Psychic and Collective Individuation

... Yet, his interdisciplinary approach was united by a unique and original theory of individuation, reconceptualised as an ongoing, never ending process, in which the individual serves as a mediation between two disparate orders of magnitude. In other words, Simondon’s world view is not static, but dynamic. He sees the world not in terms of fixed principles, but in terms of process. The individual beings which fill the world are therefore merely a singular phase of the ongoing process of individuation.

The first two stages of this process are physical individuation and biological (or vital) individuation. Physical individuation is the operation that determines the formation of non-living matter, and vital individuation determines the development of living organisms. To Simondon, the individual produced by this process of individuation (whether that be an individual crystal, a plant, or an animal) is always a relation; in particular a relation between different orders of magnitude and the milieu("Milieu can include everything from the physical structures of a location, to the activities a person experiences, to patterns of social behavior." From Christine Serva at Study.com) of which the individual is a part. As I summarised previously:

“This idea of a co-individuation between the individual and the milieu in which it exists is perhaps one of the most important ideas in Simondon’s philosophy. No individual can exist without the milieu of which it is a part; a milieu that arises at the same time as the individual from the process of individuation. Thus, we start to see a concrete example of how an individual should only be seen as a partial result of the transductive operation or process that brings it into being; it is not the beings which are formed that are primary, but the process of individuation itself.” (Bluemink, 2020)

Simondon uses the theory of vital individuation to account for the development of living beings, using plants as a paradigmatic example. However, his theory also extends into the more complex world of human existential understanding and the development of collective systems of interaction: the dual processes of psychic and collective individuation. ...

Individuation in the Creation of Psycho-Social Systems

Simondon sees that the biological individual arises as the resolution of a problematic (maybe the survival of the small-magnitude first self-generators?) that cannot be resolved through physical individuation alone. It requires the development of vital individuation as a new stage in the ongoing individuation process. Similarly, the appearance of a psychic reality, or a psyche (a p-individual), must arise from an unresolved problematic (maybe large-magnitude survival of massively-multicelluar organism?) within the biological individual (an m-individual). As he writes:

“The psyche continues vital individuation in a being that, in order to resolve its own problematic, is itself forced to intervene as an element of the problem through its action as subject; the subject can be conceived as the unity of the being qua individuated living being and qua being that is the representative of its action through the world as an element and dimension of the world.” (Simondon, 2020, 9)

So, just as the living being comes into existence through the creation of an interior which serves as the partial resolution of a problematic within the physical being (and acts as a source of new individuation processes), the psychic individual comes into being through the creation of a subject-world distinction which denotes a new kind of interiority within the living individual: that of the psyche. The psychic individual is therefore defined by its conscious intervention in the problematic that constitutes its continual individuation; i.e. a human being, as a psychic individual, is consciously making decisions that will affect its becoming. However, the psychic being, for Simondon, is not of a separate distinct nature to the biological/vital individual. Psychic individuation is merely an individuation process that serves to perpetuate the living being. (for humans, this effort to perpetuate involves co-constructing social/cultural knowledge.) ...

However, Simondon goes further to claim that psychic individuation is not a complete process; the psychic being can never fully resolve the problematic that defines its existence on its own. The preindividual realm of potentials within the psychic being provides the condition for the creation of the collective. Indeed, this collective and the individual are not separate entities but are unified in their mutual individuation. Just as the crystal becomes a physical individual through the creation of a supersaturated milieu which serves as the source of its individuation, the psychic being is constantly part of a collective milieu of other psychic beings, through which they form a collective unity:

“individuation turns the individual into a group individual that is associated with the group through the pre-individual reality that the individual bears, a pre-individual reality that, paired with the pre-individual reality of other individuals, individuates into a collective unit. Collective and psychical individuations are both reciprocal with respect to one another.” (ibid.)

So, in simple terms, we might say that when tensions arise within the psychic individual (anxiety, boredom etc.) they cannot fully resolve themselves without a mutual recognition of the collective. Similarly, tensions between the individual and collective (guilt, shame, etc.) can also only be resolved mutually. Here it seems that Simondon is drawing nearer to Hegelianism in that the self-consciousness of the psychic individual is inherently tied into the recognition of the other. However, Simondon’s rationality is perhaps better understood in Deleuzian terms: we might say that it is the preindividual intensities which generate the sensations and affects that are at the core of our psychic being, yet these intensities are never resolved within the psychic individual; psychic individuation attempts to resolve itself within the collective structures and relations that it is part of. The form of mutual recognition Simondon uses also places a more crucial importance on the idea of interiority and exteriority. Therefore, we can see that psychic individuation is interior to the individual whereas collective individuation is exterior.

...

In Technics and Time, 3: Cinematic Time and the Question of Malaise (2010), Stiegler moves beyond this philosophical-anthropological understanding of time to provide a reading of Simondon’s work that highlights the importance of individuation in thinking and acting politically. He argues that psychic and collective individuation, the processes that Simondon sees as necessary for the formation of groups, can only take place through the adoption of a common past. As Stiegler writes, “this adoption process rests on the possibility—opened by epiphylogenesis (i.e., by technical memory)—of gaining access to a past that was never lived, neither by someone whose past it was nor by any biological ancestor” (Stiegler, 2010, 90). Nevertheless, although it was ‘never lived’, this common past is the condition of the possibility for a collective future. Simply put, it is only through the process of adopting a common past that can we collectivise ourselves to project a common future. As Stiegler summarises: “Connection to the future, which does found groups, obviously requires them to share a common past, but this past can only be common through adoption, concretized only through projection” (Stiegler, 2010, 89). The processes of adoption and projection are, therefore, part of the overarching psychic-collective individuation process that connects individuals together through the idea of a shared past and future.

Unification of the We

Stiegler’s utilisation of Simondon’s work can therefore be seen as a way of understanding the unification of multiple individuals into groups with shared aims, ideals, and values. Here Stiegler builds on Heidegger’s phenomenological language to call this process the unification of the We. He writes that: “The unification process of a We is an identification, an organization, and a unification of diverse elements of the community’s past as they project its future” (Stiegler, 2010, 93). That is to say, it is the process through which individuals create their own individual identities in relation to their shared collective identities. For example, in Marxist revolutionary politics the idea of the ‘proletariat’ is a unification of a We founded on the adoption of a particular past (class struggle) which allows for the projection of a collective future (socialism). However, what is crucial here is that the unified past only exists phantasmagorically: “it assumes that this past of the We was never actually lived by this or any We, nor by anyone currently living, nor by any of their ancestors” (ibid.). That is, for the I to collectivise itself into a We, it must be capable of adopting an imagined past in order to project a common future of which it will not be a part. To see this in action we only need to look at the regular use of collective pronouns to describe past events not lived by the individual, or future events that will not be lived by the individual e.g. “we won the war” or “we’re going to win the cup.” These events are phantasmagorical, but they are adopted by an individual in order to form its identity.

On this note, Stiegler claims I and We are individuation processes in the Simondonian sense. He writes that:

“the individual, whether psychological or social ... is an incomplete process of a metastable equilibrium ... But these two individuation processes—these two metastable equilibria—are two facets of a singular reality that can be apprehended after being analyzed separately but that must then be re-assembled in order to be understood within the context of the unique processuality that both includes and characterizes them: the individual psyche is originarily psychosocial, and the social is not an ‘intersubjective’ aggregate of already constituted individuals. The individuation of the I is that of the We, and vice versa.” (Stiegler, 2010, 94)

What this means is that psychic individuation and collective individuation are two sides of the same coin; one cannot exist without the other. The processes of adoption and projection individuate a group identity which simultaneously individuates a personal identity. However, as Simondon showed, the concept of identity is never fixed, it is always part of an ongoing individuation process. Therefore, this reciprocal dynamic between the psychic and the collective is at the heart of Stiegler’s politics as much as it is Simondon’s.

The Transindividual

... What is important for Simondon is that the dual psychic/collective individuation process creates a new category which traverses the psychic and collective realm, this he calls the transindividual. Simondon claims that: “Collective and psychical individuations are both reciprocal with respect to one another; they make it possible to define a category of the transindividual, which attempts to account for the systematic unity of interior (psychical) individuation and exterior (collective) individuation” (Simondon, 2020, 9). The transindividual is therefore not merely that which serves as the connection between the psychic individual and the collective individual, but that which appears as “a relation interior to the individual (defining its psyche) and a relation exterior to the individual (defining the collective): the transindividual unity of two relations is thus a relation of relations” (Combes, 2016, 26). In other words, the transindividual is the relational world that constitutes the connection between the psychic individual and the collective. ...

Life is a waterfall

We're one in the river and one again after the fall

This metaphor interpreted through Simondon might be describes in this way: The river before the waterfall, where the water is all together and continuous, is the preindividuated milieu. The water falls over the waterfall, it separates and individuates into unique water drops. When the water combines together after the waterfall, the drops de-individuate and combine back into the whole river again.

A general pattern, albeit one never strictly maintained, may be observed within the confusing array of terms Nietzsche employed to describe the workings of the soul. Drives, instincts, or affects constituted an irreducible substratum (which is only to say that by definition we are incapable of discerning their probable components). Feelings or emotions form the next level . . . Thoughts form the third tier. (55)

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The “self ” qua atomic substratum of faculties and desires is both a philosophical and “common-sense” fiction, Nietzsche argues, from which it would be better to rid ourselves: “There exists neither ‘spirit,’ nor reason, nor thinking, nor consciousness, nor soul, nor will, nor truth: all are fictions that are of no use” (Will to Power par. 480). However, the unitary self to which we may aspire via the yoking of our multiple desires and goals to one preeminent, tyrannical yearning or aspiration is something quite different, something which Nietzsche does not advocate leaving behind. Zarathustra is emblematic for us here: “A thousand goals have there been so far, for there have been a thousand peoples. Only the yoke for the thousand necks is still lacking: the one goal is lacking. Humanity still has no goal. But tell me, my brothers, if humanity still lacks a goal—is humanity itself not still lacking too?” (Nietzsche, Zarathustra I, “Of the Thousand and One Goals”). Insofar as each individual is also made up of a thousand goals (her competing drives), the philosophical point holds here, as well. The individual, too, requires a single overarching goal or desire that will give an aristocratic or classically artistic form to the rest of her drives. Otherwise, she would be a chaotic jumble capable of accomplishing nothing. ...