Transindividuation

A process of co-individuation in which the “I” and the “We” mutually transform one another through an artefactual preindividual milieu, constituting the basis of all social and psychic transformation.

Origin: Disbelief and Discredit, 2004

Transindividuation is a concept developed by Bernard Stiegler out of Gilbert Simondon's transindividual. In Simondon, the transindividual designates a relation that is at once interior to the individual (defining their psyche) and exterior (defining the collective) — a “relation of relations” that constitutes the link between the psychic individual and the group.

Stiegler enriches this concept by integrating the technical dimension into it. The preindividual milieu in which transindividuation takes place is intrinsically artefactual: technics is that whose becoming metastabilises psychic and collective co-individuation. It is the “third strand” of what Simondon thought only as a “psycho-social” individuation. The term “transindividuation” thus designates this metastable psycho-socio-technical dynamic.

Transindividuation rests neither on the individualised “I” nor on the intersubjective “We”, but on the very process by which the two co-constitute and mutually transform one another. It is the basis of all social transformation — and hence the central stake of education and of politics.

Conceptual necessity: This concept is the antidote to disindividuation. When technologies short-circuit transindividuation (social networks, recommendation AI), they “sever psychic individuals from the long circuits of individuation”. Civilisational therapy aims to restore the conditions of transindividuation.

What this concept is not

Not a collective fusion: Transindividuation does not abolish singularity but produces it with the collective.
Not a communitarian idealism: The process can fail, produce disindividuation, be short-circuited.
Not independent of technics: In Stiegler, there is no transindividuation without an artefactual milieu.
Romanticism of the “We”: Not every collective is transindividuating — masses and crowds can disindividuate.
Naïve technophilia: Technics conditions transindividuation but can also destroy it (pharmacology).
Abstraction: The concept demands to be embodied in concrete practices, institutions and policies.

Examples

Learning a language

Language is an artefactual preindividual milieu par excellence. In learning it, the child individuates psychically (becoming a singular speaking subject) while participating in a linguistic collective that transforms along with them. A typical transindividuation through the long circuits of education.

Collective artistic creation

Jazz improvisation: each musician individuates through their singular playing while co-constituting the collective of the group. The technical milieu (instruments, acoustics, recording) conditions this transindividuation. The “I” and the “We” emerge together.

Open-source communities

Wikipedia contributors or Linux developers: each individuates through their singular contribution while participating in a commons that exceeds and transforms them. The code and the documentation are the technical milieu of this transindividuation.

counter-exampleCounter-example: Algorithmic social networks

Recommendation algorithms isolate individuals within filter bubbles, short-circuit the long circuits, and prevent the co-constitution of I/We. The economy of services “deprives the psychic individual of any opportunity to participate in collective individuation”. This is disindividuation.

The concept in detail

Psychic individuation

First pole of the process: the constitution of individual singularity. The psychic individual is formed not in isolation but in and through its relation to the collective. Its “I” emerges from a shared preindividual ground and singularises itself through creative adoption.

Collective individuation

Second pole: the constitution of the “We”. The collective is neither the sum of the individuals (inter-individual) nor that which determines them (intra-social), but is formed through the participation of psychic individuals in a common becoming. The collective is itself in individuation.

Transindividual (Simondon)

Source concept: the transindividual is the relation that unites the psychic to the collective, “a relation of relations” that constitutes the common relational world. It is distinguished from the inter-individual (individuals make the group) and the intra-social (the group makes the individuals).

Artefactual preindividual milieu

Stiegler's contribution: the preindividual milieu — that ground of not-yet-individuated potentialities — is technical. Artefacts (tertiary retentions) constitute the milieu in which transindividuation takes place. Technics is not exterior to the process but is its very condition.

Threefold individuation

Stieglerian reformulation: individuation is always threefold — psychic, technical and social. General organology analyses these three dimensions and their transductive relations. Transindividuation is the dynamic process of this threefold individuation.

Long circuits of individuation

Transindividuation requires time, attention, mediations. The “long circuits” (education, culture, generational transmission) enable a deep individuation. Technologies that short-circuit these processes produce disindividuation.