About the Concept
Understanding inseparability is approaching the notion of life from a multiplicity of different perspectives among other things starting from the principle stated by Canghuilem that life is inclusive of its study, hence thay cannot be separated and produce their set of norms. In this book Muriel Combes also brings forward the Deuleuzian assertion “Life becomes resistance when power takes life as its object.” She qualifies life as a productive a structure of information that she examines according to its application and its relationnal model.
Sources
- Muriel Combes – La vie inséparée (Vie et sujet au temps de la biopolitique), éd. Dittmar, 2011.
Life as resistance.
“toutes les fonctions du vivant sont ontongénétiques en une quelque mesure”(IGp.207) All the functions of life are source of ontogenesis explains Muriel Combes citing Simondon because they permit the resolution of problems engaging relations between disparate realities, such as biology and spirituality for example.
This normativity of life is a relational notion, not only determinated by its relation to the milieu, but furtermore produced by life itself, in a dynamic process. Muriel Combes differentiates here from an information system, such as what is called AI for example as the latter necessitates that reality conforms to its model of information.
Information is active and also it creates structures, “transindividuality is being born with, “co-(n)naître” […] through what is supplemental to oneself and others”. p.220 She refers to Simondon by saying: “the individual is alive as long as he continues to individualise! Psychisme in that sense is vital” Each gesture, each conduct engages the whole body coupled with the world”. Contrary to Cartesian views, Muriel Combes explains that Simondon states the the homogeneïty of the subject only exists because it is constantly perpetuating between being and operation.”
“Contrairement à Descartes qui dit-il substantialise le sujet, Simondon assure que l’homogénéité du sujet n’existe donc que parce que elle se perpétue entre être et opération. La connaissance s’effectue comme individuation p.216”
Action of the mind the 2 modalities for approaching the structure of the subject articulate in an action, an action of self implication that is both a knowledge operation and and a link to the trans-individual experience. “Ontogenesis is always in process and confronting the paradoxes that are brought by the anthropological Machine each one of us is confronted to the decision of reconducing it or not”
“L’ontogénèse est un évènement toujours en cours. Face aux paradoxes que met en branle la machine Anthropologique chacun est face à la décision de reconduire ce jeu ou d’essayer de l’interrompre.” p202
“On est ainsi conduit à reformuler dans de nouveaux termes la question du vitalisme : si la vie est devenir, c’est qu’elle n’est pas seulement un dépôt dont le vivant aurait à assurer la garde ; mais elle n’est rien d’autre que ce que ce vivant fait d’elle, en s’engageant, avec d’autres, dans son devenir actif, qui ne peut être que collectif, au sens d’une collectivité large où humains et non-humains sont ensemble impliqués à des degrés divers.”
« Il n’y a pas de résistance hors d’un réseau de relations de pouvoir ; il n’y a pas de relations de pouvoir sans résistances. »
Tree of Significance
- SYNONYM
- Relation
- ANTONYM
- binary, body-mind split
- HYPERNYM
- ontogenesis, life
- HYPONYM
- indivdualisation