SARAH CHOUKAH /// Gilbert Simondon and Bio-Hacking

Published

This conversation is the first one I recorded for Archipelago (hence the not-so-great quality of the sound, sorry!). In the first part of the discussion, Sarah and I attempt to introduce the philosophy of Gilbert Simondon through his concepts of individuation, allagmatic, milieu, the body as “always more than one.” His work is important to us as Sarah explains because it went from a metaphysics of “being” to one of “becoming,” allowing things not to have an essence, but rather to be involved in the process of their individuation. In the second part of the conversation, I ask questions to Sarah about her activity of bio-hacker that her knowledge of Simondon’s philosophy inform on a daily basis in the democratization of means of bio-molecular modifications in which she is involved. This conversation can be associated — that’s the appropriate word! — to the Funambulist Paper entitled “Of Associated Milieus” written by Sarah and referenced below.

Sarah Choukah is a Montreal-based researcher and doctoral student in the field of communications, at Université de Montréal. Her current fieldwork is situated within participatory and open milieus of cultural exchange, expressed as technologically, socially and biologically informed configurations of the living and the non-living. Sarah draws much of her inspiration from communication and media theories, semiotics, French pragmatic sociology, anthropology, as well as from science and technology studies and philosophy.

WEBSITES:

– http://schoukah.com
– http://genspace.org

REFERENCE ARTICLES ON THE FUNAMBULIST:

– “Episode 01: For an Allagmatic Architecture: Introduction to the Work of Gilbert Simondon
– “Episode 02: The Citizen Crafts(wo)man: Simondon After Marx & Spinoza
– “Episode 03: Topological Life: The World Can’t Be Fathomed in Plans and Sections
– “Episode 04: Nature Does Make Jumps: The Simondonian Definition of Life after Spinoza and Darwin
– “Episode 05: Of Associated Milieus by Sarah Choukah” (Sarah’s Funambulist Paper)
– “Episode 06: Transindividuation and Contagion of the Crowds After Tarde’s Sociology
– “Episode 07: The Individuation of Bodying: Simondon as Read by Erin Manning

REFERENCE BOOKS:

– Gilbert Simondon, L’individuation a la lumiere des notions de forme et d’information, Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1963.
– Gilbert Simondon, Du mode d’existence des objets techniques, Paris: Aubier, 2001.
– Muriel Combes, Gilbert Simondon and the Philosophy of the Transindividual, Cambridge, MIT Press, 2013.