Compositional Methodology: On the Individuation of a Problematic of the Contemporary

The primary focus of Gilbert Simondon’s writings is the problematic of individuation (1992; 2017); a subsidiary but integral dimension of this focus is a concern with the individuation of a problematic. In this essay, I explore some of the methodological aspects of this process. At a fundamental level, approaching the construction of a problematic as a process of individuation, Simondon provides an alternative to theories of knowledge in which the possibility of knowledge is grounded in the constituting activity of the knowing subject. As he puts it, ‘We cannot know individuation in the common sense of the phrase; we can only individuate, individuate ourselves and in ourselves’ (1992: 317). In Simondon’s approach to the individuation of a problematic, metaphysics and logic are merged in what is called transduction, that is, a recursive analogical operation in which the process of individuation ‘between the real exterior and the subject is grasped by the subject due to the analogical individuation of knowledge in the subject’ (Simondon quoted in Combes, 2012: 9; my italics). Transduction is the analogical and self-grounding dimension of the procedure of thought. As Adrian Mackenzie explains,