"Gilbert Simondon's Philosophy": Cécile Malaspina in conversation with Ashley Woodward

Join us for an online discussion of the work of Gilbert Simondon (1924–1989), with two leading experts on his thought. Simondon asked how things — whether crystals, living organisms, or human beings — come to be the distinct individuals they are. His answer, which he called individuation, saw identity not as something fixed, but as an ongoing process of becoming. He applied the same thinking to technology, arguing that machines and technical objects are not mere tools but have their own evolving reality that deserves to be taken seriously. Simondon has been an important influence on thinkers including Gilles Deleuze, Bernard Stiegler, and Bruno Latour. Come and find out why his ideas feel so vital today — no prior knowledge required.

Cécile Malaspina is a faculty member at The School of Materialist Research. She is the author of An Epistemology of Noise (Bloomsbury, 2018), and the principal translator of Gilbert Simondon’s On the Mode of Existence of Technical Objects.

Ashley Woodward is a Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Dundee. He is co-Chair of the Society for European Philosophy, an executive member of the Friedrich Nietzsche Society, and an editor of Parrhesia: A Journal of Critical Philosophy. He co-edited the first volume on Simondon in English, Gilbert Simondon: Being and Technology (EUP, 2013), and contributed to The Idea and Practice of Philosophy in Gilbert Simondon (ed. Alioui et. al., Schwabe Verlag, 2024).

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