Machinic Phylum and Architecture

Abstract

The chapter draws on the anti-substantivist and anti-hylomorphic legacy of two significant Deleuze and Guattari’s interlocutors: Raymond Ruyer and Gilbert Simondon. Ruyer vehemently opposed the logic of mechanicism with- out regressing to (active) vitalism. His masterpiece Neofinalism, yet to be fully appreciated in architectural circles, is an ode to multiplicity or ‘absolute form’. The title is to be read as a challenge to the hegemony of the step-by-step causation and partes-extra-partes mereology. According to Ruyer, non-locality is the key, not only to the question of subjectivity, but to the problem of life itself. Simon- don too shies away from the metaphysics of presence. For him, the process of individuation cannot be grasped on the basis of the fully formed individual. In other words, the knowledge of individuation is the individuation of knowledge. Simondon’s highest ambition in On the Mode of Existence of Technical Objects was to integrate culture and technics (tekhne). The conviction that culture need not be antagonistic to technology is particularly pertinent to the ecologies of architecture. In the second half of the chapter, the affordance theory meets contemporary neurosciences.