• Process and Individuation
• Mark Hansen (bio)

I have been reading and writing about Gilbert Simondon for more than two decades and have, no doubt like many others, more than occasionally wondered when translations of his two major works would finally appear. Over the years, I had heard tell of disputes among publishers, of a certain reticence on the part of Simondon's heirs to move forward, and other, related bits of unverified information, and still I wondered why such fundamentally important and original texts continued to be inaccessible to English readers and writers. With others, I watched and waited as English language discussions of Simondon, from Brian Massumi's engagements in several essays during the 1990s to translations of key secondary texts like Muriel Combes's Gilbert Simondon and the Philosophy of the Transindividual (2013, originally published in French in 1999) appeared in English; as conferences and journal issues were dedicated to Simondon; and as evidence continued to mount that this was, indeed, a major thinker with whom English language scholars were eager to engage.

That time of our collective wonder has now arrived. Supplementing the 2017 English version of On the Mode of Existence of Technical Objects (from the boutique press Univocal), an excellent translation by Cécile Malaspina and John Rogove, the publication of the English version of Simondon's philosophical masterpiece, Individuation in Light of the Notions of Form and Information, means that English speakers will finally have access to the entirety of Simondon's two theses, still by any standard the fundament of his philosophical contribution. One can only applaud the publisher's decision to issue Simondon's masterpiece in two volumes, with volume 2 dedicated to the important supplementary texts associated with the project over the years and including Simondon's revolutionary discussion of information ("Form, Information, and Potentials"). The translator, Taylor Adkins, should be thanked for taking on this massive project and rendering Simondon's sometimes cumbersome prose in readable and lively English. Now that total access has been assured, the key question will be what such access—at this point in time—will bring. How will English readers and writers engage Simondon now that they can do so with full knowledge of the vast scope of his philosophical interrogation of individuation?

Before speculating on this question, let me mention some incidental details of the longer publication history of Simondon's work which have already exercised a decisive impact on his reception in France and beyond, and which can help us understand, by example, how such details can be consequential, and also can help guide our own contemporary turn (or return) to Simondon. Two details stand out in particular. First, Simondon's study of technical objects (METO) was published in 1958 and caused quite a stir in French intellectual circles at the time. When, subsequently, the first half of his major thesis (the thesis on individuation) was published in 1964, its concerns (physical and vital individuation) seemed out of sync with METO's exhuberant call for a new social contract between humans and machines. Other than the occasion for a few weighty though piecemeal appropriations (largely in the form of footnotes) by Gilles Deleuze in his own theses from the late 1960s, Simondon's ontogenesis of individuation largely fell on deaf ears. This situation remained the case until 1989, when the second half of Simondon's major thesis, the portion devoted to social and collective individuation, was finally published. This second publication event set off a new wave of interest in Simondon's philosophy, including an international conference in 1992 and the inauguration of the critical effort to think together, and perhaps indeed to reconcile, the two theses and the two lines of thinking they each inaugurate: on the one hand, a thinking of ontogenesis as individuation across levels from the physical to the collective (and including the technical); on the other, a thinking of human-technical cooperation that, while acknowledging...

• 工艺与个性化
• 马克·汉森（生物）

我阅读和写作有关吉尔伯特·西蒙登（Gilbert Simondon）已有20多年了，毫无疑问，与其他许多人一样，我偶尔也想知道他的两本主要作品的译本何时最终出现。多年以来，我听说过出版商之间的纠纷，西蒙登的继承人前进的步伐以及其他相关的未经验证的信息，但我仍然想知道为什么如此重要和原始的文本继续存在英语读者和作家无法访问。从1990年代Brian Massumi在几篇论文中的写作到Muriel Combes的Gilbert Simondon和Transindividual Philosophy等主要中学论文的翻译，我都和其他人一起观看并等待西门登（Simondon）的英语讨论。（2013年，最初于1999年以法文出版）以英文出现；由于会议和期刊问题专门针对西蒙登；随着越来越多的证据表明，这确实是英语学者渴望与之互动的主要思想家。

我们集体奇迹的时代已经到来。补充2017年英文版的《技术对象的存在方式》（来自精品出版社Univocal），塞西尔·马拉皮纳（CécileMalaspina）和约翰·罗格夫（John Rogove）的出色翻译，是西蒙顿哲学杰作《英文的个人化》的英文版发行。形式与信息，这意味着说英语的人最终将可以使用西蒙登的全部两个论点，无论从任何标准上来说，仍然都是他的哲学贡献的基础。一个人只能为出版商决定发行两卷西蒙登的杰作而表示赞赏，而第二卷则致力于多年来与该项目相关的重要补充文本，其中包括西蒙登对信息的革命性讨论（“形式，信息和潜力”）。译者泰勒·阿德金斯（Taylor Adkins）承担了这一庞大的项目，并用可读性强，活泼的英语呈现了西蒙登有时繁琐的散文。现在已经确保了总访问权限，关键的问题将是在当前时间访问什么内容-会带来。现在，英语读者和作家将如何与西蒙登进行接触，因为他们可以充分了解西蒙登对个人化的哲学质疑的广度？

在思考这个问题之前，让我先谈一谈西蒙登较长的出版历史的一些偶然细节，这些细节已经对他在法国及其他地区的接待产生了决定性的影响，并且可以帮助我们举例说明这些细节如何成为现实。因此，也可以帮助引导我们自己的当代转折（或返回）到西蒙登。特别是有两个细节。首先，西蒙登（Simondon）对技术对象的研究（METO）于1958年发表，在当时引起了法国知识界的极大轰动。随后，当他的主要论文（关于个性化的论文）的上半年于1964年发表时，它的关注点（身体和生命的个性化）似乎与METO不同步。强烈要求在人与机器之间建立新的社会契约。从1960年代后期开始，吉尔斯·德勒兹（Gilles Deleuze）在他自己的论文中提出了一些虽重而零散的拨款（主要以脚注的形式），但西蒙登个人化的本体论在很大程度上充耳不闻。这种情况一直保持到1989年，直到西蒙登的主要论文的后半部分，即致力于社会和集体个性化的部分终于出版。这是第二次出版活动，引起了人们对西蒙登哲学的新兴趣，其中包括1992年的一次国际会议以及他们共同创立的两个论点和两条思路的开创性努力。 ： 一方面，本体论的思考是从身体到集体（包括技术）的各个层面的个体化；另一方面，是人类技术合作的思想，同时承认...