Simondon’s Politics of Human Nature: Techno-Symbolic Mediums and Transindividual Invention

In Simondon’s words, his philosophy of individuation is a relational theory aimed at understanding ‘the individual through individuation rather than individuation through the individual’ (2020a: 3). Commentators have usually carried out detailed analyses of how Simondon studies ‘the individual through individuation’, but they have rarely pointed out how he also crucially deals with ‘individuation through the individual’. This chapter studies the political implications of Simondon’s concept of the individual and especially of the role it plays as a techno-symbolic ‘medium’ in processes of transindividual individuation. On that basis, it will formulate the political stakes implicit in Simondon’s philosophy and introduce...