such as natural and technological systems. Second-­order
cybernetics observes the self-­reference of “subjects”, that is, the necessary
recursivity of cognitive systems capable of producing observations in the
first place’ (Clarke 2012: 59). In this respect, second-­order systems, from
cells to Gaia, are not only observed but also observing; in other words, they
have the capacity of learning and cognition. Thus, according to Clarke,
‘The Gaia hypothesis began as a thought experiment drawing on homeo-
stasis, a basic first-­order cybernetic model of self-­regulation using negative
feedback to correct deviations from a desired state of operation’ (Clarke
2017: 15). However, after adopting the theory of autopoiesis, Gaia discourse
was remodelled according to second-­order systems theory, which turned the
 Planetary Organism 123

logic of operational circularity upon itself and thus implied the notion of
cognition.
Thus, with Margulis’s take on Gaia, the notion of autopoiesis becomes a
universal blueprint encompassing both living and non-­living processes. As
Clarke points out, defined in this way, the Gaian system incorporates both
biotic and abiotic, or living and non-­living elements. In this sense, ‘Gaia is
fundamentally metabiotic’ (Clarke 2017: 18, emphasis in original) because it
allows the extension of the theory of autopoiesis from biological autopoietic
systems to non-­living autopoietic systems, and, in addition, explains the
structural couplings between living autopoietic systems and non-­living non-­
autopoietic milieus. Thus, Gaia theory overcomes the traditional scientific
distinction between living and non-­living matter. Gaia is neither a living
superorganism, nor a mathematical model of self-­referentiality. Rather,

Gaia is a self-­referential system of planetary cognition operating to pro-

duce globally regulative processes binding geological and biological pro-
cesses and developments together into a superordinate system rendering
its subsystem’s evolutions interdependent, that is, mutually contingent
in the final but not necessarily in the individual instance. (Clarke 2017:
19–20)

Gaia can be defined as a system–environment hybrid (to use Hansen’s

term), which couples biotic autopoietic systems with abiotic non-­autopoietic
milieus but doesn’t subsume them in a higher order super-­system and doesn’t
reduce their differences. The different kinds of biological, technological or
geological systems are seen as ‘operationally incommensurable’ (Clarke 2017:
20, emphasis in original); therefore Gaia refers not to planetary aliveness
but to planetary interconnectedness between different systems.

Gaia and Actor-Network Theory

Another important reconceptualisation of Gaia theory is presented in Bruno
Latour’s Facing Gaia: Eight Lectures on the New Climatic Regime. Latour dis-
tances himself from cybernetic discourse and prefers to investigate Gaia in
terms of his own Actor-­Network Theory (Latour 2005). First, Latour argues
that Gaia is not a totality, a whole that is made of parts. The part–whole
distinction is applicable only to technological systems, whereas Gaia is not
a technology or a machine. Latour asserts that ‘as Gaia cannot be compared
to a machine, it cannot be subjected to any sort of re-engineering’ (Latour
2017a: 96–7, emphasis in original). The whole–part distinction can be made
only on a dead planet; and yet the Earth is alive, therefore such a distinction
is not possible. Second, Gaia is not a totality in terms of a superorganism.
What Latour finds problematic here is not the concept of an organism,
but an organism understood as a whole, or a totality determining its parts.
Thus, instead of conceptualising Gaia in terms of a totality, ­understood
124 Organism-­Oriented Ontology

either as a machine or an organism, Latour prefers to define it in terms of

agency that is involved in different interactions. Margulis’s investigations
into the kingdom of micro-­organisms, similar to those conducted by Louis
Pasteur, reveal that the Earth is composed of invisible agents which can
manipulate mountain formations, cloud layers and even the movement of
tectonic plates. As Latour points out,

The Earth’s behavior is inexplicable without the addition of the work

accomplished by living organisms, just as fermentation, for Pasteur,
cannot be started without yeast. Just as the action of micro-­organisms, in
the nineteenth century, agitated beer, wine, vinegar, milk, and epidemics,
from now on the incessant action of organisms succeeds in setting in
motion air, water, soil, and, proceeding from one thing to another, the
entire climate. (Latour 2017a: 93)

Latour interprets Gaia as a network of agents where each agent is trying to

manipulate the environment for its own interest.

Beavers, birds, ants, and termites are not the only ones who bend the
environment around them to make it more favorable; so too do trees,
mushrooms, algae, bacteria and viruses. Is there a risk of anthropomor-
phism here? Of c­ ourse . . . t­ he capacity of humans to rearrange everything
around themselves is a general property of living things. (Latour 2017a: 99,
emphasis in original)

In other words, both human and non-­human agents express a certain inten-
tionality and create an entire network of effects and connections. What is
important for Latour is to discuss Gaia as a ‘connectivity without holism’
(Latour 2017b: 75), and to explain the connections among agencies without
relying on the conception of the whole (Latour 2017a: 95, 97).
However, Latour’s critique of totalities seems far-­fetched and should be
carefully examined. First, Latour interprets Lovelock’s cybernetic discourse
as necessarily leading to holistic constructions. As Clarke observes,

Latour’s text constrains cybernetic discourse to one or another dialect

of the holistic juggling of parts and wholes. It reads systemic unity as
false totality. But there is no conceptual inevitability to these outcomes.
On the contrary, the strongest cybernetic formulations in both first- and
second-­order systems theories place multiplicities, differences, and dis-
tinctions before or at least alongside oneness, wholeness, and totality.
(Clarke 2020: 68)

In other words, the system doesn’t mean wholeness. Second, Latour’s other
­target – ­the notion of an ­organism – ­is also misrepresented. Latour reminds
us that there is a general tendency to transpose organismic metaphors from
 Planetary Organism 125

biology to social sciences: ‘All the sciences, natural or social, are haunted
by the specter of the “organism,” which always becomes, more or less sur-
reptitiously, a “superorganism” – that is, a dispatcher to whom the ­task – ­or
rather the holy ­mystery – ­of successfully coordinating the various parts is
attributed’ (Latour 2017a: 95, emphasis in original). Here again Latour is
misinterpreting the notion of an organism and doesn’t take into account
the fact that an organism can be interpreted not as a whole but as an
autopoietic organisation. Latour refuses to admit that autopoietic systems
(from cells to ecosystems) are capable of incorporating within themselves
differences and multiplicities. Thus, going against the grain of Lovelock
and Margulis’s orientation towards systems theory, Latour argues that Gaia
is anti-­systemic: ‘Gaia, the outlaw, is the anti-­system’ (Latour 2017a: 87).
However, as Clarke points out, it is important not to conflate the notion of
the whole with that of the system (Clarke 2017: 14). If Gaia is not a whole, it
doesn’t mean that it cannot be a system.
Latour associates this anti-­ systemic character of Gaia with Isabelle
Stengers’s interpretations. As Stengers points out, Gaia exists on its own
terms:

It is not a living being, and not a cybernetic one either; rather it is a being
demanding that we complicate the divide between life and non-­life, for
Gaia is gifted with its own particular way of holding together and of
answering to changes forced on it [. . .] thus breaking the general linear
relation between causes and effects. (Stengers 2015b: 137)

In her book In Catastrophic Times: Resisting the Coming Barbarism, Stengers

describes Gaia as an intruder that is incompatible with our expectations
and conceptualisations. Gaia is ‘a ticklish assemblage of forces’ that is abso-
lutely transcendent in relation to our reasons and projects.

The intrusion of this type of transcendence, which I am calling Gaia,

makes a major unknown, which is here to stay, exist at the heart of our
lives. This is perhaps what is most difficult to conceptualize: no future can
be foreseen in which she will give back to us the liberty of ignoring her.
(Stengers 2015a: 47, emphasis in original)

Defined in this way, Gaia is intrusive, ticklish and unforeseen, ready to

destroy our human order. This radically unknown and unforeseen char-
acter of Gaia can be traced to Stengers’s theoretical background in far
from equilibrium systems theory, which she elaborated together with Ilya
Prigogine (Prigogine and Stengers 1984). Interpreting Gaia from this point of
view, we can recognise some contours of dissipative structures. Dissipative
structures not only maintain themselves in a state far from equilibrium
but may evolve into more complex structures (Capra and Luisi 2014: 159).
In this regard Gaia the intruder, even being chaotic and unforeseen, may
126 Organism-­Oriented Ontology

evolve into a new complex order, and, in this sense, is perfectly compatible
with systems theory. Clarke comes to a similar conclusion when he asserts
that, regardless of both Latour’s and Stengers’s attempts to extract the con-
cept of Gaia from its cybernetic origin, it still retains its systemic character:
‘the Gaia discourses of Stengers and Latour may be positively aligned with
the systems theory that supports Lynn Margulis’s autopoietic Gaia concept’
(Clarke 2017: 7).
Cary Wolfe provides a less sympathetic reading of Latour’s Facing Gaia
and of his attempts to shape Gaia in terms of Actor-­Network Theory.
According to Wolfe, the main problem in Latour’s theory is the insufficient
understanding of the difference between first-­order and second-­order sys-
tems theory. ‘A crucial underlying problem [. . .] is that Latour continues
to understand the terms “system” and “autopoiesis” as if they were simply
synonyms for homeostasis and command-­and-­control, and the fingerprints
of this misunderstanding in Facing Gaia are all over his use of the term
“cybernetics”’ (Wolfe 2020: 140). It seems that Latour understands cyber-
netics as based on ‘mereological’ relations between parts and wholes. As
Wolfe points out, ‘it should come as no surprise that Latour cannot under-
stand that, in second-­order systems theory, the account of the relationship
between the “part” and the “whole” [. . .] is actually the opposite of the carica-
ture he offers here’ (Wolfe 2020: 140, emphasis in original). Latour’s critique
of cybernetics and systems theory misses the target because second-­order
cybernetics reconceptualises the notion of the system in such a way that it
incorporates recursivity and contingency (Hui 2019).
Another problem appears when Latour is trying to explain the nature of
the relationships between an organism and its environment. As was said
before, Latour is describing every agent as trying to manipulate its environ-
ment and to rearrange everything around itself. In this sense, Latour argues
that

there is no longer any environment to which one might adapt. Since all living
agents follow their own intentions all along, modifying their neighbors as
much as possible, there is no way to distinguish between the environment
to which the organism is adapting and the point at which its own action
begins. (Latour 2017a: 100, emphasis in original)

Latour is trying to explain this intentionality of agents by referring to

Richard Dawkins’ theory of the ‘selfish gene’; however, he himself admits
that the notion of ‘self’ in biology is very problematic. Thus, all agents are
interacting quite chaotically in ‘waves of action’, which subvert all bor-
ders in such a way that it becomes impossible to distinguish between an
individual and an environment to which it would adapt. In this respect, it
becomes even more difficult to explain how these agents can interact if the
distinction between an organism and its environment, the inside and the
outside, is subverted. According to Wolfe,
 Planetary Organism 127

What Latour is unable to theorize here is the relationship [. . .] between

‘inside’ and ‘outside’, ‘neighbor’ and ‘environment,’ because he doesn’t
grasp the key insight of second-­order systems theory and the theory of
autopoiesis: that the contingency of the self-­reference of autopoietic organ-
isms is the ‘wild card,’ the ‘outlaw,’ at the core of everything Latour wants
from the unpredictable ‘agency’ and ‘intentions’ . . . (Wolfe 2020: 141,
emphasis in original)

What Latour describes as sporadic actions and intentions of agents is noth-

ing other than the self-­referential character of autopoietic systems, which
include contingency and recursivity. Organisms not only manipulate and
change their environments, but also change themselves in recursive opera-
tions. In other words, they are closed and bounded individuals at an organi-
sational level and open at an environmental level. As Luhmann points out,

The concept of a self-­referentially closed system does not contradict the

system’s openness to the environment. Instead, in the self-­referential mode of
operation, closure is a form of broadening possible environmental con-
tacts; closure increases, by constituting elements more capable of being
determined, the complexity of the environment that is possible for the
system. (Luhmann 1995: 37, emphasis in original)

In second-­order systems, recursivity works in such a way that, by incorpo-

rating contingency, it makes the system more complex. This contingency
explains the ‘anti-­systemic’ and ‘outlaw’ character of Gaia which Latour’s
theory fails to address.
Another important point of critique is that the notion of ‘agent’, or
‘actor’, fails to maintain the difference between living and non-­living (phys-
ical) systems. As Wolfe points out,

Flat Ontologies (and finally Latour’s own Actor-­Network Theory) evac-

uate the radical discontinuity between qualitatively different orders of
causation that obtain in living vs. physical ­systems – ­different orders that
impact in fundamentally different ways the evolution of the biosphere,
climate change, and, ultimately, the entire concept of Gaia. (Wolfe 2020:
132)

Living systems imply relations that are much more unpredictable and act
as an ‘outlaw’. In this respect, Latour’s Actor-­Network Theory flattens the
distinction between living and non-­living systems, and the different orders
of causality that these systems imply. Living organisms imply a different
order of causality, which incorporates recursivity and contingency and
which allows them to change themselves and their environment. In second-­
order systems, recursivity is the source of internal transformation, which,
in its turn, is the main characteristic of living organisms. The difference
128 Organism-­Oriented Ontology

between living and non-­living systems is crucial if we want to understand

the functioning of Gaia and the interface between physical, biological and
technological systems.

Gaia and the Theory of Sympoiesis

Gaia theory takes an important place in Donna J. Haraway’s works, from
her early writings dedicated to cyborgs to the latest theory of sympoie-
sis described in Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene. In
her short text ‘Cyborgs and Symbionts’ (1995), Haraway asks what is the
nature of Gaia: is it a cybernetic entity, as Lovelock suggested, or is it a
symbiotic monster, as described by Margulis? For Lovelock, ‘the whole
earth was a dynamic, self-­regulating, homeostatic system; the earth, with
all its interwoven layers and articulated parts, from the planet’s pulsating
skin through its fulminating gaseous envelopes, was itself alive’ (Haraway
1995: xiii). However, it is alive not in the sense that it is a living organ-
ism, but because it brings into a complex system different layers of the
earth. ‘Lovelock’s ­earth – ­itself a cyborg, a complex auto-­poietic system
that terminally blurred the boundaries among the geological, the organic,
and the t­ echnological – w
­ as the natural habitat, and the launching pad, of
other cyborgs’ (Haraway 1995: xiii). Thus, there are two versions of Gaia:
the cyborg-­like Gaia which can be seen as a self-­regulating man–machine
system; and a symbiotic Gaia, a hybrid born from non-­innocent couplings
of creatures with different genomes, such as in the case of Mixotricha par-
adoxa. It is interesting to see that this early text already marks both the
machinic and organismic p ­ edigree of Gaia and also introduces the term
autopoiesis in quite an unproblematic way.
A different take on Gaia appears in Haraway’s Staying with the Trouble:
Making Kin in the Chthulucene.1 Haraway seems sympathetic to Latour’s and
Stengers’s theories of Gaia (although omitting their different backgrounds)
and reads them as a continuation of Lovelock and Margulis’s hypothesis:

In this hypothesis, Gaia is a­ utopoietic – s­elf-­forming, boundary main-

taining, contingent, dynamic and stable under some conditions but not
others. Gaia is not reducible to the sum of its parts, but achieves finite
systemic coherence in the face of perturbations within parameters that

1
In Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene (2016), Haraway con-
structs her theory of Gaia in opposition to the theories of the Anthropocene.
The Anthropocene is a term suggested by Paul Crutzen and Eugene Stoermer
(Crutzen and Stoermer 2000; Crutzen 2002) to name a new geological epoch, which
marks the irreversible effects on the planet produced by human activity. The term
was criticised by many authors for reintroducing the notion of the Anthropos
back into the scene (Demos 2017). Some other authors suggested such terms as
‘Capitalocene’ (Moore 2016) or ‘Plantationocene’ (Haraway 2015). Haraway sug-
gests the new term ‘Chthulucene’, which will be discussed in the next chapter.
 Planetary Organism 129

are themselves responsive to dynamic systemic processes. (Haraway 2016:

43–4)

Thus, Gaia exposes a certain systemic coherence, but the nature of this sys-
tematicity is not discussed. Haraway seems more sympathetic to Margulis’s
idea that life emerges through symbiosis and symbiogenesis, which leads to
the increasing complexity of life forms. This is why Haraway questions the
underlying assumption that these emerging life forms are autopoietic and
argues that Margulis perhaps ‘would have chosen the term sympoietic, but
the word and concept had not yet surfaced’ (Haraway 2016: 61). Haraway
asserts that nothing can really create itself,2 therefore, nothing is really
autopoietic but needs other organisms and environments to become what it
is. In this regard the theory of autopoiesis should be coupled with the theory
of sympoiesis, which refers not to autonomous but to collectively produced
systems.
Haraway takes the term sympoiesis from M. Beth Dempster’s (2000)
work, where she distinguishes between autopoietic and sympoietic systems.
Autopoietic systems, as defined by Maturana and Varela, are characterised
by two basic features: first, they produce relations between their compo-
nents that allow them to reproduce the same pattern of relations (they
are self-­referential); second, they have the ability to reproduce their own
boundaries (they are self-­defining). Autopoietic systems are organisationally
closed, but structurally open: this means that they are not absolutely auton-
omous but that they internally define their boundaries and relationships
with the environment. Sympoietic systems are defined as organisationally
ajar, with loosely defined boundaries. ‘Lacking self-­ defined boundaries,
sympoietic systems consequently lack the same degree of control and are
open to a continual flux of organizationally relevant information [. . .] This
dynamic, though restricted, flux of information allows sympoietic systems
to evolve continuously by adapting to changing conditions and by gener-
ating new ones’ (Dempster 2000: 9). Autopoietic and sympoietic systems
manage information in different ways: autopoietic systems carry a kind of
‘packaged’ information, whereas sympoietic systems carry different bits of
information in their components (which are autopoietic in themselves) and
lack a central control. This makes sympoietic systems more flexible and
adaptive, therefore they can easily adapt to changing environments, and
also produce new forms of organisation (in this regard they are allopoietic):

2
In When Species Meet (2008), Haraway attributes this thought to Scott F. Gilbert:
‘I am instructed by developmental biologist Scott Gilbert’s critique of autopoiesis
for its emphasis on self-­building and self-­maintaining systems, closed except for
nourishing flows of matter and energy. Gilbert stresses that nothing makes itself in
the biological world, but rather reciprocal induction within and between always-­
in-­process critters ramifies through space and time on both large and small scales
in cascades of inter- and intra-­action’ (Haraway 2008: 32).
130 Organism-­Oriented Ontology

‘autopoietic systems follow some sort of path from a less to a more devel-
oped stage, whereas sympoietic systems are continually, although not nec-
essarily consistently, changing’ (Dempster 2000: 10–11). This explains why
sympoietic systems have greater potential for change: if autopoietic systems
are homeostatic, predictable and development-­oriented, then sympoietic
systems are allopoietic (producing otherness), unpredictable and evolution-­
oriented. In this sense, sympoietic systems, which also include autopoietic
systems as their components, have the ability to maintain their identity and
the status quo, and, at the same time, have the potential to change and to
adapt to changes coming from the environment.
Thus, Haraway promotes the theory of sympoiesis and suggests that ‘Gaia
is a system mistaken for autopoietic that is really sympoietic’ (Haraway
2016: 180, n. 38). According to Haraway, autopoiesis can explain the func-
tioning of bounded units or individuals, whereas sympoiesis is a better
term to explain the collaborative assemblages that acquire their identity in
the process of interaction and becoming. By fusing different components,
sympoiesis creates more complex life forms and gives rise to new emergent
properties. Haraway refers to Margulis’s notion of the holobiont, which
indicates an organism plus persisting symbionts, such as the poster critter
Mixotricha paradoxa. For Haraway, the notion of the holobiont questions
the idea of a self-­organised individual and indicates that all living beings
appear as a result of dynamic organising processes:

Like Margulis, I use holobiont to mean symbiotic assemblages, at whatever

scale of space or time, which are more like knots of diverse intra-­active
relatings in dynamic complex systems, than like the entities of a biology
made up of preexisting bounded units (genes, cells, organisms, etc.) in
interactions that can only be conceived as competitive or cooperative.
(Haraway 2016: 60, emphasis in original)

In this respect, Haraway thinks that sympoiesis ‘is a word proper to complex,
dynamic, responsive, situated, historical systems [. . .] Sympoiesis enfolds
autopoiesis and generatively unfurls and extends it’ (Haraway 2016: 58).
That means that sympoiesis and autopoiesis are not in opposition to each
other, but, rather, they designate different aspects of systemic complexity.
Haraway takes the notion of the holobiont even further by trying to
decentralise the relationships between a host and its symbionts: ‘my use of
holobiont does not designate host + symbionts because all of the players are
symbionts to each other, in diverse kinds of relationalities and with varying
degrees of openness to attachments and assemblages with other holobionts’
(Haraway 2016: 60, emphasis in original). The idea that ‘all of the players
are symbionts to each other’ echoes Latour’s formulation that every agent
is trying to manipulate another in such a way that all borders between an
organism and its environment, between the inside and the outside, are
subverted. But this subversion poses another methodological question: if
 Planetary Organism 131

the borders are subverted, how can we distinguish between organisms and
environments, or symbionts and hosts? Is it still possible to talk about
any systemic approach, if all symbionts dissolve in their environment? As
Wolfe critically formulates it, if all boundaries between an organism and its
environment collapse, to what is this system still open? Wolfe asserts that
to theorise this mode of interaction, first we have to define the entity which
is interacting, and only then can we define the nature of this interaction.
In other words, first we have to explain the organisation of an autopoietic
entity, and only then can we define their sympoietic interactions. In Wolfe’s
view, ‘approaching complex system/environment interactions from the
theoretical framework of autopoiesis is coherent and rigorous, while the
theory of “sympoiesis” is not’ (Wolfe 2023: 216).
To answer this critique, we can argue that a systems theory approach, even
being coherent and rigorous, might also have its limitations. Here we can
quote Haraway’s interview where she says that she is sympathetic to certain
efforts to rethink Gaia through autopoiesis, but in general she is resistant to
systems theory: ‘I am nonetheless deeply resistant to systems theories of all
kinds, including so-­called third-­order cybernetics and the autopoiesis and
structural coupling approaches’ (Gane 2006: 139). This assertion should be
taken into ­account – w ­ hat if systems theory is insufficient to account for the
relational and processual nature of sympoietic intra-­actions? Maybe first we
have to understand the nature of this interaction, and only then analyse
the agents or actors, having in mind that they are just temporal effects of
this interaction.
Another point of Wolfe’s critique is related to the paradoxical position of
the observer: if we agree with the statement that ‘everything is connected’,
then we imply an observer’s position from which this connectedness can
be seen or observed. However, this is the impossible position of the ‘God’s-­
eye view’ which Haraway criticises herself. The observer’s position always
implies a particular place and has unavoidable limitations. Having this in
mind, Wolfe argues that the second-­order systems theory approach, which
maintains the self-­referential closure and the boundaries between the system
and its environment, is a better theoretical model. In other words, to increase
the connections with the environment and to reach a higher complexity, an
entity first has to be a closed autopoietic system. Wolfe formulates his ‘open-
ness from closure’ principle (Wolfe 2010: 117), meaning that self-­reference
in autopoietic systems refers not to closure or the homeostatic ‘repetition of
the same’, but to recursive operations which can incorporate contingency
(Wolfe 2020: 141). Without this autopoietic self-­referential closure there
would be no recursivity, and without recursivity there would be no actual
connectivity between an organism and its environment. As Wolfe points
out, ‘when it comes to the biosphere and its role in the larger system of
Gaia, second-­order closure and the recursivity it enables between organism
and environment is the joker in the deck, both ontogenetically and phy-
logenetically, the most unpredictable source of the “outlaw” characteristics
132 Organism-­Oriented Ontology

of alterity and contingency’ (Wolfe 2020: 142, emphasis in original). And

yet, even though this second-­order systems approach seems justifiable in
discussing the theory of Gaia, the question still remains whether it is appro-
priate to accept the theory of sympoiesis. If we think about Gaia as a thin
layer of the atmosphere, we have to admit that it is not just an autopoietic
system having a boundary or a membrane; it is a boundary or a membrane
itself (Clarke 2017: 222). If Gaia is a bounded entity and a boundary itself,
then the notion of autopoiesis perfectly fits this description. However, if
we think about the holobiont and the processes of sympoiesis, the notion
of boundary becomes irrelevant. The ontological weight here is laid not on
entities and their boundaries, but on the relations between different centres
of cognition. Thus, the notion of sympoiesis requires not systems theory,
but a cognitivist approach, which will be discussed in the next chapter.

Conclusion
As we have seen, the original Gaia hypothesis had two ‘parents’: it is
Lovelock’s cybernetic model and Margulis’s notion of symbiosis and sym-
biogenesis. After meeting Varela, Lovelock and Margulis were persuaded to
describe Gaia in terms of self-­referential and self-­maintaining autopoietic
system, connecting living and non-­ living components. However, other
authors, such as Latour and Haraway, invite us to rethink Gaia not as an
autopoietic unity, closed unto itself in repetitive patterns, but as a complex
and dynamic network, which is open to contingency and otherness. In this
respect, Gaia is not quite an organism or a living being, but a living-­like
agent, driven by its formative activity. As Latour points out,

The simplification introduced by Lovelock in the comprehension of ter-

restrial phenomena is not at all that he added ‘life’ to the Earth, or that
he made the Earth a ‘living organism’, but, quite to the contrary, that he
stopped denying that living beings were active participants in biochemical
and geochemical phenomena. (Latour 2018: 76, emphasis in original)

Lovelock refused to de-­animate the Earth and to deny that there are many
actors or agents that produce and engender qualitative changes.
In this respect, the theory of living-­like Gaia is a better theoretical tool
to reflect our climatic condition than the discourse on the Anthropocene.
The Anthropocene (and Capitalocene or Plantationocene) deals with meas-
urable or quantitative effects which are mostly irreversible. By contrast,
Gaia theory reflects qualitative connections between living and non-­living
systems. Gaia theory implies the planetary cognition that organises different
living and non-­living (geological or technological) systems in such a way that
they can reach the most favourable conditions. In this respect, Gaia theory
is nothing other than organology, the extension of life by other means
than life: living beings are exteriorised into non-­living environments or
 Planetary Organism 133

technologies, and vice versa: non-­living substances are interiorised by living

beings and transformed into vital energy. Gaia is this planetary organism
that collects different organic and inorganic components and produces new
forms of life.
 7
Hybrid Organism

In this chapter I will discuss Haraway’s notion of sympoiesis and will

examine different modes of cohabitation or hybridisation with non-­human
others. Such concepts as sympoiesis, or the holobiont, question the notion
of the biological individual and also change our understanding of what it
means to be human. As Richard Grusin pointed out, ‘we have never been
human’, for the reason that ‘the human has always coevolved, coexisted,
or collaborated with the n ­ onhuman – ­and that the human is characterized
precisely by this indistinction from the nonhuman’ (Grusin 2015: ix–x). We
have never been human, because we have always been dependent on other
species living within or beyond our bodies. However, the question that
still needs to be answered is whether all forms of coexistence are profitable
and welcomed. How does one define the limit at which this coexistence is
collaborative and productive (‘posthuman’), and beyond which it becomes
damaging and lethal, in other words, ‘posthumous’, e.g. coming after life?
(Weinstein and Colebrook 2017). For this reason, the interrelations between
different life forms should be discussed together with the concepts of immu-
nity and contagion. The notion of immunity expresses an ambivalent char-
acter of life: on the one hand, it protects an organism against everything
that is beyond its boundary; on the other hand, it helps to collaborate
with other organisms and to create a new community, or an ecosystem. In
this sense, immunity can be thought as a possibility for a new community
connecting human and non-­human beings. At the end of this chapter, I will
examine different modes of interspecies communication in contemporary
art practices.

Sympoiesis as ‘Making-With’
Haraway’s discursive interventions, from cyborgs to symbiotic creatures,
deconstruct the myth of the organism as a natural wholeness. Instead,
she persuasively demonstrates that every living being is a multiplicity, an
assemblage, which might be arranged and rearranged in many different
 Hybrid Organism 135

ways. In this respect, Haraway, without acknowledging it,1 elaborates

further Deleuze and Guattari’s attempts to disarticulate the idea of an
organism and open it to becoming and ‘unnatural participations’, which
was discussed in Chapter 3. For Deleuze and Guattari, an organism is an
assemblage-­like construction, the body without organs, which demonstrates
the disorganisation of the organism and the denaturalisation of nature.
Deleuze and Guattari are interested in different modes of becoming, defined
as expansion, propagation, occupation, contagion, peopling. It is a multi-
plicity, which is organised not by filiation or heredity, but through epidemic
or contagion. Haraway also insists on the contingent and undetermined
mode of every multiplicity; however, she stresses symbiotic cooperation
and sympoietic entanglements.
In this chapter I will discuss Haraway’s notion of sympoiesis not in rela-
tion to the Gaian system but as a mundane practice of ‘making-­with’ or
‘becoming-­with’ (Haraway 2016; 2017). Haraway is sympathetic to Lynn
Margulis’s idea that life emerges through symbiosis and symbiogenesis,
which leads to the increasing complexity of life forms. In Symbiotic Planet
(1998), Margulis proved that life originated from the interaction between
different life forms, such as bacteria and archaea. By fusing with each other,
bacteria and archaea invented a complex cell made of a nucleus and extra-
nuclear organelles. As Haraway suggests, symbiosis is the basic law of life:
‘The core of Margulis’s view of life was that new kinds of cells, tissues,
organs, and species evolve primarily through the long-­lasting intimacy of
strangers’ (Haraway 2016: 60, emphasis in original). Haraway asserts that
the notion of autopoiesis should be coupled with the notion of sympoiesis
because, as she says, nothing creates itself; thus nothing is really autopoietic,
or self-­organising. Everything needs others to create itself. Haraway asserts
that organisms are never quite autonomous: ‘neither biology nor philosophy
any longer supports the notion of independent organisms in ­environments
. . . ­Bounded (or neoliberal) individualism amended by autopoiesis is not
good enough figurally or scientifically; it misleads us down deadly paths’
(Haraway 2016: 33). Instead, she says, we have to adopt Karen Barad’s
(2007) agential realism and intra-­active complex systems of relations, where
the elements of the system do not pre-­exist the relations but are created
precisely by them. Such a model of intra-­active relationships is better than
the model of autopoietic systems.

Autopoietic systems [. . .] are not good models for living and dying worlds
and their critters. Autopoietic systems are not closed, spherical, determin-
istic, or teleological, but they are not quite good enough models for the
mortal SF world. Poiesis is symchthonic, sympoietic, always partnered

1
We find a harsh critique of Deleuze and Guattari’s notion of becoming in the first
chapter of Haraway’s When Species Meet (2008: 3–44). However, a more positive
and careful approach is lacking.
136 Organism-­Oriented Ontology

all the way down, with no starting and subsequently interacting ‘units’.
(Haraway 2016: 33)2

Haraway suggests that a living being (she prefers a tentacular one) is never
closed unto itself, but is always entangled and attached to other living
beings and forms interspecies assemblages.
In other words, Haraway does not completely reject the theory of auto-
poiesis but insists that autopoiesis and sympoiesis are different aspects of
systemic complexity, and that they rather enfold than oppose each other.
At this point it is important to stress that Maturana and Varela do not
assert that autopoietic systems are closed and devoid of interaction with
other systems. For example, they argue that ‘Autopoietic systems may inter-
act with each other under conditions that result in behavioral coupling’
(Maturana and Varela 1980: 119–20). The interacting organisms as dynamic
systems trigger each other and thus become continuously changing struc-
tures, but never lose their autopoietic character. In this respect, autopoietic
systems are not neglected but rather complicated, and they become the
source of each other’s change and development. Haraway is saying the same
thing when she adopts Margulis’s notion of the holobiont and reinvents it
in the sense that the holobiont does not merely designate the host plus the
symbionts, but means that ‘all of the players are symbionts to each other,
in diverse kinds of relationalities and with varying degrees of openness to
attachments and assemblages with other holobionts’ (Haraway 2016: 60). In
this sense, sympoiesis is always an allopoiesis, or heteropoiesis, an attempt
to deal with otherness and cope with differences.
To assert her theory of sympoiesis as a ‘making-­with’, Haraway refers
to the works of biologists which give clear evidence that symbiosis has
always been a dominant mode of existence. For example, in a famous article
‘A Symbiotic View of Life: We Have Never Been Individuals’ (2012), Scott
F. Gilbert, Jan Sapp and Alfred Tauber argue that biological individuals are
always inhabited by other forms of life, such as viruses or bacteria. After
examining biological individuals according to anatomical, developmental,
physiological, genetic and immunological criteria, the authors come to the
conclusion that all organisms are related to each other in an all-­pervading
symbiosis. Before Margulis’s work, symbiosis was seen as rare or exceptional;
now symbiosis ‘is becoming a core principle of contemporary biology, and it
is replacing an essentialist conception of “individuality” with a conception
congruent with the larger systems approach now pushing the life sciences in
diverse directions’ (Gilbert et al. 2012: 326).
There are many criteria for defining biological individuality. According to
anatomical criteria, a biological individual is regarded as a structured whole.
However, our favourite critter Mixotricha paradoxa is a chimeric individual,

2
SF here refers to science fiction, speculative feminism, speculative fabulation,
string figures, etc.
 Hybrid Organism 137

‘a beast with five genomes’ (Margulis and Sagan 2001: 38–41), which is
composed of a host and persistent populations of symbionts. Now, if we
examine a biological individual according to developmental criteria, we can
see that development is closely related to interspecies communication. For
example, the newborn of the Hawaiian bobtailed squid Euprymna scolopes
lacks a light organ, which is developed in cooperation between the squid and
the luminescent bacteria called Vibrio fischeri (Gilbert et al. 2012: 328). Thus,
the vibrio bacteria are essential for inventing a new organ and also bringing
the squid into being. The vibrio bacteria also initiate changes in the squid’s
gene expression, thus altering the development of its body and immune
system. As Margaret McFall-­Ngai points out, ‘These observations challenged
what we thought we knew about organismal development, namely, that it
was driven primarily by inherited genetic codes. In contrast, our research
showed us that squid develop, in part, through relations with microbes,
not exclusively through inherited genetic scripts’ (McFall-­Ngai 2017: 61).
These and many other examples provide evidence that animals cannot be
considered individuals by anatomical, developmental, physiological, immu-
nological, genetic or evolutionary criteria. Their bodies must be understood
as holobionts that developed through interspecies communication.
However, the notion of the holobiont changes not only our understand-
ing of the animal world but also the idea of what it means to be human. In
a more recent article Gilbert observes that ‘The holobiont is powerful, in
part, because it is not limited to nonhuman organisms. It also changes what
it means to be a person’ (Gilbert 2017: 75). Seen from this perspective, the
human body is not a bounded individual but a complex ecosystem, which is
related to other organisms through the reciprocal process of symbiosis. For
example, in defining anatomical individuality, Gilbert suggests that only
about half the cells in our bodies contain a ‘human genome’, and the other
cells include about 160 different bacterial genomes (Gilbert 2017: 75). Thus,
from the anatomical point of view, human bodies contain a plurality of
bacterial ecosystems. From the genetic point of view, we are not individuals
either because, while humans have about 22,000 different genes, the bacte-
ria in us provide eight million more. The co-­metabolism between humans
and their bacterial symbionts proves that we are not individuals from the
physiological point of view. Gilbert gives an interesting example of such a
physiological symbiosis: a mother has two different kinds of nutrients in her
­milk – o­ ne is for the newborn baby, and the other for the bacteria that will
help to build its gut and immune system. ‘A human mother’s milk contains
several oligosaccharides, complex sugars, that cannot be digested by the
baby. These are not sugars for the baby; these are sugars for bacteria such
as Bifidobacteria, which has genes that encode enzymes capable of digest-
ing those special milk sugars’ (Gilbert 2017: 81). Thus, the maternal body
creates conditions for a new symbiotic community. According to immuno-
logical criteria, humans are also far from individuals because our immune
system allows countless microbes to become parts of our bodies. As Gilbert
138 Organism-­Oriented Ontology

points out, ‘Without the proper microbial symbionts, important subsets of

immune cells fail to form [. . .] We are thus not individuals by immune cri-
teria’ (Gilbert 2017: 82). Recent research in immunology reveals that there
is no such thing as an individual ‘self’ because our bodies couldn’t survive
without hosting microbial organisms.
Thus, after discussing anatomical, genetic, developmental, physiological,
immunological and evolutionary criteria, Gilbert comes to the conclusion
that we are not individuals but h ­ olobionts – ­organisms persistently coop-
erating with communities of symbionts. This means that symbiosis is not
an exceptional or marginal case but an all-­encompassing principle of life.
‘These major symbiotic webs rule the planet, and within these big symbioses
are the smaller symbiotic webs of things we call organisms [. . .] Symbiosis is
the way of life on earth; we are all holobionts by birth’ (Gilbert 2017: 84).
But if we are all holobionts by birth, what do these modes of symbiosis and
cohabitation mean for us and for other species?
This forces us to think about how we can harmonise these biological
insights and our philosophical predispositions. Are we ready to give up
the notion of the human individual? Inspired by recent biological research,
Haraway enthusiastically invites us to engage in interspecies communica-
tion, which is understood as sympoiesis. In contrast to biological symbiosis
and symbiogenesis which is simply found in the natural world, sympoiesis
means an active ‘making-­with’ with other species, which is understood as a
way to counter both anthropocentrism and the Anthropocene. Taking as
a metaphor the spider Pimoa cthulhu, and making a small change in spelling
from cthulhu to chthulu, Haraway invents a new ­term – ­the Chthulucene3
– that should replace the Anthropocene.

[T]he Chthulucene is made up of ongoing multispecies stories and prac-

tices of becoming-­with . . . ­Unlike the dominant dramas of Anthropocene
and Capitalocene discourse, human beings are not the only important
actors in the Chthulucene, with all other beings able simply to react. The
order is reknitted: human beings are with and of the earth, and the biotic
and abiotic powers of this earth are the main story. (Haraway 2016: 55)

Haraway invites us to create tentacular webs and assemblages with other

species. However, what I find problematic in this project is that these con-
nections work only on the imaginary and speculative level, avoiding the
real interaction with other species. The relationship with animal partners
remains vaguely defined, and in some ­cases – ­such as poetically described
interactions with companion species (Haraway 2008) – looks very problem-
atic because it is still embedded in the logic of anthropocentrism and asserts
the supremacy of the human species.

3
Haraway refers to a spider, Pimoa cthulhu, that lives in the redwood forests of
Sonoma and Mendocino counties, near where she lives in north central California.
 Hybrid Organism 139

How can we imagine interspecies communication beyond these beauti-

ful poetic SF speculations? Even if the notion of symbiosis is now widely
accepted in biology, sympoiesis, or ‘making-­ with’, between human and
non-­human species still needs to be accounted for and explained. What is
problematic here is that the entire history of philosophy rests on the idea
of the bounded individual. To renounce the boundaries would mean to
destroy the individual, the human subject, and thus to deprive the world
of the source of thinking and reasoning. When Gilbert, Sapp and Tauber
announce that ‘we are all lichens’, or, as Haraway asserts, ‘we are humus, not
humans’, to what extent can we accept these statements? Can we renounce
our human individuality and dissolve into the mud of compost? At this
point, some other terms and concepts should be found or invented. I think
that the notion of sympoiesis should be discussed in relation to the question
of immunity and contagion. Are all connections and relations profitable
to the host and its symbionts, or not? If they are, then everyone can enjoy
interspecies collaboration; but if they are not, then these connections might
be fatally contagious and lead to destruction. In other words, to explain
the interaction with otherness, we have to explain the functioning of the
immune system.

Immunity and Contagion

Haraway discusses the notion of immunity in one of her earlier texts, ‘The
Biopolitics of Postmodern Bodies: Constitutions of Self in Immune System
Discourse’.4 What is important for Haraway is that the individual body is
not something given but is permanently constructed: paraphrasing Simone
de Beauvoir, she asserts that ‘one is not born an organism. Organisms are
made; they are constructs of a world-­changing kind’ (Haraway 2013: 279).
The immune system is a good example of organisms being assemblages,
which are constantly shaped by the environment. As Haraway points out,
‘“Organism” and “individual” have not disappeared; rather, they have been
fully denaturalized. That is, they are ontologically contingent constructs
from the point of view of the biologist, not just in the loose ravings of a
cultural critic or feminist historian of science’ (Haraway 2013: 292–3). The
immune system, as it was defined in the twentieth century, draws the bound-
ary between the ‘self’ and the ‘non-­self’, and in this respect immunological
discourse imitates the discourse of biopolitics. The immune system creates
a defensive mechanism to fight against the ‘non-­self’ in the same way as
biopolitical power discriminates against the ‘other’.
However, the distinction between the ‘self’ and the ‘non-­self’ is not so
clear if we want to explain it biologically. What remains to be explained is
what defines this ‘self’ and why the immune system is silent in relation to
its own cells and tissues. What happens when a part of the so-­called ‘self’

4
First published in differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies, 1, 1989, pp. 3–43.
140 Organism-­Oriented Ontology

changes and becomes a stranger to itself? Is the biological ‘self’ identical

with philosophical and psychological notions of individuality? As Alfred I.
Tauber explains, the notion of selfhood was not only imported from phil-
osophical discourse but quickly became an idiom that was explained as if
it grew within the science of immunology (Tauber 2017: 42). The notion of
‘self’, which comprises both the organismal self and the immunological self,
was a very convenient and recognisable model with which to think about
our immunological identity. However, as immunology developed, some
important questions had to be answered. First, the immunological ‘self’ is
never given all at once, but develops throughout the organism’s life. That
means that the immunological ‘self’ is not a given entity, but a process,
during which it is constantly changing. Second, the immunological ‘self’ is
non-­reactive or silent in relation to the cells coming from other organisms,
for example in the case of pregnancy. There is clear evidence that long
after delivery, foetal cells are found in maternal bodies, creating a case of
microchimerism. Why does the immune system not attack these cells? And
third, why does the immune system react to the cells of the same organism
in the case of autoimmune diseases? Why does the immune system treat the
‘self’ as if it were the ‘other’? As Roberto Esposito points out, autoimmune
diseases ‘express, by their very name, its most acute contradiction: rather
than a failure, a block, or a flaw in the immune apparatus, they represent its
reversal against itself’ (Esposito 2011: 162). Autoimmune diseases express
an ‘overactive defence’ of the body, when the body is using a defence that is
disproportionate to the actual size of the intruder.
Esposito argues that the antinomies of the immune system could be
interpreted not as an alleged pathology, but, on the contrary, as its normal
functioning. ‘If the immune system works by opposing everything that it
recognizes, this means that it has to attack even the “self” whose recognition
is the precondition of all other recognition: how could the immune system
recognize the other without first knowing the self?’ (Esposito 2011: 164,
emphasis in original). Here we see a certain antinomy: the immune system
should recognise the ‘self’ in order to recognise the ‘other’; however, this
recognition is damaging because, after recognising this, it starts to attack
itself. As Esposito points out,

what needs explaining is not the fact that in some cases the immune
system attacks its own parts, but the fact that this normally does not
happen. This non-­aggression is well known as being due to the phenom-
enon called ‘autotolerance’, or tolerance of self. What we want to draw
attention to is how this leads to the reversal of a common perception: it is
not autoimmunity, with all its lethal consequences, including death, that
requires explanation, but rather its absence. (Esposito 2011: 164)

The question to be answered here is what is the primary and natural con-
dition of the body: is it the absence of autoimmunity (so-­called ‘autotol-
 Hybrid Organism 141

erance’), or its necessary presence (‘autoimmunitary attack’)? As Esposito

points out, ‘Here we arrive at the key point of the argument: the destructive
rebellion against the self is not a temporary dysfunction, but the natural
impulse of every immune system. In countering all that it “sees”, it is natu-
rally led to first attack its own self’ (Esposito 2011: 165, emphasis in original).
These philosophical reconsiderations force us to rethink the ways in
which our bodies are defined, and, more importantly, make us question
the assumption that our bodies are always already given and identical to
ourselves. If the body is constantly changing during its life, at what point
can the body be considered as ‘proper’, and, moreover, how can we deter-
mine our immunological ‘self’? Commenting on recent biomedical research,
Esposito comes to the conclusion that the immune system is not something
definitive and identical to itself but is permanently changing and adapting
to the environment. In this sense, the immune system can be thought of not
as a defensive mechanism but as a network of relationships, or, as Deleuze
and Guattari would say, as an assemblage, that creates temporal and non-­
hierarchical connections between heterogeneous elements. In this context
the notion of immune tolerance could mean not only a lack of response but
also a positive recognition of elements of the ‘non-­self’. The discovery that
immune tolerance can be induced artificially demonstrates that the immune
system can be taught to recognise the cells of the other body and respond to
them positively.

This means that tolerance is not a non-­immunity, a kind of virtuous

immuno-­deficiency; if anything, it is a reverse immunity: that which
reverses the effects within the same lexicon. But if so, if tolerance is a
product of the immune system itself, it means that, far from having a
single-­response repertoire, that of rejecting other-­than-­self, it includes the
other within itself, not only as its driving force but also as one of its
effects. (Esposito 2011: 167)

In other words, the body should be thought of as a fusional multiplicity or

as an assemblage where different molecular populations negotiate with each
other.
All these questions signal that the notion of immunity is undergoing
a conceptual shift. Rather than being understood as a defensive reaction
towards an external, contagious element, immunity is now conceived as a
network that keeps the balance in the organismal ‘self’. In other words, it is
not a negative reaction towards a foreign element but a normal functioning
that needs to be explained. As Tauber points out,

When immune reactions are conceived in terms of normal physiology

and open exchange with the environment, where borders dividing host
and foreign are elusive and changing, host defence is only part of the
immune system’s functions, which actually comprise two basic tasks: to
142 Organism-­Oriented Ontology

preserve host integrity (protection) and to establish organismic identity.

(Tauber 2017: 117, emphasis in original)

In other words, immunity should be examined not in its negative and reac-
tive state (as defence) but in its positive state (as ‘tolerance’ or immune
silence). Examined from this perspective, immunity is explained not in
terms of an opposition between ‘self’ and ‘non-­self’ but as a self-­organising
system.
This conceptual shift can be related to immunologist Niels Jerne and
his ‘network theory’, which explains immunity as a self-­referential system.
Haraway also points out the importance of Jerne’s idea that the immune
system has to be understood not as a protection of the individual ‘self’
but as a changing network based on self-­regulation and self-­organisation.
‘Jerne’s basic idea was that any antibody molecule must be able to act func-
tionally as both antibody to some antigen and as antigen for the production
of an antibody to itself, albeit at another region of “itself”’ (Haraway 2013:
291, emphasis in original). In this sense, the immune system is understood
as a network that is capable of recognising and mirroring the antigen in
such a way that there is nothing external that the immune system has not
already mirrored internally.

‘Self’ and ‘other’ lose their rationalistic oppositional quality and become
subtle plays of partially mirrored readings and responses. The notion of
the internal image is the key to the theory, and it entails the premise that
every member of the immune system is capable of interacting with every
other member. (Haraway 2013: 291, emphasis in original)

Thus, the immune system is understood as an internal network that reacts,

not to an external ‘invader’, but to its internal structuring.
Tauber also examines Jerne’s network theory as a major shift in immunity
theorising. As Tauber explains, Jerne proposed the idea that the immune
system is made of interlocking recognising units, so that each component
reacts with the others within the system, and in this way they all together
form a self-­referential network. In this model the antibody has two roles,
active and passive:

So in addition to the active binding of antigen, Jerne suggested that

antibody could also act as the target of another antibody by presenting
itself as an antigen through its so-­called idiotypic domains. On this view,
immunoglobulin behaves as both antibody (as originally regarded) and
antigen to a corresponding antibody that reacts with its unique idiotope.
(Tauber 2017: 60, emphasis in original)

The immune system reacts to the external antigens only to the extent that
these elements are recognised in the internal ‘library’ of antibodies. ‘In other
 Hybrid Organism 143

words, Jerne postulated that the amino acid sequences of immunoglobu-

lins share structural homologies with all antigens to which the organism
might ­respond – ­that is, “internal images” represent that external universe’
(Tauber 2017: 60). Thus, the immune system performs a dialogue between
antibodies that play two roles, the ‘recogniser’ and the ‘recognised’. Neither
the ‘recogniser’ nor the ‘recognised’ have any essential characteristics of
‘self’ or ‘non-­self’. Rather they are signifiers referring to other signifiers,
and, in this sense, immunity can be understood as a self-­referential structure
of language. The ‘other’ is something that simply disturbs that structure and
activates a response.
Seen from this perspective, the immune system cannot be explained by
the ‘self’ and ‘non-­self’ distinction because, strictly speaking, the immune
network can recognise only itself. Every element is always already within
the system, and what is external or ‘other’ is either invisible or appears as
‘nonsense’. The distinction between ‘self’ and ‘other’ can be conceptualised
only from the observer’s point of view, whereas the immune network is
always immanent to itself and cannot reflect its outside. As Tauber points
out, ‘Jerne’s network conception [was] built on self-recognition, which then
reconfigured “autoimmunity” (self-­recognition) from aberrancy to the nor-
mative organizational rule of immune function’ (Tauber 2017: 62, emphasis
in original). Immune tolerance or silence does not need a special expla-
nation because the immune system knows only itself. The originality of
Jerne’s model lies in the fact that it denies the subject–object structure,
which implies the observer’s perspective, and suggests that immunity is
an immanent structure based on self-­survey. As Tauber observes, ‘Jerne’s
innovation offered a model of immune function independent of agency,
and with that move, he highlighted the difference between the observer’s
perspective and the network’s’ (Tauber 2017: 65). This is a completely differ-
ent epistemology, which might be compared to the notion of primary con-
sciousness, as described by Ruyer. Similar to primary consciousness which
knows itself in immediate self-­survey, Jerne’s immune network knows itself
in self-­referential loops.
The idea that the immune system is capable of recognising, responding
and learning implies a close relationship between immune activity and cog-
nition. At this point we can refer to Varela’s theory of immunity, which he
developed together with Nelson Vaz, Antonio Coutinho and others. Varela
was trying to apply his theory of autopoiesis to Jerne’s network hypothesis.
His basic insight is that any autopoietic u ­ nit – f­ rom cells to complex living
­systems – ­is capable of cognition. In this sense, the immune system, similarly
to the nervous system, possesses a certain kind of knowledge, which Varela
and Anspach define as a ‘immu-­knowledge’:

We argue that the immune system is a cognitive network, not only because
of properties which it shares with the brain, but also, more interestingly,
because in both cases we have similar (or at least comparable) global
144 Organism-­Oriented Ontology

­ roperties of biological networks giving rise to cognitive behavior as

p
emergent properties. (Varela and Anspach 1991: 70)

The immune system has a cognitive faculty, which belongs not to some
knowing agent but to the network as such. In this sense, the immune system
is processing information, which is necessary to maintain the organism’s
integrity and identity. As Tauber points out,

the immune system then is best regarded as an information-­generating

system, which continuously seeks its own eidos or steady state of immune
identity. In this sense, immunity fashions identity as an ongoing self-­
seeking, information-­ organizing activity. To the extent immunology
would fashion itself along these lines, the conception of the self parti-
tioned from the world (and thus conceived defensively) would be replaced
by a different ‘ecological’ character, one based on in-formation. (Tauber
2017: 144, emphasis in original)

In this respect, the immune system is understood as a cognitive system that

processes information in a self-­referential manner.
The application of an autopoietic model allows us to compare systems of
different scales. In this sense, any living ­system – ­from cells and organisms
to e­cosystems – f­unctions as a self-­organising and self-­referential cogni-
tive network. Thus, Varela and Anspach draw a comparison between an
immune system and a planetary system: ‘the body is like Earth, a textured
environment for diverse and highly interactive populations of individuals.
The individuals in this case are the white blood cells or lymphocytes which
constitute the immune system’ (Varela and Anspach 1991: 69). The lym-
phocytes are generating different molecular populations within the body,
similar to living species which generate diversity within an ecosystem. The
immune system is like ‘a microcosmic version of Gaia’ (Varela and Anspach
1991: 69), which can maintain its balance through self-­referential processes.
Thus, the immune system, like the planetary system of Gaia, is shaped as
an autopoietic entity, which is closed unto itself and can recognise only
itself. However, what remains problematic in this autopoietic approach
is how to define the other.5 If the cognitive network knows only itself,
how can it communicate with other organisms and other ecosystems? As
Tauber explains, in this theory the ‘non-­self’ appears as nonsense, or as
informational noise:

5
As Tauber points out, Antonio Coutinho, Francisco Varela and colleagues (the
so-­called Paris School) developed a two-­tier schema in which a ‘central’ immune
system (conceptualised as ‘autonomous network theory’, ANT) and a pathogen-­
driven ‘peripheral’ immune system (known as ‘clonal selection theory’, CST)
operate in a coordinated manner. This approach fails to explain what holds these
two systems together (Tauber 2017: 68).
 Hybrid Organism 145

the other (nonself) does not exist in this closed system as Jerne originally
proposed. [. . .] ANT [Autonomous Network Theory], locked into seeing
only itself and blind to the other, fails to define the other as other, which
then can only be identified as ‘foreign’ from an exterior point of view . . .
(Tauber 2017: 237, n. 7, emphasis in original)

Thus, if the immune system sees only itself, how can it coexist with other
systems, and, in general, how is this autonomous network approach com-
patible with the notion of the holobiont?
The idea that the immune system works as a self-­referential autopoietic
network is an important theoretical elaboration in so far as it replaces the
dualistic opposition between the ‘self’ and the ‘non-­self’ and shifts the focus
from a defence mechanism towards immune balance. However, the theory
of symbiosis and that of the holobiont poses another challenge, because the
immune system has to deal not only with purely exterior elements, or with
an interior self, but also with difference within itself. Such biomedical phe-
nomena as microchimerism, when genetically different molecules circulate
in the same body, reveal a need for a new approach. Tauber asserts that
in the future biology should create a model of ecological immunity which
could examine immunity not as a defence, but as an interface. As Tauber
points out,

Older understandings of immune identity based on autonomous, insu-

lar animals in competition with others omit the crucial mechanisms of
tolerance that allow organisms to live as a holobiont. And to study such
aggregates, eco-­immunology shifts from the individual-­based conceptions
that have dominated the life sciences to considerations of the dialecti-
cal relationships that require tolerant mechanisms to mediate beneficial
exchanges. (Tauber 2017: 221)

Immunology has to reconsider the mutualistic scenarios between competing

or cooperating elements within an organism, and to take symbiosis into
account. In this sense, the focus shifts from defence to immune balance,
and, in general, from immunity towards autoimmunity.

Hybrids and Chimeras

There are many examples of such symbiotic existence. First of all, eukaryotic
cells themselves appeared as a result of endosymbiosis; it was demonstrated
that mitochondria and chloroplasts possess their own genes; in other words,
they used to be free-­living bacteria which later merged into one cell. Second,
multicellularity may have been initiated by interactions between bacteria
and protists. Third, humans themselves are genomic chimeras: nearly 50%
of the human genome consists of transposable DNA sequences acquired
exogenously from microbes (Tauber 2017: 100–2). This biological evidence
146 Organism-­Oriented Ontology

forces us to give up the idea of the biological individual and find appropriate
terms to think of consortiums or assemblages within individuals. For exam-
ple, Vinciane Despret encourages us to think in terms of ‘combinations’
and ‘compositions’: combinations create hybridisations that still reproduce
certain features of ‘parent’ species, whereas compositions create chimeras
open to surprise and chance. ‘Co-­optation, contagion, infections, incorpora-
tions, digestions, reciprocal inductions, becomings-­with: the nature of being
human, Haraway says, is at its most profound, at its most concrete, at its
most biological, an interspecific ­relation – ­a process of co-­opting strangers’
(Despret 2016: 191). In a similar way, Margrit Shildrick differentiates between
hybrids and chimeras: ‘in a hybrid each cell consists in a combination of
genes, while in a chimera each individual cell will contain genes from only
one of the originating organisms. In short, the tissues of a chimera are pop-
ulated by cells that are genetically distinct from each other’ (Shildrick 2019:
11–12, emphasis in original). Thus, both hybrids and chimeras deconstruct
the idea of the biological individual and provide new patterns to conceptu-
alise biological existence.
In this respect, the phenomenon of microchimerism (Martin 2010; Shildrick
2016; 2019) found in humans can be a good starting point to discuss eco-­
immunity. Microchimerism appears in specific medical cases, such as organ
or stem cell transplantation, or in natural situations, such as pregnancy. As
Shildrick points out, ‘Strictly speaking microchimerism indicates that no
more than 1 in 1000 cells is genetically distinct from the majority, but in some
cases such cells may come to predominate in a particular organ as well as cir-
culating in low numbers throughout the body’ (Shildrick 2019: 11, emphasis
in original). The term chimerism is derived from the Greek word Chimera, a
mythological creature which is composed of different animals such as a lion,
a goat and a serpent. In a similar way, a donor’s organ in a recipient’s body
or a foetus in a maternal body create a kind of microchimerism. Referring
to Diana Bianchi’s (1996) research, Shildrick argues that immunology ‘has
uncovered strong evidence, now widely accepted, that both maternal and
fetal cells cross the placental barrier as a matter of course, effecting a kind
of microchimerism within each body’ (Shildrick 2016: 97). Thus, instead of
rejecting the foetus, the maternal immune system remains silent and even
contributes to a certain cellular mobility within the body. It seems surprising
that the relationship between foetus and maternal body was never considered
as an argument against the ‘self’ and ‘non-­self’ distinction in immunology.
Thus, is microchimerism a short-­term phenomenon, created in specific
circumstances, such as organ transplantation or pregnancy, or is it a game-­
changing discovery? As Shildrick observes, one of Bianchi’s most interest-
ing findings is that pregnancy-­generated microchimerism is not a temporal
phenomenon, but persists in a maternal body many years after giving birth.
Moreover, some of the women in Bianchi’s research had never been preg-
nant, nor had had either organ transplants or blood transfusions. One
acceptable explanation is that
 Hybrid Organism 147

chimerism ‘handed down’ as it were from mother to child could entail the
translocation of HLA deriving from a previous pregnancy, in which fetal
markers (effectively traced as male ones) had entered the maternal body.
In other words, every subsequent female offspring of the same mother
could carry Y-­coded HLA, not from any pregnancy of her own, but from
the circulation of her own older male sibling’s cells in the maternal body.
(Shildrick 2016: 100)

From this it follows that microchimerism is not only an intercorporeal

but also an intergenerational phenomenon, which can be passed to other
generations. In other words, if microchimerism persists in the same body
over several years, maybe it is not particular and random, but universal and
continuous.
The discovery of microchimerism allows us to reconsider the notion of
autoimmunity, since the immune response towards ‘non-­self’ components
might be not only defensive, but also protective. As Shildrick points out,
‘there is emerging evidence that autoimmunity may not be the intrinsically
self-­destructive phenomenon that has long been assumed but that in addi-
tion to its pathological outcomes it may also serve a regular and necessary
homeostatic function’ (Shildrick 2019: 17). The discovery of microchimer-
ism is also a challenge to modern philosophy, based on the image of the
autonomous and self-­reflective individual. If an individual body is always
haunted by other bodies and also by other species (such as microbes), then
immunity is more about creating a community, as Esposito claims, than
about keeping the boundary between the ‘self’ and the ‘non-­self’. Every
organism is an ecological system, where different cellular populations com-
pete and collaborate with each other. In Derrida’s words, every single body
is haunted by the spectre of another body, thus creating a certain corporeal
hauntology. In this sense, every organism is a spectre without clear bounda-
ries, and, consequently, the science of immunology is more like a corporeal
hauntology endlessly searching for components of ‘non-­self’.
At this point we can observe that the term sympoiesis refers to poiesis,
meaning ‘making’ or ‘art’, which can be another possible way to examine
our relationships with non-­human others and to think along the lines of
ecological immunology. Here I would like to discuss some artistic examples
which examine the interaction between human and non-­human animals
not in a speculative, but in an actual physical way. The first is the project
‘May the Horse Live in Me’ (2011), created by Marion Laval-­Jeantet and
Benoît Mangin (Art Orienté Objet). The project constitutes an attempt
to hybridise the human body through the injection of horse’s blood. To
achieve this, the artist had to exclude from the horse’s blood some of the
most cytotoxic red blood cells, as well as lymphocytes and macrophages;
however, she saved for transfusion all other cells, including immunoglob-
ulin, which transfers information within the body (Hirszfeld 2015). Over
the course of several months Laval-­Jeantet allowed herself to be injected
148 Organism-­Oriented Ontology

with horse immunoglobulin, and thus progressively developed a tolerance

to this foreign animal body. After having built up her immune tolerance,
the artist was able to be injected with horse blood plasma during a ritual-
ised performance on 22 February 2011 at Galerija Kapelica in Ljubljana.
During the performance the artist put on a set of leg-­extending stilts that
‘were engineered to mimic the suspensory spring-­and-­lever structure of a
horse’s hind leg’ and that allowed her to be high enough to achieve ‘“the
horse’s eye view” and line of vision, and to duplicate the swinging motion
of a horse at walk’ (Downey 2018). The artist and the horse walked around
the gallery, thus conducting a symbolic ritual of bonding. After that, their
newly hybridised ‘centaur’ blood sample was extracted and freeze-­dried like
a molecular sculpture.
Thus, the performance enacted a kind of chimerisation at the molecular
level. The intention of this performance was that the horse immunoglobu-
lin would bypass the defensive mechanisms of the human immune system,
enter the artist’s bloodstream and interact with it. In this respect, the horse
blood plasma transfusion performance became a place of negotiation with
otherness: on the one hand, the injected horse blood plasma was recognised
by the artist’s immune system and this recognition saved her from ana-
phylactic shock; on the other hand, some negative or defensive reactions
emerged. As the artist herself points out, the first response to the transfu-
sion was fever, which went up and down, then sleep disorder, a very strong
appetite and panic attacks (Hirszfeld 2015). When the hybridised ‘centaur’
blood sample was extracted, it became completely clotted in ten minutes,
thus showing symptoms of strong inflammation. The blood sample as such
can be seen as a synecdoche of the performance, as a document of a new
form of hybridisation of the performer.
This immunological experiment was followed by other performative
attempts to overcome bodily boundaries. As Laval-­ Jeantet points out,
‘After experiencing immune otherness through horse blood injection, we
have become interested in eco-­systemic otherness, including human and
non-­human animal microbiota as new milieu within which to perform’
(Laval-­Jeantet 2020: 158). This interest in eco-­systemic exchange led to two
new artistic projects which involved microscopic living matter as perfor-
mance ‘actors’: ‘May the Rain Forest Live in Me’ (or ‘May the Pygmy Live
in Me’), and ‘Holy Coli, the Mouse in Odour of Sanctity’. The first project,
‘May the Rain Forest Live in Me’ (starting from 2015), was inspired by the
scientific discovery that Yanomami people in the Brazilian rainforest have
the richest and most diverse microbiota in the world, and, consequently, the
most exceptional immune system. The artist decided to approach another
tribe, Pygmy, known from her previous journeys, and imagined that after
grafting the same microbiota as a Pygmy, she would experience fascinating
changes in her mental states: ‘could I, in turn, also learn to feel the forest
environment as my Pygmy friend does, thanks to the transplant of his
internal ecosystem?’ As it turned out, the experience was quite exceptional:
 Hybrid Organism 149

‘It was followed by brutal colic, a violent eviction of this Indigenous world
by my European internal ecosystem’ (Laval-­Jeantet 2020: 159). It seems that
microbiotic multiplicity is not always a good thing and might lead to a lethal
contagion; moreover, that it might be one of the reasons why people die
young in this geographical location.
However, in the second project, ‘Holy Coli, the Mouse in Odour of
Sanctity’, the transformation of the microbiota was more favourable for the
host. The project aimed to transform the microbiota of a mouse with genet-
ically modified E. coli, which made the mouse’s faeces smell of violets. In
this way the figure of the mouse is elevated to a certain holiness, because it
is the animal that is most often used in laboratory research to save humans.
Similarly, Haraway noticed this holy dimension of experimentation when
describing the special case of the oncomouse, a genetically modified mouse
that carries an activated oncogene and that was intentionally created to
research breast cancer. In Haraway’s interpretation, the oncomouse is both
a scapegoat and a secular Christian figure that will be sacrificed to find a
cure for breast cancer and possibly save many ­women – ­other mammal
beings (Haraway 1997: 79). ‘Holy Coli’, then, suggests that the smell of
violets potentially changes the status of the laboratory animal and restores
it to its own existence. The project also suggests that in some medical or
biological situations human bodies and animal bodies are interchangeable,
transgressing the boundaries of the insular biological individual.
Maja Smrekar’s project ‘K-­9_topology’, in different forms and over differ-
ent time periods, examines the potential hybridisation of humans and dogs.
The first part of the project, the exhibition ‘Ecce Canis’ (2014), reproduced
the smell of the hormone serotonin, which was biotechnologically extracted
from the blood of the artist and her dog. This hormone defines reciprocal
tolerance between humans and wolves, which were domesticated as dogs. In
this respect, the smell of serotonin not only created the molecular environ-
ment for interspecies cohabitation, but also incites the spectator to become
part of this process. Another attempt to create a symbiosis between the
two species was the performance ‘Hybrid Family’ (2015–16), which took
place in the Freies Museum in Berlin. During this performance the artist,
using a special diet and mechanical stimulation of her breasts, produced
a certain amount of colostrum, which was used to feed a puppy. In this
respect, the performance questions the normative status of the heterosexual
family and invites us to imagine ‘unnatural’ or ‘aberrant’ familial ties with
other species. The project ‘ARTE_mis’ (2016–17) pushed these interspecies
relationships even further by attempting to create a hybrid at a cellular
level: after conducting research in the laboratory, the artist and her co-­
workers managed to perform in vitro ‘fertilisation’ of one of the artist’s egg
cells with her dog’s somatic cell, taken from its saliva.6 The merged cell was

6
‘A reproductive cell has been in vitro enucleated in a laboratory with microma-
nipulators. Then it was left under a UVC light for 30 minutes, so as to achieve
150 Organism-­Oriented Ontology

maintained alive for two days; when the nutrition was stopped, it remained
frozen as a molecular sculpture. Although the merged cell had no chance of
developing because of large biological disparities between the two species,
this frozen molecule can be seen as a virtual form of a wolf–human hybrid,
which might potentially become real in the future, when (and if) the artist
could legally use a dog’s reproductive cells (instead of somatic cells). In this
sense, the projects by Marion Laval-­Jeantet and Benoît Mangin and by
Maja Smrekar create chimeric or hybrid entities at a molecular level and
question the dogma of bounded individual organisms.
These artistic experiments pose important biopolitical questions: to what
extent can we manipulate our immune system, or microbiota, or reproduc-
tive system? To what extent can we manipulate other living beings? On the
one hand, the ‘actors’ in these performances can be seen as being subjected
to biopolitical manipulation and treated as ‘bare life’, in Agamben’s terms.
On the other hand, these experiments can be seen as a strategy to resist
biopolitical power in so far as they help to overcome biological determin-
ism, anthropocentrism and speciesism. How can we classify such entities
as a blood sample containing molecules of horse and human blood, or a
frozen fertilised cell containing human and dog cells? In Agamben’s (2005)
terms, it is a biopolitical kairos, a messianic promise of a different biological
future. Biological kairos is this impossible, unthinkable moment, where life
and death, animal life and human life, can be replaced interchangeably.
Biological kairos is also a critical, decisive moment, which can involve danger
for an artist, the danger of anaphylactic shock or of deadly contact. Thus,
eco-­immunity might look like a messianic promise of a different biological
future, and might also involve the danger of lethal contagion.

decomposition of all DNA in the cell. The leftover membrane of enucleated

reproductive cell was fused with a dog’s somatic cell, isolated out of her saliva,
through the process of electroporation. Since a reproductive cell “programmes”
the nucleus to divide, after 7 divisions, the aggregate of 128 cells, on the 6th day,
a blastocyst occures. ARTE_mis has been left to divide just up to the stage before
the formation of a blastocyst. It was then frozen to –198 degrees Celzius, after
a 3rd day of growth. It gets reanimated for the exhibition, with the nutrition
and hormone feeding stopped, so that the cell stays frozen in time.’ More about
this project can be found at ‘ARTE_mis’, 2016–2017, https://www.majasmrekar​
.org/k-­9-topology-­artemis (accessed 1 November 2022). However, in an earlier
interview the artist expressed her intention to use, not a dog’s somatic cell, but
dog’s sperm: ‘in my fourth project within the K-­9_topology series, I am suggesting
to inoculate in-­vitro my eggs with dog sperm in order to eventually make a new
species which would have better chances to survive in the very unpredictable
nature of the future’. More about this can be found at Régine Debatty, ‘Post-­
anthropocentric art. An interview with Maja Smrekar’, 2016, http://we-­make​
-­money-­not-­art.com/post-­anthropocentric-­art-­an-­interview-­with-­maja-­smrekar/
(accessed 1 November 2022).
 Hybrid Organism 151

Conclusion
All of these performances imply a certain ‘logic of contamination’, to
use Jacques Derrida’s term, by establishing new experimental conditions.
The performances ‘May the Horse Live in Me’ and ‘May the Rain Forest
Live in Me’ by Laval-­Jeantet created conditions under which the artist’s
body and her immune system became the place of negotiations with other
species. The artistic and experiential practices created new conditions of
immune (re)cognition. In a similar manner, the performance ‘Holy Coli’
by Laval-­Jeantet, and Maja Smrekar’s performance series ‘K-­9_topology’,
invented an experimental space where human and animal bodies became
interchangeable. In both cases the immune system was expected to function
not as a defensive mechanism protecting the ‘self’ from the contagious
‘other’, but as an ecological network expressing the relationships between
the organism and the environment.
These examples shape the model of ecological immunity based on the
(re)cognition of beneficial interspecies exchanges. In this respect, the func-
tioning of the immune system is similar to the functioning of an autopoietic
system: on the one hand, the immune system has to keep the organism’s
‘identity’, its smooth functioning and internal organisation; on the other
hand, to remain what it is, it has constantly to negotiate its boundaries and
connect to its environment. In this sense, immunity necessarily involves a
certain immune-­knowledge, the investigation and cognition of other beings.
However, to know these other beings, the immune system has to incorpo-
rate them, to introduce them in the form of an antigen that is recognised
by a specific antibody. Hence, immunity is an open and changing network,
incorporating and negotiating otherness.
The fact that immunity can be induced artificially makes it conceptually
isomorphic to the practices of bioart: bioart creates unique conditions that
help to establish ‘structural couplings’ with other species and in this way
induce them into our environment. Thus, the artistic practices discussed
above work in a similar way to the practices of vaccination: they introduce
a certain part of a foreign element and force the performer to cope with it,
to accept it as a part of its autopoietic system. Instead of explaining these
interactions in terms of symbiosis, we can interpret them as the interaction
between different autopoietic systems, which maintain their integrity but
simultaneously are open to structural changes.
 Conclusion: Organism-­O riented Ontology

After examining different authors and approaches, what can we say about
the ontological status of organisms? Even if the answer to this question
might seem obvious to a biologist, it is not clear what place organisms
occupy in contemporary philosophy. As we know, the discussion about
organisms appeared in Kant’s Critique of the Power of Judgement and has
taken on different configurations during the recent history of philosophy.
As Hui suggests, ‘Kant’s Critique of Judgment imposes the organic as the
condition of philosophizing, which is to say that for any philosophy to
be, it has to be organic’ (Hui 2021: 16). But what does it mean that phi-
losophy has to be organic? An organic form of thinking continued in the
early twentieth century in the works of Whitehead and Bergson, and also
became prominent in the later twentieth century, where it manifested itself
in systems theory, process philosophy and cybernetics (Hui 2021: 54). As
we have seen, the organic condition continues to be a preoccupation in the
philosophies of Simondon, Ruyer, Deleuze and Guattari, and also takes
new turns in the works of contemporary thinkers such as Stiegler, Malabou,
Latour and Haraway. In one way or another, these thinkers reveal the
organic as a condition of philosophy and thus can be seen as precursors
to organism-­oriented ontology. Rather than concentrating on individuals
and identities, contemporary philosophy is more and more interested in
processes, developments, entanglements and changes; in other words, it is
defined by organic features and conditions. It was Kant, again, who found
that a biological model of epigenesis could be useful for theoretical thinking
because it opens the possibility of imagining ‘pure reason’ as an organic
system that is self-­organising, self-­maintaining, creative and unpredictable.
Now, in retrospect, we can say that all the authors discussed in this book
take some specific features characteristic of organic beings and make them
the centre of their philosophy. The first feature, shared by all authors, is
processuality: the idea that processes and individuations have ontologi-
cal priority over formed individuals. In this respect, Simondon’s insight
that physical, biological, psychosocial and technical entities develop in an
analogous way is very important. Simondon clearly demonstrates that the
 Conclusion 153

organic condition can be extrapolated towards other systems. Although the

crystal, and physical individuation in general, cannot achieve an organ-
ism’s flexibility, other systems, such as the psychosocial and technological,
express a certain organic creativity. The inventor’s imagination (discussed
by Simondon) or the brain’s organisation (examined by Deleuze and
Malabou) express a certain biological plasticity and unpredictability, which
is generated by its organic materiality. Similarly, technology changes and
develops throughout the interaction with its inventor and the associated
milieu. Both Stiegler’s organology and Hui’s cosmotechnics, and the theory
of Gaia (examined by Lovelock, Margulis, Latour and Stengers), reveal
the continuity between nature and technology. Smart technologies and the
development of AI provide more and more evidence that technologies are
becoming organic, and create huge organisms in which we live.
Processuality is closely related to another feature of organism-­oriented
­ontology – t­ hat of potentiality. To develop means to actualise those virtual
or ‘embryonic’ qualities that are perfectly real but still waiting in an abstract
form. However, this does not imply that virtual or potential features are
determined in advance; there is no place for preformationism. Rather, virtu-
ality or potentiality, present in every living being, can be actualised through
divergent and differentiating lines, through multiple encounters with the
milieu. These encounters, as demonstrated in the last chapter, are not nec-
essarily beneficial, but might be destructive and damaging. Therefore, the
potentiality leading to growth and creation is, at the same time, an impoten-
tiality leading to impoverishment and depletion. As Agamben argues, com-
menting on Aristotle’s famous passage, ‘all potentiality is impotentiality of
the same and with respect to the same’ (Agamben 1999: 182). Beings, which
are capable of potentiality, are equally capable of their own impotentiality.
In this sense, Deleuze and Malabou clearly demonstrate that ontogenetic
development means not only the augmentation, expansion and prosperity
of forms, but, at the same time, their explosion, impoverishment and deg-
radation. In this respect, organism-­oriented ontology can be distinguished
from all orders of cybernetics, which promise the increasing efficiency of
recursive operations. By contrast, organisms not only increase their poten-
tiality, but also move towards impotentiality, finally reaching annihilation
and death.
Processuality is also closely related to multiplicity. The notion of mul-
tiplicity has two meanings. First, multiplicity means that an organism
develops in a multi-­phased way, and, in this sense, it constantly differs
from itself. In this context an organism as a multiplicity can be defined
as virtual potential, which may increase or augment its potential, and,
at the same time, may gravitate towards its destruction or annihilation.
Second, multiplicity means that an organism contains multiple differences
in itself. It is an actual multiplicity, which makes linkages and connections
between different parts. However, what is important to stress is that multi-
plicities or assemblages are not identities, and their parts are not subsumed
154 Organism-­Oriented Ontology

into totalities or wholes. As DeLanda explains, even biological organisms

are assemblages: ‘Conceiving an organism as an assemblage implies that
despite the tight integration between its component organs, the relations
between them are not logically necessary but only contingently obliga-
tory’ (DeLanda 2006: 11–12). In other words, conceiving of an organism
as an assemblage means that, first, it is defined by relations of exteriority
which imply a certain autonomy for the terms to which they relate; and,
second, these relations are not necessary, but contingent, being the result
of their coevolution. Such reconceptualisation of an organism allows us to
include in its definition a holobiont, which relates several biological enti-
ties into one symbiotic assemblage. It also embraces organological entities,
which connect biological organisms and tools, humans and machines, or
machines and natural environments. It also includes the planetary Gaia,
which interrelates biological and atmospheric multiplicities. In this respect,
an organism-­oriented ontology creates a continuous milieu for organisms,
animal species, technologies and the planet.
And yet how does this organic condition of philosophising relate to the
human subject? The problematic of the human individual does not dis-
appear; however, attempts to reconceptualise the notion of cognition can
change the position of humans in the continuum of living beings. Cognition
can be attributed not only to humans but also to micro-­organisms, animals,
technological systems and the planet. It was Ruyer who argued that every
organising activity, from atoms and molecules to more complex organisms,
is a primary consciousness. All other forms of consciousness, characteristic
of animals with motor schema, or of humans with reflective consciousness,
derive from this primary form. Thus, primary consciousness is a forming
activity that describes not only organisms, but also inorganic entities. This
does not mean that Ruyer is advocating a kind of vitalism, or is trying
simply to expand organic features to physical entities. Rather, he asserts the
idea that a certain formative activity is schematically common to molecules,
organisms and consciousness. In other words, this formative activity is con-
sciousness. The human brain has no monopoly over consciousness, but
rather it is participating in this common structuring activity.
Ruyer proposes the theory of forms which enable a certain continuity
between inorganic entities, organic beings and reflective consciousness.
Similarly, Damasio asserts a continuity between different forms of ‘self’,
which form a continuous organismic unit. In this respect, Damasio’s theory
questions the mind–body divide. The most basic form of auto-­affectivity is
the ‘proto-­self’, which is in the background of all organic processes. The
‘proto-­self’ is ‘the feeling of what happens’ within the body, which provides
both organismic and mental auto-­affection. This means that the nervous
system and the brain are not the only providers of mental phenomena
because they are deeply rooted in non-­nervous structures of organisms.
‘Neural and non-­neural structures and processes are not just contiguous
but continuous partners, interactively [. . .] In plain talk, brains and bodies
 Conclusion 155

are in the same mind-­ enabling soup’ (Damasio 2018: 240, emphasis in
original). Malabou also examines this cerebral auto-­affectivity, which she
names the cerebral unconscious. In contrast to Damasio, who asserts that
an organism, a nervous system and a brain are continuously interconnected
by homeostatic recursivity, Malabou considers the rupture between cere-
bral auto-­affection and subjective auto-­affection, observed in such cases as
neurodegenerative diseases or brain lesions. Cerebral auto-­affection and
subjective auto-­affection might break apart, but that does not devalue the
ontological status of these organisms, even if they cannot reconnect to
themselves. This is a very important biopolitical i­mplication – ­to ascribe
a certain value or dignity to those bodies that are in a state of impotential-
ity, but that are still very much alive while they are moving towards their
annihilation.
The notion of cognition, which can now be extended not only to human
subjects but also to non-­human animals, enables the invention of new
configurations of subjectivity. Ruyer’s concept of primary consciousness,
Damasio’s idea of the ‘proto-­ self’ and Malabou’s idea of the cerebral
­unconscious – ­all these insights outline multiple processual subjectivities
that run through human and non-­human bodies, but which are not appro-
priated by any individual subject. As Brian Massumi points out,

there should be no illusions that the mental power of processual subjec-

tivity resides in a ‘mind’ (individual or collective). It is a subjectivity not
only without an efficient cause behind it, but without a subject behind it
either. The mental power of this processual subjectivity-without-a-subject
may be considered spiritual, if by that is simply meant intensely, relation-
ally enlivening. (Massumi 2014: 41, emphasis in original)

This subjectivity-­without-­a-subject is reflected in Massumi’s concept of ‘bare

activity’, which he invents following Ruyer’s notion of forming activity.
‘Bare activity’ designates processual subjectivity that cannot be captured by
any atomised individual, and that cannot reach any final cause or goal. On
the one hand, this ‘bare activity’ is indeterminate and vague, lacking bound-
aries and determination; on the other hand, this indetermination allows it
to resist biopolitical power and control. If biopolitical power functions by
creating boundaries and hierarchies that lead to inclusions and exclusions,
then processual subjectivity can be seen as an antidote to biopolitics because
it is indeterminate, plastic and mutually inclusive.
Another aspect of this reconfigured notion of subjectivity is that cogni-
tion can be associated not only with human and non-­human ‘selves’, but
also with computational machines. Hui clearly demonstrated that the reflec-
tive ‘self’ conceptualised in German idealist philosophy might be compared
with the recursivity of smart machines. In her recent works Malabou (2019;
2023) even argues that there are no clear criteria to distinguish between the
‘subjective self’ of the human mind and the ‘technological self’ of AI. She
156 Organism-­Oriented Ontology

argues that AI does not simply ‘imitate’ the human brain, but, through this
imitation, relates to its own ‘technological self’. In this respect, there is a
clear continuity between human intelligence and artificial intelligence. This
idea also appears in N. Katherine Hayles’s works, where she discusses the
notion of non-­human cognition, which embraces the cognitive capacities of
biological, human and technological entities. According to Hayles, the great
divide is not between humans and non-­humans, but between cognisers and
non-­cognisers (Hayles 2017: 30). Cognition is a process of meaning-­making
which relates different kinds of ­cognisers – ­organs, organisms, animals,
human brains and t­echnologies – t­o their milieus. This makes cognition
fundamentally different from the purely quantitative information described
by Shannon and Wiener (Hayles and Sampson 2018: 66). The cognitive
relationship with the milieu is not adaptive but rather creative and world-­
changing. Organisms are manipulating their milieu in such a way as to make
the world more amenable for living.
This new organism-­oriented approach allows us to tackle such persisting
political problems as the question of the Anthropocene. On the one hand,
the recent debates about the Anthropocene seem important because
they draw our attention to the conditions that make our planet less and
less suitable for living. On the other hand, we can ask to what extent
the Anthropocene itself, as a discursive and visual apparatus, is trying to
outsource responsibility for climate change to some fictitious Anthropos
(Demos 2017: 17). The notion of the Anthropos is a dangerous fiction
because it brings back the ‘universal man’. It is as if the urgency of the
approaching catastrophe allows us to wipe away all the theoretical efforts of
postcolonial and feminist criticism to differentiate and define every condi-
tion. Another problem is that Anthropocene discourse is often associated
with geo-­engineering, which suggests solving the problem of climate change
with the help of quantitative solutions. A good contrast to the quantitative
discourse of the Anthropocene is Gaia theory. Gaia is a planetary cognition
based on the complex knowledge of organisms that know how to endure
and survive.
Organism-­ oriented ontology not only resituates the question of the
Anthropocene but also allows resistance to biopolitical manipulation and
control. As Malabou suggests, resistance to the biopolitical instrumental-
isation of the living being might emerge from the potentiality of the living
being itself. It is the capacity of living beings to self-­organise, self-­generate
and change that might help them to evade the control of biopower. An
organism, as was discussed earlier, is capable both of maintaining itself, and
of transforming itself and the environment. Organisms are open for entan-
glements, interactions and symbiotic couplings. However, an organism-­
oriented ontology does not imply an organismic or vitalist philosophy;
organisms are assemblages that include within themselves both inorganic
materials and organological forms such as tools and machines. Organisms
are plastic materialities that allow us to reconsider all these posthuman
 Conclusion 157

conditions in which we live. By conceptualising symbionts and holobionts,

hybrids and chimeras as ontological conditions, we resist the biopolitical
demand to differentiate, classify and decide which forms of life are worth
living. In this respect, organism-­oriented ontology is mutually inclusive,
sharing ontological value with the cognisers of other species, those that are
living and those that have become extinct. It also gives ontological weight to
all conditions of human life, including trauma, disability, illness, decompo-
sition and death. It also includes technologies, which are understood not as
something external and hostile, but as extended projections of our internal
organs and organisms. Let us hope that creativity, contingency and poten-
tial for c­ hange – t­ he characteristics of organism-­oriented ­ontology – e­ nable
us to evade the grip of biopolitical and anthropo-­political power and create
more liveable conditions for the future.
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 Index

absolute form, 40–1, 43, 48, 52–5 body without organs, 14, 65–8, 71, 74–5,
absolute survey, 50, 52–4; see also self- 135
survey brain, 7–9, 15–17, 39–40, 45–6, 50, 53–5,
Actor-Network Theory, 123, 126–7 57, 71–5, 77–88, 90, 93, 106, 111–12,
actual and virtual, 57, 59, 61, 63–6, 75 119, 121, 143, 154–6
actualisation, 59–61, 63–4; see also
counter-actualisation Canguilhem, Georges, 16, 38, 96–8,
adaptation, 7, 28, 113 106n
affect, 7, 32, 34, 66, 69, 71, 74, 86–7 causality, 2, 7–8, 46, 92, 94, 99, 100–1,
auto-affection, 77, 86–8, 154–5 109, 113, 127
auto-affectivity, 72, 85, 87–8, 154–5 cause and effect, 2–3, 7–8, 39, 64, 95,
Agamben, Giorgio, 76, 150, 153 120, 125
allagmatic, 30 final cause, 7, 39, 44, 155
allopoietic, 7, 10, 129–30 cerebral unconscious, 16, 77, 86, 88, 155
analogical paradigmatism, 15, 19, 23, 55, chronology, 30
59, 106 closure, 6, 10, 45–6, 120–2, 127, 131
Anthropocene, 11, 13–14, 110, 113–15, operational closure, 6, 10–11, 30, 120
128n, 132, 138, 156 cognition, 7–9, 17–18, 30, 36–7, 50,
anticipation, 35–6, 103–4, 108, 111 52, 53–6, 63, 73–5, 77, 81, 91, 112,
Art Orienté Objet, 147 118–23, 132, 143, 151, 154–6
assemblage, 1, 4, 10, 12–15, 17, 65–71, concretisation, 98–9
125, 130, 134–6, 138–9, 141, 146, consciousness, 8–9, 15–16, 32, 34, 36,
153–4, 156 39, 41, 43, 45, 47–55, 63, 71–2, 74,
associated milieu, 99–100, 107, 112, 114, 77, 83, 87, 89, 100, 104, 105, 119,
153 121, 154
autopoiesis, 2, 6–7, 9–11, 14, 17, 30–1, organic consciousness, 15, 37, 45, 47,
55, 115, 118–23, 126–32, 135–6, 50, 55, 63, 83, 87
143 primary consciousness, 15, 18, 38–9,
47–8, 50, 52–5, 72, 83
Bergson, Henri, 3, 16, 59, 63, 97–8, contagion, 68–9, 134, 135, 139, 146,
106n, 152 149–50
Bertalanffy, Ludwig von, 4, 5, 108n contingency, 2, 7, 16, 61, 94–5, 97, 101,
biopolitics, 1, 18, 95, 139, 155 108–110, 114–15, 126–7, 131–2, 157
biopower, 1–3, 95, 156 cosmotechnics, 108, 112–14, 153
170 index

counter-actualisation, 64; see also force, 1, 3, 6, 18–19, 24–5, 27, 29, 31,
actualisation 39–41, 44, 46, 52–5, 60–2, 64, 67,
cybernetics, 2, 5, 26, 49, 96, 98, 101, 70, 73–4, 92, 96, 98, 100, 105, 108n,
108–9, 114, 119, 122, 126, 131, 110–14, 119, 125, 138, 141, 146, 151
152–3 form, 3–4, 9, 11–13, 15–17, 19–26, 28,
30, 32–5, 38–44, 46–56, 57n, 59–60,
Damasio, Antonio, 9, 82–6, 88–9, 121, 62–3, 66–85, 89–92, 95, 99–102,
154–5 104–5, 108n, 109–12, 114n, 117,
dark precursor, 62–4 121, 127, 129–30, 133–6, 138, 142,
DeLanda, Manuel, 12n, 64, 154 148–9, 150–4, 156–7
Deleuze, Gilles, 1, 12–13, 15, 18, 20–1, Foucault, Michel, 1, 95
23–4, 31, 57–65, 74–6, 95, 153
Deleuze, Gilles, and Guattari, Félix, 12, Gaia, 14, 16, 17, 115, 117–19, 121–33,
14–16, 18, 20, 51n, 56–7, 64–75, 77, 144, 153–4, 156
135, 141, 152 Gaia theory, 10, 13, 17, 110, 115,
Dempster, Beth M., 17, 129 118–19, 121–3, 128, 132, 156
Derrida, Jacques, 78, 98, 104, 147, 151 Gaia hypothesis, 2, 16, 115–16, 118,
Despret, Vinciane, 146 122, 132
difference, 5, 7, 8–9, 12, 15–17, 19–20, Gilbert, Scott F., 13, 17, 129n, 136–9
23–6, 34, 45, 56–66, 69, 75, 81, 101, Grosz, Elizabeth, 20, 24n, 27, 42, 47,
107, 110, 123–7, 136, 139, 143, 145, 51n, 53–4, 73
153 ground and form, 99–100
differentiation, 12, 23, 29, 42, 45, 48,
57–8, 60, 63, 91–2 Haraway, Donna J., 10, 17, 115, 128–32,
Driesch, Hans, 3, 4, 12, 46 134–6, 138–9, 142, 146, 149, 152
Hayles, Katherine N., 56, 121, 156
embryogenesis, 38, 40, 46, 94 Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, 15, 24,
emotion, 9, 32–4, 55, 87, 112 77, 78, 109
environment, 1, 4, 6–9, 12–13, 15, 18, Heidegger, Martin, 103, 109
23–4, 27, 30–2, 36, 42, 47–9, 78, 80, holobiont, 13–14, 17, 65, 130, 132, 134,
83, 90, 92, 109, 113, 116–20, 122–4, 136–8, 145, 154, 157
126–7, 129–132, 135, 139, 141, 144, homeostasis, 5, 82–3, 85, 90, 115–16,
148–9, 151, 154, 156 120, 122, 126
epigenesis, 3, 12, 77, 90–5, 105–6, 112, Hui, Yuk, 2–4, 16, 20, 97–8, 101, 105,
114, 152 106n, 108–110, 112–14, 126, 152–3,
epigenetics, 1, 13, 90, 92–3, 95 155
epiphylogenesis, 106–7, 114 Husserl, Edmund, 59, 103–4
equipotentiality, 13, 15, 39, 44–7, 53–4, hybrid, 10, 14, 17, 47, 123, 128, 145–6,
73–4 149–50, 157
Esposito, Roberto, 140–1, 147 hybridisation, 110, 134, 148–9
evolution, 13, 16, 68, 70, 75, 94, 97–8, hylomorphism, 14, 21, 71
110, 114, 116–17, 127, 130; see also
involution identity, 6, 9n, 10–12, 14–15, 19, 21–2,
exteriorisation, 49, 70, 103–5, 108 35, 58–9, 63n, 64, 80, 87–9, 98, 102,
exteriority, 28–30, 32, 35, 103, 154 109, 122, 130, 140, 142, 144–5, 151
imagination, 35–7, 60, 80, 99–100, 104,
feeling, 9, 73, 82–7, 89, 121, 154 112, 153
finalism, 39, 43–4, 74n; see also immunity, 17, 70, 134, 139, 140–7, 150–1
neofinalism immunology, 138, 140, 144–7
 index 171

individual, 2, 11, 13–15, 17, 19–22, 24–7, McFall-Ngai, Margaret, 137

31, 34–7, 40–1, 43, 45, 52, 54, 59, mechanism, 2–5, 7, 39, 42, 46, 96, 97n,
61, 64, 68, 75–6, 80–1, 88–90, 94, 101, 108n, 109, 114, 139, 141, 145,
99, 102, 104–8, 110–23, 126–7, 130, 151
136–9, 142, 144–7, 149–50, 152, membrane, 26, 28–9, 32, 119, 132, 150n
154–5 memory, 35–6, 45, 53, 74n, 100, 103–8,
individuation, 11, 13–16, 19–35, 37, 44, 111
57–64, 71, 98–9, 106–7, 153 Mensch, Jennifer, 3, 95
information, 4, 19–20, 22, 24–6, 29, 33, Merleau-Ponty, Maurice, 33n, 34
35–6, 48, 86, 88, 96–7, 100–1, 114, metastable, 14, 21, 25, 27–9, 35–7, 58,
119, 129, 144, 147, 156 60–1, 100, 117
interindividual, 31, 34 metastability, 21–2, 27, 29–32, 34, 37
interiorisation, 103–4 microchimerism, 140, 145–7
internal resonance, 22, 26–7, 32, 62, 99 mind, 8, 10, 16–17, 36, 52–3, 55, 63,
invention, 11, 16, 19, 24, 33–6, 43, 45, 71–2, 74n, 77, 79–80, 83, 89, 91–2,
49–50, 53, 70, 81, 97–8, 99–100, 102, 99–100, 102, 109, 121, 131, 154–5
104, 108, 110, 112, 155 molar structure, 40–1
involution, 68; see also evolution morphogenesis, 11, 13, 15, 38–44, 47–8,
50, 57, 62–3, 65, 75, 80
Kant, Immanuel, 2–3, 39, 65, 74, 90–5, multiplicity, 11–15, 17–18, 37, 52, 56,
97, 109, 152 59–60, 63–4, 69, 86, 114, 124–5,
134–5, 141, 149, 153–4
Lamarck, Jean-Baptiste, 28, 98
Latour, Bruno, 12, 115, 123–8, 130, 132, neofinalism, 38, 43–4, 50, 74; see also
152, 153 finalism
Laval-Jeantet, Marion, 147–51
Leroi-Gourhan, André, 49, 70, 97, ontogenesis, 11, 13–16, 19–21, 23, 25, 28,
102–3 37–8, 97–8, 100, 107
Lovelock, James, 5, 10, 16–17, 110, ontology, 11–14, 17–19, 55, 58, 74, 88,
115–17, 119, 121, 124–5, 128, 132, 152–4, 156–7
153 open system, 4–6, 46, 82, 120
Luhmann, Niklas, 121, 127 operational closure, 6, 10, 30, 120, 122
orders of magnitude, 22, 24–7, 31–2, 58,
machine, 3, 5, 7, 9–10, 16, 26, 49, 96–8, 60–1
101–2, 108–15, 123–4, 128, 154–6 organic consciousness, 15, 37, 45, 47, 50,
machinic phylum, 57, 70–1, 75 55, 63, 83, 87
Malabou, Catherine, 1, 3, 13, 15–16, 75, primary consciousness, 15, 18, 38–9,
77–82, 85–95, 111–12, 152–3, 155–6 47–8, 50, 52–5, 72, 83, 119, 121, 143,
Mangin, Benoît, 147, 150 154–5
Mangold, Hilde, 46 organicism, 2, 4, 39–40, 42, 95–6, 108–10
Margulis, Lynn, 5, 10, 16–17, 68, organisation, 2, 4–7, 10, 14–16, 18,
115–19, 121–3, 125–6, 128–30, 132, 29–30, 33–4, 39–41, 43–7, 54, 59–60,
135–6, 153 65–7, 75, 82, 96–7, 100, 106, 110–11,
Massumi, Brian, 18, 20, 26, 155 115, 119–21, 125, 129, 131, 151, 153
matter, 2–5, 8, 21–2, 24–5, 40–1, 70–1, organology, 2, 16, 20, 96–7, 102, 106–10,
91–2, 94, 102–3, 114n, 121, 123, 113–15, 132, 153
129n, 146, 148
Maturana, Humberto R., 5–9, 17, 30–1, perception, 8–9, 32–6, 45–6, 50–2, 55,
55, 115, 119–21, 129, 136 73, 81, 84, 86, 104, 119, 140
172 index

plasticity, 12–13, 15–16, 18, 75, 77–82, Spemann, Hans, 46–7

85, 88–90, 93, 95, 111–12, 153 Stengers, Isabelle, 115, 125–6, 128, 153
potentiality, 1, 11, 13–14, 18, 22, 31, Stiegler, Bernard, 12–13, 16, 20, 97–8,
36–7, 44–6, 55, 58, 61, 67–9, 74–8, 102–8, 110, 112–14, 152–3
80–2, 90, 95, 99–102, 113–14, 153, structural coupling, 6–7, 10, 119–20,
156 123, 131, 151
pre-individual, 13–14, 19, 21–3, 27–8, substantialist atomism, 21, 24
31–2, 34–7, 57–61, 64, 99–100, 102, symbiogenesis, 14, 115, 117, 129, 132,
107 135, 138
preformationism, 11, 13, 15–16, 39, symbiosis, 12, 14–15, 17, 65, 68–9, 117,
43–4, 77, 90–2, 100, 153 129, 132, 135–9, 145, 149, 151
Prigogine, Ilya, 4–5, 125 sympoiesis, 10, 17, 128–32, 134–6,
problematic, 23–4, 27–8, 31, 34, 36, 86, 138–9, 147
154 systems theory, 2, 4–5, 11–12, 65, 115,
processuality, 11–14, 18, 152–3 122, 125–7, 131–2, 152
purposesiveness, 3, 39
technical object, 13, 16, 19–20, 34, 36–7,
recurrent causality, 7–8, 99, 113 97–104, 106–10, 112–14
recursivity, 7, 10, 16, 97, 101, 108–10, technology, 16, 26, 49, 70–1, 97, 107–14,
112, 114, 122, 126–7, 131, 155 123, 153
Roux, Wilhelm, 46 teleology, 7, 43, 118
Ruyer, Raymond, 11–13, 15–16, 18, 20n, tertiary protention, 111
37–55, 57, 62–3, 70, 72, 74, 77, 81, tertiary retention, 104–6, 110–11
83, 86, 88, 108, 118, 121, 143, 152, theme, 38, 41–4, 46–9, 62–3;
154–5 developmental theme, 41–3, 74n
formative theme, 41, 43–5
Sauvagnargues, Anne, 20, 23, 29 topology, 28–30
self, 6, 9, 50, 83–4, 86–9, 112, 119, 126, transduction, 20, 22–4, 26, 34, 44, 103
138–47, 151, 154–6 transindividual, 23, 31–5, 37, 102,
autobiographical self, 9, 84 104–6, 114
core self, 9, 83–4
non-self, 139, 141–7 Uexküll, Jacob von, 35, 48, 108
proto-self, 9, 83–7, 121, 154–5
self-enjoyment, 38, 51–2, 54, 74, 121 Varela, Francisco J., 5–10, 17, 30–1,
self-organisation, 5–6, 10–12, 15, 38, 44, 55, 63, 115, 119–22, 129, 132, 136,
47, 54, 96, 118, 120, 142 143–4
self-survey, 15, 38–9, 41, 50–5, 57, 72–4, virtuality, 24n, 59, 75, 90, 101, 153
86, 88, 121, 143; see also absolute vitalism, 1–5, 7, 11, 13, 39, 41–2, 46,
survey 70–1, 74, 96, 108, 114, 154
Shildrick, Margrit, 146–7
Simondon, Gilbert, 11–16, 19–38, Waddington, Conrad, 4, 90, 108n
40, 44, 55, 57–61, 64, 71, 97–109, Whitehead, Alfred North, 11, 152
112–14, 152–3 Wiener, Norbert, 5, 33, 96, 98, 108, 156
Smrekar, Maja, 149–51 Wolff, Étienne, 44