Simondon and the technologies of control: on the individuation of the dividual

Abstract

ABSTRACT Can Simondon’s thought provide us with the tools to consider the evolution of computational technologies of power in their intersection with capitalism’s digital turn? To answer to this question, this essay projects a line of interaction between Simondon’s and Deleuze’s philosophies in order to enable the comprehension of the technical means through which twenty-first-century domination is exerted in the form of digital modulation. The description of this form of domination must take into account the relation between topology and individuation and how this relation is altered by the computational, that reconfigures the naturalisation of technical objects as a process of ‘becoming-alive’ of digital technologies. To this end, this essay considers Deleuze’s insights in matters of non-Euclidean spaces and describes one of the central concepts of the Post-scriptum sur les sociétés du contrôle, the dividual, from the standpoint of its associated digital milieu. Attempting to update Simondon’s mechanology to address a digital technology of power, this essay will then describe the technical lineage of the dividual and its peculiar process of individuation in its hybrid or monstrous character.