Organism-Oriented Ontology

Audronė Žukauskaitė is Chief Researcher in the Department of Contemporary Philosophy at the Lithuanian Culture Research Institute. Her publications include From Biopolitics to Biophilosophy (2016, in Lithuanian) and Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari’s Philosophy: The Logic of Multiplicity (2011, in Lithuanian). She co-edited Life in the Posthuman Condition: Critical Responses to the Anthropocene (Edinburgh University Press, 2023), Interrogating Antigone in Postmodern Philosophy and Criticism, (Oxford University Press, 2010), Deleuze and Beckett, (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015) and Resisting Biopolitics: Philosophical, Political and Performative Strategies, (Routledge, 2016).

• Introduction: Towards an Organism-Oriented OntologyThe Thinking of the OrganicAutopoietic SystemsOrganism-Oriented OntologyOutline of ChaptersGilbert Simondon: From Ontology to Ontogenesis Physical Individuation: Transduction Biological Individuation: The Membrane Psychical Individuation: The Transindividual Conclusion Raymond Ruyer: Organic Consciousness Morphogenesis: Between Preformationism and Finalism Equipotentiality Types of Forms, Types of Consciousnesses Self-Survey without a SelfConclusion Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari’s Philosophy of Life Individuation as Differentiation The Deconstruction of an Organism The Brain: Between the Mental and the Cerebral Conclusion Catherine Malabou: Plasticity of Reason Plasticity and Potentiality Damasio: From the Neuronal to the Mental Malabou: Between the Neuronal and the Mental Epigenesis and Reason Conclusion General Organology: Between Organism and Machine Simondon on Technical Objects Stiegler’s General Organology Hui’s Cosmotechnics Conclusion Planetary Organism The Gaia Hypothesis Gaia and the Theory of Autopoiesis Gaia and Actor-Network Theory Gaia and the Theory of Sympoiesis Conclusion Hybrid Organism Sympoiesis as ‘Making-With’ Immunity and Contagion Hybrids and Chimeras Conclusion Conclusion: Organism-Oriented Ontology Bibliography Index

This is an extraordinary book. Žukauskaitė has marshaled the resources of a wide range of contemporary thinkers— Simondon, Ruyer, Canguilhem, Deleuze and Guattari, Malabou, Stiegler, Latour and Haraway—to develop an organism-oriented ontology that is focused not only on the body but, more profoundly, on the multiple processes of individuation that constitute the body. Žukauskaitė is charting a path to the philosophy of the future that the rest of us can only follow.