Differences in Becoming.

Gilbert Simondon and Gilles Deleuze on Individuation

[forthcoming in Philosophy Today, 61:3, Summer 2017,

quote according to the published version]

Emmanuel Alloa & Judith Michalet

ABSTRACT For a long time, Gilbert Simondons work was known only as either a philosophy
restricted to the problem of technology or as an inspirational source for Gilles Deleuzes
philosophy of difference. As Simondons thinking is now finally in the process of being
recognized in its own right as one of the most original philosophies of 20th century, this also
entails that some critical work needs to be done to disentangle it from an all too hasty
identification with (or even subsumption under) Deleuzian categories. While both Simondon
and Deleuze have made crucial contributions towards a theory of differential individuation
that significantly diverges from other authors associated with French poststructuralism
insofar as they insist on the dynamic and vital dimension of difference, they also differ on
crucial points. Whereas Simondon sees the process of becoming as transductive
amplification, and Deleuze theorizes it as intensifying involution, leading to two notably
distinct concepts of difference.

In the last years, it has become fashionable, especially in the Anglo-American world, to summarize a
certain generation of French philosophers coming after structuralism as philosophies of difference.
What this generation has undoubtedly in common is a rejection of stable and substantial identities,
but also of a mechanism of difference which owes its existence to dialectical opposition. Yet, beyond
a certain rejection of dialectical Hegelianism such as incarnated by Sartre and the all too binary

1
notion of difference in the structuralist movement, the label philosophies of difference embraces
positions as diverse as those of Derrida, Lyotard, Foucault, Deleuze, Guattari, Kristeva, Baudrillard
or Laruelle. More recently, a new name has been added to that list, as his work has not had the same
fortune at the time, and its relevance the poststructuralist generation is now finally being
acknowledged: that of Gilbert Simondon.
The conditions are right, Brian Massumi stated back in 2012, for Simondon to have a major
impact.1 Among the reasons Massumi lists is the fact that modes of thought more comprehensively
and suggestively in dialogue with Simondons have left their mark, among which, quite
prominently, that of Gilles Deleuze.2 Indeed, Deleuze was among the very few who recognized
Simondons importance from the outset, and this is certainly not by accident, since, just as Massumi
emphasizes, a deep kinship connects both strains of thought. For a long time, Simondon was first
and foremost perceived as a philosopher of technology. While his Du mode d'existence des objets
techniques (On the mode of existence of technical objects)3 was immediately recognized as an important
contribution to the problem of technology, and was reprinted various times, it suffered from a
disconnection from the rest of Simondons work. However, among the very few how discerned the
wide-ranging implications of Simondons thinking at large there was another philosopher, how drew
significantly on his ontology of difference: Gilles Deleuze.
Simondon was inspirational to Deleuze on many points, and indeed, as stressed by David Scott, in
nearly all of Deleuzes published works [] Simondons theses or concepts can be implicitly detected
or explicitly identified.4 Prima facie, where both Simondon and Deleuze depart from some of the
other anti-dialectical and post-structuralist French thinkers of difference is when (in a way that even
made them suspicious to many of their contemporaries) they theorize difference not so much as an
infinite play of meaning but in terms of a vital dynamism. As such, their theories of this difference
are inseparable from their visions of life, understood as differential, modulatory becoming.

1
Brian Massumi, Arne de Boever, Alex Murray & Jon Roffe, Technical Mentality Revisited. Brian
Massumi on Gilbert Simondon, in Being and Technology Gilbert Simondon. Being and Technology, eds.
Arne de Boever, Alex Murray, Jon Roffe & Ashley Woodward, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press,
2012: 22.
2
Ibid.
3
Gilbert Simondon, Du mode dexistence des objets techniques, 1958; second ed. Paris, Aubier, 1989. On
the Mode of Existence of Technical Objects, trans. Cecile Malaspina, Minneapolis, Univocal, 2016.
4
David Scott, Gilbert Simondons Psychic and Collective Individuation. A Critical Introduction and
Guide, Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press, 2014: 14.
2
Nevertheless, the fact that Deleuzes reading of Simondon prepared the grounds for the current
rediscovery of his work, which is documented in numerous works of recent scholarship,5 comes as
both a blessing and a curse. As it happens, by seeing Simondon only as a forerunner, a kind of dark
precursor of Deleuzes philosophy of difference, one misses the difference between these two
thoughts. Despite their incontestable proximities, there are also a certain number of points on which
Simondons and Deleuzes philosophies diverge (ultimately, even in their different degrees of
vitalism). While the task of a critical disentanglement of both philosophies has just begun (an
important special issue of the journal Pli has to be mentioned here6), we want to suggest that both
of them provide different, and ultimately incompatible accounts of what individuation is. Among
the many thinkers associated with the so-called philosophies of difference, what Simondon and
Deleuze share is that their concept of difference is steeped in a theorization of individuation. Each
criticizes what would be an infatuation with diversity (difference is not diversity, as both of them
underline) in order to break from a traditional static ontology.
Being is never One, Deleuze writes in his comment on Simondon,7 and this is a statement on
which both authors agree. In their respective conception of pluralism however, important nuances
separate them. On a more technical level, this paper aims at demonstrating that a conflation of levels
has often taken place, which biased the compared reading of both philosophers: as this paper argues,
Simondons concept of individuation can be characterized as transductive difference and that of
Deleuze as intensive difference. While for the former, transduction is synonymous with the process of

5
Keith Ansell-Pearson, Germinal Life. The Difference and Repetition of Deleuze, London-New York,
Routledge, 1999: 90-95. Alberto Toscano, The Theatre of Production: Philosophy and Individuation
Between Kant and Deleuze, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006; Pierre Montebello, Deleuze. La
passion de la pense, Paris, Vrin, 2008, chap. IV, Linfluence de Simondon: cinq points; Alberto
Toscano, Gilbert Simondon, in Graham Jones and Jon Roffe (eds.), Deleuze's Philosophical Lineage,
Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2009: 380-398; Fabrizio del Lucchese, Monstrous
Individuations: Deleuze, Simondon, and Relational Ontology differences 20, 2-3 (2009): 179-193; Anne
Sauvagnargues, Deleuze: Lempirisme transcendental, Paris: PUF, 2010; Sean Bowden, Gilles Deleuze,
a Reader of Gilbert Simondon, In Being and Technology Gilbert Simondon. Being and Technology, eds.
Arne de Boever, Alex Murray, Jon Roffe & Ashley Woodward, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press,
2012
Andrew Iliadis, A New Individuation: Deleuzes Simondon Connection, MediaTropes IV.1 (2013): 83-
100.
6
Pli. The Warwick Journal of Philosophy. Special Volume Deleuze and Simondon (2012) (with texts
by Anne Sauvegnargues, Arnaud Bouaniche, Pierre Montebello, Didier Debaise, Daniel W. Smith,
Alberto Toscano, Marjorie Gracieuse, Claudio Rozzoni).
bart7 Gilles Deleuze, On Gilbert Simondon (1966), in Desert Islands and Other Texts (hereafter
referred to as DI), translated by Michael Taormina, Los Angeles, Semiotext(e), 2004: 89
3
differential individuation, the latter retains the concept of transduction for the sake of describing
exclusively organic and superior individuations. On the other hand, whereas Simondon only uses
intensity in order to give an account of how informational processes work, Deleuze draws on it as the
principle of his entire ontology and differential processes at large.
While the article shows the many theoretical crossings between Simondon and Deleuze, including
the crucial points on which their oeuvres diverge, it aims at recapturing some of the tools both
provide for facing some of the current challenges in biology, in the politics of life and for
postanthropocentric perspectives of nature. By insisting on the fact that difference cannot be
reduced to diversity, and its management, it advocates for a different approach to pluralism:
differences that make a difference are fundamentally beyond the scope of regulation (and even self-
regulation). As we trace out the thread of this hidden dialogue between the two authors who have
suffered from hasty conceptual concatenation, we will also clarify how Simondon and Deleuze each
theorized in quite different a way the individuals relationship to the external world. As we will be
explaining in more detail, the former sees this relationship as transductive amplification, and the latter
as intensifying involution.

Singularity: germinal or structural ?

Among the thinkers associated with poststructuralist theories of difference (to avoid the unfortunate
tag French theory), a recurrent concern can be noted: the concern with singularity. Although this
concern runs through philosophies as diverse as those of Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, Jean-
Luc Nancy or Alain Badiou and has precedents in Georges Bataille or Maurice Blanchot, it is
certainly particularly conspicuous in Gilles Deleuzes work. It has been asserted that with Deleuzes
Difference and repetition (1968), the status of a full-fledged philosophical concept has been conferred
to singularity. However, Deleuze himself always denied to have played such a role and traced back
the conception of individuation as singularity to Gilbert Simondon, more specifically to Lindividu
et sa gense physico-biologique [The Individual and Its Psycho-Biological Genesis], the first part of
Simondons monumental thesis on the notion of individuation, published in 1964, and which Gilles
Deleuze acclaimed in the same year with a praising review. Among the things that Simondon forces

4
philosophy to see, Deleuze writes, is the need for introducing a new concept: that of singularity. 8
Singularity is not just a new skin for old wine, i.e. a new name for the old metaphysical notion of
individuality. On the contrary, singularity exists outside of the alternative between universal types
and particular individuals. Deleuze finds in Simondon a cogent formalization for an ontology of
singularity. Being, says Simondon, is non-un (not-one). On the other hand, it is not nothing either.
Rather it is nonnullus, as the Latins say: not-nothing, i.e. something, someone. But what? To begin
with, nothing but a this which exists by virtue of its thisness, of its being such, as Medieval ontology
refers to it: haecceitas, says Duns Scotus, from haec (this thing). The thisness is what is common to
a string of molecules, a patch of color, a sequoia tree, a wind, a state of intense joy or five oclock in
the afternoon.
In a productive misunderstanding, discussed by Deleuze,9 Simondon translates haecceitas as
ecceit, implying that thisness has to do with ecce, see here!. If anything, it testifies a concern
with the real; singularity is not meant to be defined only negatively (as that which is irreducible, non-
generalizable or non-substitutable, as in some other post-structuralist philosophies of difference), it
is meant to have an empirical thickness, attested by the deictic particle ecce: this very body, this very
event. Yet this suchness is nothing that could be essentially stabilized, and as a matter of fact, there
is no such thing as a single singularity. (In the same fashion, there is not a multiple, there are only
multiplicities).
The unity of singularity is neither provided by an underlying substance, nor by a consciousness to
which it appears; it is exclusively provided through its own process of becoming. Simondon calls this
a genetic monism, 10 for alone genesis could assume the unity containing plurality; the only unity
of a being is that of its becoming, i.e. of becoming different from what it is. As Deleuze acknowledges,
with his genetic monism Simondon overcomes the customary errors of determinism that can be
identified both in philosophies of transcendence and in (inconsistent) philosophies of immanence:
While philosophies of transcendence fall prey to a finalist perspective, where something is defined
retrospectively through its supposed terminal stage, philosophies of immanence are often

8
Ibid.: 87.
9
Gilles Deleuze, Flix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia (hereafter referred
to as TP), translated by Brian Massumi, Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press, 1987, 540, note 33.

5
jeopardized as they grant an ontological privilege to the constituted, empirically or sociologically
determined individual being. Simondons conclusion is thus radical: there is no such thing as
individuality at all, just individuation. Only by taking being in its dimension of becoming can
empiricism and indeterminacy be reconciled. Through Simondons ontogenetic move, pluralism
moves from a hypothetical construct to an empirical reality: individuation proves to be a real event,
yet characterized through its inherent openness, non-substantiality and relationality. Rather than
conceptualizing what would be the underlying essence common to a string of molecules, a particular
tree, a patch of color, a state of intense joy or five oclock in the afternoon, the point of a processual
ontology is reject any principle of individuation, any general law that would be more fundamental
than that to which it applies. On the other hand, it equally takes its distance from a positivist
approach that would take the individual as the starting or end-point. If anything at all, being can
only be seized in the process of becoming, as something that preceded itself and extends beyond the
currently determined individual being, as something that is always already more than itself and thus
inherently plural.
How to disentangle the nexus between Simondon and Deleuze, and give each philosopher credit for
his own singularity? Whereas Simondon and Deleuze both reject the opposition between generality
and particularity in favor of a theory of singularity, it should be noted that singularity has two
different specific strategic function for each of these. Before getting there however, Simondons
general project has to be briefly outlined and his now rather well-known remarks about the
technological condition replaced in a larger context.
As a matter of fact, Du mode d'existence des objets techniques (On the mode of existence of technical objects),
which was published in 1958,11 was actually just the coda to the main doctoral thesis. What
Simondon presented as the main thesis (thse principale) in 1958 was indeed a comprehensive
discussion of the issue of individuation within Western thinking and its inherent limitations.
According to this work, which had an unfortunate editorial history,12 the trajectory of individuation

11
Simondon, On the Mode of Existence of Technical Objects. See also Technical mentality, trans. Arne
De Boever, Parrhesia 7 (2009): 7-27.
12
The main thesis, L'individuation la lumire des notions de Forme et dInformation (Individuation in
the light of the notions of Form and Information), was published in various steps. The first part was
published in 1964 under the title L'individu et sa gnse physico-biologique (Individuation and its
physical-biological genesis) at the Presses Universitaires de France, the second part was published in
1989 by Aubier as Lindividuation psychique et collective (Psychic and collective individuation), while it
6
within Western thinking has been governed by two main paradigms: substantialism and hylomorphism.
Substantialism proposes that the principle of individuality is inherent within the individual being,
exists as its primary foundation, and comprises its essence; hylomorphism on the other hand
proposes that individuality arises in how form (morph) individuates amorphous and
undifferentiated matter (hyl). Whatever different these two doctrines may be, they have something
in common: the principle of individuality is logically anterior to the process of individuation.
Whether the principle is seen as something that lies at the bottom of the being that will be
individuated (that would be the substantialist version) or whether the principle is external (such as
in hylomorphism), individuation itself is only ever considered a derivative, subordinate process.
While rejecting the idea of a principium individuationis independent of what has been individuated,
Simondon conceives of that which individuates (the individuator, Deleuze might put it) as an
agent directly performing the individuation, like a structure acting on the level of an individuation
being made (as Merleau-Ponty would put this, who influenced Simondon in ways yet not sufficiently
accredited).13 Although Simondon rejects traditional dualism, it would also be wrong to see him as
heralding a kind of unified monism: individualism cannot be simplified to a linear path, nor can it
any more easily be considered a succession of stable yet disjointed states; on the contrary, it assumes
a metastable state where something stays stable while remaining subject to potential discordance.
Metastability will indeed play a major role in Simondons concept of the world, as it allows to explain
how there can be at once individual things in the world, but no such things as a principle of
individuality nor even something as constituted form and an amorphous matter. This is indeed
Simondons criticism of hylomorphism: it assumes that at the beginning, there is a homogeneous,
but formless matter and some external principle which will mold it, just as Aristotles model of the
passive, purely receptive wax receiving an imprint by a formative signet ring. To illustrate his
alternative theory of individuation, Simondon draws on the example of the formation of crystals
(fig. 1).

is only in 1994 that the full material was made available, with the additional and related texts: Gilbert
Simondon, Lindividu la lumire des notions de forme et dinformation (hereafter referred to as ILFI),
Grenoble, ed. Jrme Millon, 1994.
13
Lindividu et sa gense physico-biologique is dedicated in memory of Merleau-Ponty.
7
At the beginning, for a crystal to form, there must be a particular environment (e.g. an aqueous
solution) which needs to be at a specific temperature to enable rapid spread (and so the environment
can be neither too rigid nor too slack, it can be neither chaotic, nor fully stabilized). Introducing a
foreign body will then eventually catalyze the process of crystallization around this initial seed, and
the microscopic structure will propagate until it has organized the entire environment. The crystal
seed, therefore, is both the impure element in the environment (a grain of sand, also known as seed
in crystallography)its impurity makes it singularand a microscope would reveal the preformation
to be highly organized to the extent that it anticipates the entire structure. This singular seed, the
appearance of which remains spontaneous, and to this day inexplicable, 14 introduces within the
amorphous environment an element of asymmetry that polarizes it and imprints a form upon it,

14
ILFI: 104. Unless stated otherwise, the translation is ours.
8
thereby literally in-forming it. The transmission of this information to the entire metastable
environment is what Simondon calls transduction, a process that is per se interminable.

The phenomenon of growth is consequently automatic and indefinite; all the

subsequent layers of crystal have the ability to structure the amorphous
environment surrounding them, so long as this environment remains metastable.
In this sense, a crystal is endowed with an infinite power of growth; a crystals
growth may be stopped, but never finished.15
Hundred-fifty years earlier, Hegel had already pointed out that the becoming of the crystal is, in and
of itself, endless.16
Simondon repeatedly returns to this example of physical-chemical individuation and make it his
primary model of organic individuation, rather than the other way around. In a section of his thesis,
Forme et substance (not included in the first edition of 1964 that Deleuze commented upon), he
ultimately formulates this hypothesis: Vital individuation will come to be part of physical
individuation by halting its flow, by slowing it down . . . The living individual, in its most primitive
state, is comparable to a nascent crystal growing without any sign of stabilizing. 17 This conception
of life, as we will come to see, directly affect the scope of Simondons philosophy of biology. (fig. 2)

15
ILFI: 86.
16
G.W.F. Hegel, Encyclopedia of Philosophical Sciences II (1830), remark to 317.
17
ILFI: 152.
9
Meanwhile, it is clear that the more or less monadological model of a seed crystal caught Deleuzes
attention. As it were, Deleuze drew on this model to develop his own idea of a crystal-image in his
writings on cinema, an image which is simultaneously internal difference and envelope, a coiled-up
singularity and a crystalline expansion.18 But once again, Deleuze only keeps the quasi-
monadological, punctiform paradigm of Simondons concept of singularity (and we will soon see
why). Yet Simondon also discusses other examples of singularities that are not mere points, such as
a cast in the process of technical individuation. To the degree that it informs the external
environment, Simondon considers that the cast is singular but cannot be compared to a seed. This
results in Simondon talking about singularity in terms that may seem strange today, namely in terms
of average-sized singularity. Indeed, internal resonance is defined as an exchange of energy and

18
Gilles Deleuze, Cinema 2 : The Time-Image, translated by Hugh Tomlinson and Robert Caleta,
Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press, 1989: 81: The little crystalline seed and the vast
crystallizable universe: everything is included in the capacity for expansion of the collection constituted
by the seed and the universe.
10
movement within a defined enclosure, communication between microphysical matter and
macrophysical energy from an average-sized singularity, topologically defined.19 The cast, as a defined
enclosure, makes communication between these differences possible: its action reverberates
throughout the entire mass by molecule-to-molecule and bit-to-bit interactions.20 The catalytic
element for formation is therefore a topologically defined space, an average-sized and intermediary
zone21 serving as a sound box. In the technical process of casting, the cast acts as a systems
topological boundary.22 This is why an average-sized singularity can, step by step, start
propagation, namely, a transductive operation,23 an amplification. The intermediary singularity is
the cast, as Simondon confirms.24
Although Simondon abandons the scholarly opposition between potential determination and an
actively determined being, his thoughts still do not tend toward a pure actualism. There remains a
marked contrast between potentiality and actuality, but most importantly, potentiality is not
considered a function of the actualized individual, but rather in terms of energy inherent within
matter. And so a distinction needs to be made between two types of potential energy, associated
respectively with information processes and transduction processes: the former, initial potential energy,
in other words the energy of an unstructured system, contrasted to the latter, the potential energies
connected to each structure.25 These latter energies are connected to a particular system structure and
are modified whenever structural changes happen. Transduction makes these changes in structures
and energy states possiblethese two changes being correlatedbecause, as Simondon explains,
transduction is akin to a process of structuring that affects successive places. Each place, or each new
structure, corresponds to a particular potential energy. When information moves between the two
interconnected orders of reality constituting the system, transduction arises as a movement between

19
ILFI: 45 (emphasis added).
20
ILFI: 44.
21
ILFI: 60.
22
ILFI: 45.
23
The transductive operation would be a structures successive propagation from a structural seed
through an entire area, in the way a supersaturated solution crystallizes from a seed crystal; this presumes
that the area is in metastable equilibrium, which means that it holds potential energy that can only be
released by a new structures emergence, like a problems solution. Cf. Gilbert Simondon, Forme,
information, potentiels, presented at the Socit Franaise de Philosophie on February 27, 1960, and
published in ILFI: 532.
24
ILFI: 44.
25
Cf. ILFI: 77.
11
the structures, within the system. But since the initial system does not disappear, and as it were
includes the structures, the initial potential energy continues to remain stable.
In Lindividuation la lumire des notions de forme et dinformation (ILFI) and this point will be essential
when discussing Simondons contrast to Deleuzethe potentialities are inherent in matter,
distributed homogeneously therein. Matter, wrote Simondon, is the carrier of potentialities that
are uniformly spread out and distributed within itself; matters homogeneity is the homogeneity of
its possible future.26 The potentiality of clay, for example, is connected to the colloidal properties
of aluminum hydrosilicates,27 distributed homogeneously within clay. This homogeneity guarantees
a transformations correct propagation throughout the system undergoing internal resonance.
Because the potentialities are uniformly distributed throughout the material, a transformation can
occur progressively. As Simondon explains,

once the transformation begins, it spreads, because the action exerted at the start
between the seed crystal and the metastable body is subsequently exerted
progressively between the already-transformed parts and the as-yet-untransformed
parts.28
But its certainly in losing transformation potential that these parts sequentially undergo the
structuring that a singularity has set into motion.
Although to a certain extent, he is clearly heir to Simondon, Deleuzes theories are rooted
in presuppositions different from his, particularly concerning the concept of potentiality. If Deleuze
takes mathematical topology as a framework in which to find an idea similar to the singular point as
a point catalyzing a process (e.g. inflecting the curve), he also finds in that framework another
conception of potentiality. Whereas Simondon considered matter to be the site of potentiality upon
which a singularity could act, Deleuzeor rather: the Deleuze of the late 60s, to be more precise
considered potentiality to inhere not in matter, but a structure that was virtual and immaterial.
One has thus to differentiate static individuation, associated with a theory of being as univocity (to
be is to be individuated), from event-driven individuation, associated with a theory of being as plastic
differentiation (to be is to individuate oneself). Thus individuating factors are not established
individuals, but

26
ILFI: 45.
27
Cf. ILFI: 41.
28
ILFI: 78 (emphasis added).
12
 that which acts in them as a transcendental principle: as a plastic, anarchic and
nomadic principle, contemporaneous with the process of individuation, no less
capable of dissolving and destroying individuals than of constituting them
temporarily.29
As Franois Zourabichvili put it, the singularity is distinguished from the individual or the atomic
in that it is ceaselessly divided on either side of a difference in intensity that it envelops. 30 The
Deleuzian concept of singularity is distinguished here from the standard usage of the word: a singular
thing is not distinct from the ordinary, but rather sets aside the ordinary; it is not extraordinary, but,
within the ordinary, brings about a shift.
As has been said, Deleuze makes clear his debt to Simondon for this concept of singularity (as
opposed to individuality), but he has still brought about a major change without commenting it. To
come straight to the point: whereas Simondon considered the singularity the catalyzer that sets in motion the
process of information, in a field structured around certain potentialities, Deleuze considers the potential field
already filled with a set of singularities that events would actualize and differentiate. Consequently, the
Simondonian singularity and the Deleuzian singularity are significantly different and do not
overlap.31
How did this confusion occur? In his review of the first part of the Simondonian thesis published
in 1964, Deleuze writes:

By discovering the prior condition of individuation, [Simondon] rigorously

distinguishes singularity and individuality. Indeed the metastable, defined as pre-
individual being, is perfectly well endowed with singularities that correspond to the
existence and the distribution of potentials. (Is this not the same as in the theory of
differential equations, where the existence and the distribution of "singularities" are
of another nature than the "individual" forms of the integral curves in their
neighborhood?)32
In Deleuzes discussion, Simondons metastable field is already full of singularities that do not occur
as catalytic, asymmetrical, and polarizing elements. Not only is this concept of singularity folded into

29
Gilles Deleuze, Difference and Repetition (hereafter referred to as DR), translated by Paul Patton, New
York, Continuum, 2005: 47.
30
Franois Zourabichvili, Deleuze: A Philosophy of the Event, translated by Kieran Aarons, Edinburgh,
Edinburgh University Press, 2012: 116.
31
When Anne Sauvagnargues writes that the Simondonian definition of individuation tells Deleuze how
to avoid the hypothesis of awareness by replacing transcendent subjectivity with emissions of perfectly
differentiated (with a t) singularities, she repeats the Deleuzian gesture by amalgamating Simondons
germinal singularity with the singular point of mathematics. (Anne Sauvagnargues, Deleuze, lempirisme
transcendantal, Paris, PUF, 2008: 290).
32
Gilles Deleuze, On Gilbert Simondon (1966), in Desert Islands and Other Texts (hereafter referred to
as DI), translated by Michael Taormina, Los Angeles, Semiotext(e), 2004: 87.
13
that of distributing potentials, but this distribution is not considered (as in Simondon) in
thermodynamic terms, but in mathematical terms. This conceptual shift will become pivotal in
Difference and Repetition. Deleuze draws upon Albert Lautmans work for this idea of distributing
singularities that will determine the individual taking of form. In Deleuzes work, these two layers
of mathematical realitiesdistributed singularities and the integral curves that correspond to them
will refer to the transcendental and the empirical. Lautman had already distinguished these two
layers himself: the engagement of the abstract in the genesis of the concrete is a transcendental
interpretation of the governing relation that can be better accounted for,33 he wrote in 1939.
Ultimately, Deleuze situates singularities within a space that precedes the individuating field: the
differential field.34 However, this differentiated space is not spread out, and as such it is not a field
per se. In Difference and Repetition, Deleuze conceptualizes it using the terminology of Idea or
Structure. On the one hand, there is the purely virtual level of the elements differentiated
determinationsreciprocal determination and complete determinationand on the other hand
there is the intensive or individuating level of active connection between the elements, which
represents the first step of actualization within the virtual structure. The pre-individual singularities
are consequently distributed virtually before being intensifiedthe individuating stageand
subsequently developed, which is to say, extended along the lines of ordinary pointsthe
differentiating stage. Corresponding to the [differential] relations which constitute the universality
of the problem is the distribution of singular points and distinctive points which determine the
conditions of the problem.35 Deleuze writes that nowhere better than in the admirable work of
Albert Lautman can an overview be found of the ideal liaisons between dialectical notions, relative
to eventual situations of the existent.36 Pre-individual singularities, before any intensifying
individuation, make up the components of these ideal connections at the core of a virtual structure.
They are distributed in a potential which admits neither Self nor I, but which produces them by
actualizing or realizing itself.37 More than in Simondons philosophy, the concept of singularity

33
Albert Lautman, New Research on the Dialectical Structure of Mathematics (1939), in Mathematics,
Ideas, and the Physical Real, translated by Simon B. Duffy, New York, Continuum, 2011: 200.
34
Deleuze mentions the existence of singularities of the differential field in DR: 336.
35
DR: 202.
36
DR: 203.
37
Gilles Deleuze, Logic of Sense (hereafter referred to as LS), translated by Mark Lester with Charles
Stivale, New York, Columbia University Press, 1990: 103.
14
would have inspired mathematical systems where it designates a point on an object that is not
defined by its function.
In his Elementary Treatise on Analytic Geometry, which Deleuze quotes,38 Auguste Comte differentiates
among particular singular points of a curve, such as inflection points where a curve changes between
convex and concave, cusp points where two branches of a curve meet, or critical points where the
tangent would be horizontal and the derivative would be zero.39 (fig. 3) Because they indicate change,
Comte also calls these points determining points. Deleuze in turn uses determining pointseven
if he doesnt call them as suchto refer to a transcendental constellation that determines all
empirical form-takings without resembling them. The singular point, which is only a congruence of
ordinary, non-determining points, becomes a transcendental point fit to determine empirical spatial

developments.
Moreover, within mathematical thought, singularities are connected to differential relations.
Differential relations are calculated within the process of a reciprocal determination. But Deleuze
adds that reciprocal determination expresses only the first aspect of a veritable principle of reason; the
second aspect is complete determination.40 As a matter of fact, every differential relation determines
the existence and distribution of singular points. A distribution of determining points implies
differential relations.
Interestingly, Deleuze seems to proceed to a peculiar blending of Simondons thinking with
structuralist insights: whatever something is or means cannot be determined through any of its
intrinsic features, but only through its position in a given field. As with chemical elements, with
respect to which we know where they are before we know what they are, likewise here we know of

38
DR: 212, footnote 1: Auguste Comte, in some fine pages . . . shows how the distribution of
singularities determines the 'conditions of the problem.
39
Auguste Comte, Trait lmentaire de gomtrie analytique deux et trois dimensions, Paris,
Carilian-Goeury and V. Dalmont, 1843: 114. See also Auguste Comte, Cours de philosophie positive,
Paris, Baillire, 1869, vol. I: 347.
40
DR: 57.
15
the existence and distribution of singular points before we know their nature (bottlenecks, knots,
foyers, centers . . .).41 What was only a theory of how signification comes about in Saussure is turned
transcendental in Deleuze, however. In Deleuzes opinion, structuralism cannot be separated from
a new transcendental philosophy, in which the sites prevail over whatever occupies them.42 An in
How Do We Recognize Structuralism? he adds these are positions in a properly structural space,
that is, a topological space.43
Where Simondon and Deleuze hence coincide is in their attempt to theorize a becoming that is no
grounded in anything but itself and an individuation that would not already be wholly
predetermined by a principle, a cause or a form. Nevertheless, the significance and specific role of
this idea of singularity for becoming turn out to be quite different between the two authorswith
Simondon heralding that singularity inaugurates the taking of form (the process of in-formation)
within a potential field, while Deleuze sees in it what structures a potential field (and hence the
process of differentiation).44

Topologies of Life

How does the transition from physical individuation to biological individuation happen? Can the
seed-crystal model be generalized to the development of organic life? A number of biologists would
suggest so. In his famous 1944 book What Is Life? Erwin Schrdinger hypothesized that the
chromosome fibre functioned much like a miniature code, programming the entire pattern of
the individual's future development and of its functioning in the mature state.45 In his Logic of Life,
Franois Jacob explained Schrdingers thesis by referring to the chromosome as a crystal: For
reasons of stability, the organization of life becomes comparable to a crystal. Not the somewhat dull

41
LS: 104.
42
Gilles Deleuze, How Do We Recognize Structuralism? written in 1967 and published in 1972,
translated by Melissa McMahon and Charles J. Stivale, in DI: 174.
43
Gilles Deleuze, How Do We Recognize Structuralism?, DI: 174.
44
Although it is not always explicitly restated at every occurrence, whenever the reference to
Deleuze is made, it is the Deleuze of the 60s that of Difference and repetition and of Logic
of Sense that is meant. Fleshing out the changes within his thought, especially in the texts co-
written with Guattari, would go beyond the scope of this paper.
45
Erwin Schrdinger, What Is Life? Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1944: 18.
16
and monotonous crystalline structure where a single chemical configuration repeats itself over and
over, with the same periodic intervals in three dimensions. But what physicists call an aperiodic
crystal, in which the arrangement of non-repeating configurations creates the variety necessary to
support the diversity of living beings . . . The combination of two signs in the Morse code enables
any text whatsoever to be coded. The plan of the organism is mapped out by a combinative system
of chemical symbols.46
Here, Franois Jacob focuses not on the crystals process of crystallization, but the simplicity of the
crystals structure, the clarity of its form. Much
like a coded message, the seed crystal contains the
entire program, just as a chromosome contains
the genetic program to be actualized. By
inscribing the example of crystals again within a
general problem of hereditythe subtitle of The
Logic of Life is A History of Hereditya principle of
individuality is reintroduced which would
precede all individuation. Now this had precisely
been the perspective that Simondons conception
of individuation had try to overcome: a living
organism does not amount to a mechanical
realization of a schema contained within genetic material. Just as actualization does not exhaust all
possibilities, so does life constitute a continuous invention of what was not yet contained within its
determinants. Far from forming an immutable text, the double helix of DNA, with its two strands
of protein molecules described by Crick and Watson in 1953 (fig. 4), reminds Simondon of how
living matters intrinsic uncoupling allowsand even requiresinfinite invention. Hereditary
nature would be not a predetermined element, but a problem to resolve, a pairing of two reunited
elements, in relation to disappearance.47 Living beings do not carry out transductions by
propagation within a homogenous milieu, but by resolving an initial state of dephasing or

46
Franois Jacob, The Logic of Life, translated by Betty E. Spillman, Princeton, Princeton University
Press, 1993: 292.
47
ILFI: 207.
17
disparation (from Latin disparatio, being disparate) between two systems in favor of a new pairing
or coupling. In other words, in the biological being, transduction isnt direct, but indirect.48 This
transductionwhich Simondon also calls allagmatic since it carries out a change or an alteration
(whence the Greek root allattein)is fully expressed in his example of binocular vision which is to be
found among all mammals (except for Cetaceans). The supervenience, in the history of evolution,
of double retinas and of binocular vision among mammals potentially allows for a much more
accurate assessment of spatial depth, provided that a solution is found to the problem how to make
two contradictory visual information streams coincide. The emergence of something like
stereoscopic vision hence perfectly exemplifies what Simondon calls allagmatic transduction: by
coupling disparate visual inputs from the optical nerves, the visual center of mammals (but one could
also mention birds here) synthesizes them into a third image that cannot be deduced from either
monocular stream.49 In this sense, the history of evolution is a history of the emergence of new forms
of life capable of resolving previous problems, and we are correct in assuming that an organism
constitutes a system for resolving a disparate pair.50 As opposed to the direct kind of transduction
to be found in the inert, physical realm, this indirect, allagmatic kind of transduction is inherently
inventive, insofar as it brings about a leap towards a state that could not be derived from the previous
ones.51 Natura fecit saltus that is what Simondon means to prove: nature does indeed make jumps.

48
ILFI: 160.
49
ILFI, pp. 207-208.
50
Victor Petit, Lindividuation du vivant. Sur une intuition simondonienne reste ignore, Cahiers
Simondon n. 1, Paris, LHarmattan, 2009: 49.
51
On the question of invention, see one of the most fascinating lecture courses by Simondon: which
Simondon devoted an entire course to, Gilbert Simondon, Imagination et invention (19651966), edited
by Nathalie Simondon and introduced by Jean-Yves Chateau, Chatou, Editions de La Transparence, 2008
18
Interestingly, rather than presupposing some substantial difference between the organic and the
inorganic, Simondon focuses on their different modes of individuation. He makes a point for
distinguishing the two kinds of transduction in respect of their specific type of space (fig. 5). For
living beings, transductive operations can no longer apply to propagating a piece of information
through a homogeneous Euclidean space, but are more like operations within a topological space.
It is hence not a coincidence if Simondon inserts a chapter on topology within both the first part
(Lindividuation physique) and the second part (Lindividuation des tres vivants) of ILFI. The
nature of topological space is to be a space of relations from end to end: not extensive but intensive,
as Deleuze would say. In this sense, topological space differs from Euclidean space in that it doesnt
have empty areas. As a crystal propagates from a seed, individuation only operates at its external
boundaries,52 in an environment that constitutes the area yet to be crystallized. The interior has no
function, it only serves to support this crystallizing individualization at the outer boundaries: a
crystal can be emptied of a significant portion of its material without any halt in its growth.53 But
this is not true at all for a living being: the full contents of the internal space are topologically in
contact with the contents of the external space on the limits of the living being; there is, in effect,

52
ILFI: 27.
53
ILFI: 227.
19
no distance in topology.54 This is why the famous homunculus that Wilder Penfield had been
working on since the 1930s, which
represented the human bodys organs in
terms of their corresponding cortical
areas (fig. 6), was insufficient for
Simondon: it was and remained
Euclidean. Nervous and cortical system
development follow not Euclidean logic,
but topological logic: thus neocortical
development in upper areas happens by
cortical folding: this is a topological, not
Euclidean, solution.55
Now much like space, time isnt
extensive for living individualities. Within physical crystallization, temporality is absent, as future
and as what remains to be crystallized. In biological individuation (and a fortiori in physical
individuation), temporality exists not only as a horizon of future, but also as past: all the steps and
preceding states are present in the ongoing individuation and influence it. The living being doesnt
just internalize by assimilating, but condenses and presents everything that was elaborated in
prime.56 Simondon (who, despite himself, merely confirms his Bergsonism here) deduces that for a
living beings topology now needs a living beings chronology associated with it. Just as topology
leaves behind the homogeneity of the Euclidean field, so the new chronology should account not
only for chronology, but also for reports of discontinuity, dissociation, contiguity, and envelopment.

After having insisted on the specificity of the living beings individuation (which will be further
explained in the third part when psychological individuation), Simondon still manages to critique a
clear distinction from physical individuation processes, which are inevitable when beginning a
theory of living beings in terms of complex organisms, whether like the biologist Kurt Goldstein57

54
Ibid.
55
Ibid.
56
ILFI, pp. 227-228.
57
Kurt Goldstein, The Organism, Boston: Beacon Press, 1963 (Reprint New York: Zone Books, 1995).
20
or like Kurt Lewins hodology which considers space to result from an organized subjects successive
displacements (from hodos, path, route).58 The action doesnt just trace a subjective path through
space, between any objects that pose obstacles, but rather it modifies the very frame of subject and
object, in a far more fine-tuned and delicate way.59 This is no longer an established subject that,
when confronted with obstacles, adjusts its behavior; the interaction itself results in constant
disconnections and reconnections in the living being: the living being solves problems, not only by
adapting, i.e. by modifying its relationship to the environment (as a machine might), but also by
modifying itself, by inventing new internal structures.60 In this sense, Simondon can affirm that the
living being is simultaneously an individuating system and a system individuating itself. It is, so to speak,
stuck with invention, since it does not inherently have the prerequisite resources for resolving
problems, but rather the solution arises even as the problems appear.
In his theorizing processes of biological invention, Simondon can draw on existing research. There
is for instance the tradition of scientists who have been working on the phenomenon known to
biologists as neoteny. Neoteny refers to the phenomenon observable in the animal world among
some species which suggests that these have not fully developed into adulthood, such as the famous
axolotl, a species of salamander that remains in its larval form throughout its life. What nineteenth-
century biology described as the retention of juvenile traits among adults (also known as
paedomorphism) has received a different interpretation later on. Authors like Coghill, Raymond
Ruyer or Merleau-Ponty have seen neoteny as an interesting case for a non-teleological account of
biological growth: the arrest of development forces the individual to constantly readapt itself to its
milieu. In this reading, paradoxically, rather than being a conservative moment, neoteny results
from an inventive thrust.61 But even more important on Simondons concept of invention is the
influence of Georges Canguilhem.
Georges Canguilhem, the epistemologist and philosopher of biology who happened to be also on
Simodons thesis committee, had developed an organismic theory of life. In this theory, the living

58
Kurt Lewin, Principles of Topological Psychology, New York-London: McGraw-Hill, 1936.
59
ILFI: 211.
60
ILFI: 28.
61
G.F. Coghill, Anatomy and the Problem of Behaviour, New York, Hafner, 1929. Raymond Ruyer, No-
Finalisme, Paris, PUF, 1952. Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Nature. Course Notes from the College de France
(1956-60), ed. by Dominique Sglard, trans. Robert Vallier, Evanston, Ill., Northwestern University
Press, 2003, 142-156.
21
being, rather than being defined through its relationship to its surrounding inorganic environment,
must be conceived starting from the perspective of a living milieu. Any individual that differs from
the statistical norm (i.e. the reproduction of the same) can be seen as abnormal or even pathological.
In point of fact, that there would be no evolution without such divergence from the norm. Any
diverging individual that persists is first tolerated by the error margins of the norm, before becoming
a threat to the norm itself. Insofar as the new form persists, and modifies the norm, life is
characterized by what Canguilhem calls the process of normative invention.62 However, it is not
enough to state that the individual is an exception that that becomes the rule: even as biological
invention appears to be an exception to the current statistical norm, this invention must be normal
in a different, though unknown sense.63 The point is here to overcome the old hylemorphic pattern,
whereby one instance (either the individual or the environment) is the determining factor and the
other the determined one. Instead, claims Canguilhem, the relation between the living and the
milieu establishes itself as a debate (Auseinandersetzung), to which the living brings its own proper
norms of appreciating situations, both dominating the milieu and accommodating to it.64
While endorsing for the most part Canguilhems account of invention, Simondon goes even a step
further, as he doesnt restrict these dynamics to organic processes alone. According to Simondon,
the invention of a new normative form (or formative norm, depending on which point of view one
takes here) already happens on the inorganic level. The origin of the crystal, thought of in terms of
invention, once again, provides the basis for Simondons concept of individuation, and this will
have an impact on his description of organic processes too (it is no coincidence, then, that he
describes the living being as a crystal in the process of being born.65). This starting point leads to a
totally different appreciation of life than that those put forward by Schrdinger and Jacob, for
example. Simondon argues that the processuality inherent in crystallization makes it possible to
understand what connects individuations numerous levels. The clear-cut division between the
organic realm and the inorganic realm had to be revised with the development of plant molecular
virology. Plant infections were discovered, such as the so-called mosaic disease that can ruin tobacco

62
Georges Canguilhem The Normal and the Pathological . New York: Zone Books, 1998 : 15557.
63
Georges Canguilhem, Knowledge of Life [1952], trans. Stefanos Geroulanos & Daniela Ginsburg, New
York: Fordham University Press 2008, 16162.
64
Ibid.: 113.
65
ILFI: 152.
22
plantations on a large scale. This mosaic disease (TMV) (fig. 7), which was the first ever scientifically
filtered and crystallized botanical virus, has both characteristic of a living being and that of an inert
one, as it propagates both inside the leave like any living being and behaves like a non-living entity
when crystallized, propagating just like a crystal would.66

In A Thousand Plateaus, co-written with Flix Guattari, Deleuze returns to Simondons

crystallography example to clarify certain processes of change. Given that crystals can only spread
gradually and incrementally to their outer limits, crystallography would be the ideal example of
induction.67 Yet Simondon has
clearly stated in Individuation not
only that the crystals
transformation is transductive, but
also that transduction should not be
confused with deduction or
induction.68 When he connected his
idea of inductive propagation to
Simondon, has Deleuze just
proceeded to yet another creative
theft that he invited all
philosophers to and which, in his
Dialogues with Claire Parnet,
contrasted to the plagiarisms of the
trickster?69 What way is there to explain what is manifestly a misreading where Simondons crystals
a interpreted in inductive terms, while contracting this induction to a transduction that would be
inherent within living beings?70

66
ILFI, pp. 228-229.
67
Gilles Deleuze, Flix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia (hereafter referred
to as TP), translated by Brian Massumi, Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press, 1987: 81.
68
ILFI: 34.
69
Gilles Deleuze/Claire Parnet, Dialogues II, translated by Hugh Tomlinson and Barbara Habberjam,
New York, Columbia University Press, 2007: 41.
70
ILFI: 78.
23
First of all, there is ongoing confusion resulting from the ease of conflating logical with physical
induction. When Simondon explains that transduction is neither inductive nor deductive, he does
so chiefly to clarify that it is not a simple logical process, but rather an ontological one. 71 Whereas
logical induction (as a transition from particularity to generality) can be contrasted to logical
deduction (a transition from generality to particularity), physical induction has no inverse process.
Yet its physical induction, not logical induction, that Deleuze and Guattari are thinking of here
when they characterize crystallography. Induction (i.e. the propagation of a structure from an
inductive element to an inducted milieu) presumes a fields relative homogeneity, which makes it,
in Deleuze and Guattaris eyes, Euclidian. Transduction in contrast is inherently topological, because
it operates within a heterogeneous domain. While induction consists of perfect replication of the
seeds geometry within the inducted milieu, transduction is more of a transposition that is not
extensive, but intensive. For this reason, the word transduction no longer describes the set of individuation
processes, but will now refer strictly to living beings.72 Whereas a crystal growths structural replication
happens at its boundaries, a living beings development happens within its membranes, where all
the interior resonates. And so it is in a biological sense, Deleuze writes in The Logic of Sense, that
Valrys line rings true: what is most deep is the skin.73
The membrane reveals the living beings specificity: the site of intensive resonances also marks the
threshold between inside and outside. While physical induction can continue infinitely, so long as
no obstacle limits or diminishes it from outside, the organism limits itself and only individuates
itself by causing its interior to reverberate to the fullest degree it can, as an aspect of a dynamic
topology which itself maintains the metastability by which it exists.74 This is due to its metastability
being achieved not by iterating initial information, but by a polarized existence at the interface of its
limit, with which the living being integrates not just a single datum but rather many data. Simondon
is clear on this point:

there is physical individuation when the system can receive information once and
then develop and amplify by individuating this initial singularity in a non-delimited
way. If the system can continually receive further input, make several singularities
71
Jean-Hugues Barthlmy, Penser lindividuation. Simondon et la philosophie de la nature, Paris,
LHarmattan, 2006: 33.
72
Also noted by Pierre Montebello in Gilles Deleuze. La passion de la pense, Paris, Vrin, 2008: 166, n.
3.
73
Cf. LS, pp. 10 and 103
74
ILFI: 226. Quoted by Deleuze in LS: 104.
24
 compatible instead of iterating the single original singularitycumulatively,
through transductive iterationthen its individuation will be organic, self-limited,
and organized.75
Deleuze takes up this distinction between inorganic and organic systems when he affirms that an
inorganic system is actualized all at once: in a physical system, this . . . affects only the boundaries,
whereas a biological system receives successive waves of singularities and involves its whole internal
milieu in the operations which take place at the outer limits.76 By synthesizing, overpowering, and
rearticulating different singularies, the living being is, according to Deleuze, transductive.
Now we have a clearer understanding of the rationale behind Deleuzes decision to restrict the term
transduction to simple organic individuation. If transductive amplification indeed consists, in its
simplest form, of iterating an initial impetus and presumes neither isolation nor limitation, if there
is no exterior limit (whether obstacle, friction, slowdown, etc.),77 why should this not be considered
as a simple phenomenon of induction? Because Simondon himself repeats that the actual limit of
induction is plurality in its simplest and most impassable form: heterogeneity.78 In this sense, the
realities that transduction causes to intersect are neither identical nor heterogeneous but contiguous
;79 transduction is an operation of laterally coupling particularities.80
Again, Simondon has hardly invented a new concept with transduction; rather, he has brought
about a broadened understanding of what certain developmental psychologists had identified as the
particular logic of children, chiefly William Stern and his Psychology of Early Childhood from 1914,
which Merleau-Ponty references several times in his courses on childhood psychology,81 but is even
more extensively dealt with by Albert Burloud in his Principes dune psychologie des tendances from
1938. The psychologist, who was a student of Alfred Binet, defined in this book the transductive
logic infants used. Transductive is opposed to both deductive and inductive: the infant doesnt use

75
ILFI: 152.
76
DR: 317.
77
Gilbert Simondon, Communication et information, edited by Nathalie Simondon and introduced by
Jean-Yves Chteau, Chatou, Editions de La Transparence, 2010: 173.
78
ILFI: 124.
79
ILFI: 107.
80
See Emmanuel Alloa, Prgnances du devenir. Simondon et les images, Critique n 816 special issue
on Simondon (2015), 356-371.
81
William Stern, Psychologie der frhen Kindheit, Leipzig, 1914; trans. Psychology of Early Childhood
Up to the Sixth Year of Age, New York: Holt, 1924. Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Psychologie et pdagogie de
lenfant. Cours de Sorbonne 1949-1952, edited by Jacques Prunair, Lagrasse, Editions Verdier, 2001, pp.
15, 20 and 21.
25
either syllogistic deduction by drawing an universal proposition from specific propositions, not does
he use amplifying induction by going from the particular to the universal or from the singular to the
general. When a child is asked why the sun is hot, he will answer that it is because it is on fire. He
always reasons by going from particular to particular.82 This idea of transduction, drawn from Stern,
would also be developed by Jean Piaget in his psychology of children, where it is portrayed as
unregulated inference, a transfer from singular to singular without any higher order.83 And so
transduction in Piagets thought always remains pre-logical. For Simondon, however, transduction
is a logic in and of itself, moreover, it is an onto-logic that concerns ontogenesis as such. It is distinct
from Deleuzes view in that transduction more specifically describes the process of a living beings
individuation. If he reserves this term for organic domains, another term functions here for the
operation of individuation in all degrees: that of intensity.

Transductive amplification / intensifying involution Different lines of flight

Although, as we have shown, Gilbert Simondons and Gilles Deleuzes thoughts correspond to
different thrusts and interests, that explain for only partial overlaps, and why the same concept may
sometimes stand for different things. Regarding transduction for instance, in Deleuzes reception,
rather than undergoing a fruitful expansion, the concept undergoes a severe restriction in scope, a
fact which has yet not been sufficiently accounted for. Similarly, on the concept of singularity,
Deleuze and Simondon part in the importance they respectively grant to the mathematical extension
of the term. As it happens, it is sometimes in the moments where both philosophies seem to meet
most intimately that divergences become apparent.
In an arguably particularly crucial moment of Deleuzes Difference and repetitionthe beginning of
chapter 5the famous postulate of difference as intensity is defined in a Simondonian fashion.
Whatever happens and whatever appears is determined by a difference which is its sufficient reason;
this difference is nothing but a difference in intensity, a difference in terms of level, temperature,
gradation, pressure, tension, potential etc. This entails that at first, there must be something like an
irreducible inequality, a kind of transcendental injustice (Alberto Toscano), which sets this process

82
Albert Burloud, Principes dune psychologie des tendances, Paris, Editions Alcan, 1938, pp. 341-342.
83
Jean Piaget, Le jugement et le raisonnement chez lenfant, Paris, Editions Delachaux 1924, pp. 245 and
following.
26
in motion: The reason of the sensible, the condition of what appears, is not space and time, but
the Unequal in itself, disparation such as it is comprehended and determined by difference in
intensity, in intensity as difference.84 At the key moment of the definition of his own ontology of
intensity, Deleuze not only draws on Simondons concept of disparation, he also defines intensity
in informational terms: in this initially unstable field, he states, a signal-sign system intervenes, in
which the phenomenon is defined as a sign which fulgurates between disparate series, generating
an event of communication that synthesizes (while simultaneously veiling) the heterogeneity from
whence it arises. Significantly, thus, Deleuze draws on a communicational model, which is exactly
the one used by Simondon, when he equates information with intensity (as opposed to form or data,
quality or quantity).85 Yet, while Deleuze dramatically restricts the notion of transduction, on the
other hand, he infinitely extends the notion of intensity beyond the purely communicational frame
it had in Simondon: instead of describing intensity as an operator of meaning, it becomes the
operator of being at large.
Clearly, Deleuze sees intensity as an operative concept that allows to move beyond some of the
dangers he senses in Simondons approach: that of focusing excessively on individuation. Already in
his 1966 review, with reference to Simondons attempt to indicate something like an ethical horizon
for his philosophical, in the concluding pages of ILFI, Deleuze expresses his concerns: when moving
from individuation to (social) individualization, and to questions of the ethics of the human, one
risks reintroducing the the form of the Self Simondons theory of disparity was meant to avert.86
In his later texts written with Guattari, Deleuze will venture even further, stressing processes of
deindividuation, disaggregation and dedifferentiation. With respect to theories that would still be
too progress-oriented (Bergsonss between the lines of his 1966 review, this is what he suspects
Simondon of), Deleuze and Guattari speak of a creative involution:

Becoming is involution, involution is creative. To regress is to move in the

direction of something less differentiated. But to involve is to form a block that
runs its own line between the terms in play and beneath assignable relations.87)

84
DR: 2223.
85
ILFI: 236-241.
86
DI: 89.
87
Deleuze and Guattari, Thousand Plateaus, 23839
27
This concept of involution, which has been fittingly described as antiextensional concept of the
multiple88, could be directly opposed to Simondons concept of amplification. To Simondon,
qualitative leaps come about through transductive amplifications. A certain field structures itself
through lateral expansion and reticulation, and thereby condenses itself to a higher compacity, all
the way through a situation of oversaturation, where the right trigger factor may cause a rupture.
While Simondon often evokes processes where through saturation, a certain state is pushed to its
limits, and a transduction must take place, Deleuze is evidently more interested in processes of
simplification or restraint. Experimentation is involutive, the opposite of the overdose, he states
in Dialogues.89 Through simplification or restraint, life often invents new forms and functions, by
losing, by abandoning, by reducing, by simplifying, even if this means creating new elements and
new relations of this simplification.90 No doubt, involution is a return, but in the sense that
Nietzsche gave to it; it is being, but only the being of becoming.91
Through and through, involution is thus the inverse movement of extension. At the moment in the
process of actualization when the difference is explained, it becomes a negation (as an opposition,
negation presumes an Euclidean space). Since difference is nothing but intensity, for Deleuze, it
must cancel itself out in the space it has been distributed through. Once it has been installed in
space, difference can only continue to persist through limitation or opposition, in short: as negation.
In light of this illusion of negative flattening and neutralizing difference, it becomes important to
return to the moment where the constitutive disparities of intensity can still be felt. Beings are not
distinct because of external features; they differ in their intensities.
Simondon, on the other hand, is more attentive to the logics of progress, in science, technology and
in history, as the many conferences and lectures on a topic as such as invention testify.92 As more
and more unpublished texts emerge, these last years, it becomes clear however that while Simondons
optimism in history is unquestionable, Deleuzes suspicion about his evolutionary finalism are

88
Alain Badiou, Gilles Deleuze, The Fold: Leibniz and the Baroque. in Gilles Deleuze and the Theatre
of Philosophy, eds. Constantin V. Boundas and Dorothea Olkowski (New York/London: Routledge
1994), 5169 : 52.
89
Gilles Deleuze & Claire Parnet, Dialogues II, trans. Hugh Tomlinson and Barbara Habberjam, New
York, Columbia University Press 2007 : 29.
90
Ibid.
91
Deleuze 1994: 41.
92
See in particular Sur linvention dans les techniques. Cours et confrences (2005, Paris, Seuil, 2005)
and Imagination et invention. Cours 1965-1966 (Paris, Chatou, 2008).
28
proven wrong. Simondons thinking is as much a thinking of evolution as it of revolution. Analyzing
the emergence of radical new arrangements on the molecular and organic level, Simondon seems to
imply, allows for a better understanding of technical or political revolutions. Where Deleuze has
the Unequal as sufficient reason of the sensible, Simondon talks of originary metastability: the
very taking-form (prise de forme) realizes the form through the imprint if gives to a given field, while
at the same time threatening its own existence, as it latently prepares the oversaturation of this very
field. Metastability is thus both the ordinary condition and a state permanently on the brink. A pre-
revolutionary state, a state of oversaturation, says Simondon, is one where an event could occur at
any time, where a structure is ready to pop up instantly; it is sufficient for the structural germ to
appear and sometimes, chance can function as an equivalent of the structural germ.93 As it turns
out, the physico-chemical realm and the psycho-social realm are not so much apart. certain pre-
revolutionary situations a resolution might occur either for the fact that an idea falls out of nowhere
and immediately a structure arises that spreads everywhereor through some random encounter.94

CONCLUSION - Beyond Regulation. Differences in Tension

Although Simondon and Deleuze are close in many respects, e.g. their definitions of revolution, the
methods they offer to analyze its reasons and conditions are quite distinct. Fortunately, a lively
literature has sprung up lately which takes Simondons heritage seriously, and too see much more
in him than either a philosopher restricted to the issue of technology or to a dark precursor to
Deleuze. It is not by accident that lately, a lot of emphasis has been put on the dimension of the
transindividual, which far from being just a multiplication of individuated beings, as Deleuze
eventually suspected, is indeed a site of de-individuation. In this respect, Simondon is particularly
interest in all the processes where the transindividual comes close again to the pre-invididual, i.e.
where deindividuation allows for new modes of individuation. While Deleuze confesses his
unconditional vitalism without any shadow of a doubt (Everything I have written is vitalist, at least
I hope it is95), Simondon must be seen, at best, as a weak vitalist, and he offers precious hints as

93
ILFI: 238.
94
ILFI: 556.
95
Gilles Deleuze, Negotiations, trans. C M. Joughin, New York: Columbia University Press, 1995: 143.
29
how to conceptualize the interactions with non-living actors, technical devices, mediated
environments and environmental media. Furthermore, Simondon also allows for a new approach
to the normative, which Deleuze largely refused, partly because of his anti-Lacanian rhetoric. In a
generation strongly dominated by Althusser and his theory of repression, Simondon was among the
few to maintain that norms are not just what shapes life, norms are lived, and as they are, they take
shape. In this sense, there is an individuation of norms too, which signals both their crystallization
and their transformation: the very necessity for norms to last in time (a norm that would apply only
once is a nonsense) puts them under immense pressure and often, their generalization in practice is
already the primer for their transformation. A perspective of amplifying differentiation has therefore
ethical implications, for Simondon, as it shows under which conditions norms both change lives
and mutate through living practices.96 Not by accident, various scholars have recently outline
possible practical outcomes of such an ethics of amplification and transfer.97
Transductive amplification and intensifying involution, the two central operations this article tried
to flesh out, although certainly not opposed or lest dialectically contradictory, indicate different lines
of flight in Deleuzes and Simondons respective thinkingand in contemporary uses one can make
of them today. What they share however is a clear rejection of any soft pluralism, i.e. the irenic
panorama of a democratic convergence through interest or parley. Both their philosophies are
philosophies of tension, dissatisfied with a perspective which would consist in putting in contact
different way of beings through tactical coalescences, or by postulating something like an
undifferentiated common. Unquestionably, Simondon and Deleuzes oeuvre try to venture beyond
the classical alternative between individualism and organicism, insofar as their horizon is that of a
post-foundational, anti-teleological becoming. But their philosophies equally provide a critique of
the myth of immanent self-organization, insofar as it still feeds on the model of steering and
regulation which both authors reject. In their respective accounts of late capitalism, they
acknowledged how the order of vertical hierarchy has been effectively been replaced with a new
myth, that of self-organization and self-regulation, inherited from cybernetics. What both of them

96
ILFI: 321.
97
See for example Muriel Combes, Gilbert Simondon and the Philosophy of the Transindividual, trans.
Thomas LaMarre, London-Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2013, 66-78; Andrea Bardin, Epistemology and
Political Philosophy in Gilbert Simondon: Individuation, Technics, Social Systems, New York: Springer,
2015. See also Paolo Virno, Angels and the general intellect: individuation in Duns Scotus and Gilbert
Simondon, Parrhesia 7 (2009), 58-67.
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criticize is a rationale which aims at reducing if not annulling tension by mechanisms of regulatory
governance. If anything, Simondon and Deleuze can be helpful today in their crossfire criticism of
homeostatic equilibrium, where anything that break ranks is always already absorbed by the
mechanisms of diversity management.

PHOTO CREDITS :
Fig. 1: Crystallized gallium. Photo: TMV.
Fig. 2: Crystallized gypsum. Photo : Csar Menor Salvn.

Fig. 3 : Auguste Comte, Trait lmentaire de gomtrie analytique deux et trois dimensions, Paris, Carilian-Goeury and V.
Dalmont, 1843, p. 114. Simplified diagram. (J. Michalet).
Fig. 4: The double-helix structure of DNA, drawing: Odile Crick, in Nature 171 (1953), p. 737.
Fig. 5: Transductive and intensive differences (E. Alloa / J. Michalet)
Fig. 6: Second sensorimotor homonculus. Wilder Penfield and Theodore Rasmussen, The Cerebral Cortex of Man, New York,
Macmillan, 1950, pp. 214-215 (Modified by Russ Dewey).
Fig. 7: Tobacco Mosaic Virus (TMV). Visualization by Behance / Thomas Splettstoesser.

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