Organism-Oriented Ontology

by Audronė Žukauskaitė

Discussing different aspects of the philosophy of Gilbert Simondon, Raymond Ruyer, Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, and including some contemporary thinkers, such as Catherine Malabou, Bernard Stiegler, Bruno Latour, and Donna J. Haraway, Audronė Žukauskaitė argues that all these threads can be seen as precursors to organism-oriented ontology.

184 pages, Hardcover

Published August 15, 2023

About the author

Audronė Žukauskaitė - filosofė, humanitarinių mokslų (filosofijos krypties) daktarė, Kultūros, filosofijos ir meno instituto vyresnioji mokslo darbuotoja. Knygų „Anapus signifikanto principo" (2001) ir „Anamorfozės: nepamatinės filosofijos problemos" (2005) autorė, rinkinio „Viskas, ką norėjote sužinoti apie Žižeką, bet nedrįsote paklausti Lacano" (2005) vertėja ir sudarytoja.

Reviews

[endrju]

Žukauskaitė both begins and ends the book with a very provocative claim that the organic is the condition for philosophy and that philosophy has to be organic. Such an organic condition of philosophy is to be found in Simondon, Ruyer, Deleuze and Guattari, Stiegler, Malabou, Latour and Haraway, all of whom receive a chapter in the book and are seen as precursors to "organism-oriented philosophy". Highly questionable, especially when it comes to Deleuze and Guattari. What I found lacking is, since the author tries to develop "organism-oriented philosophy" in order to develop a critique of contemporary biopolitics, an exploration of what constitutes biopolitics - that is, Foucault's understanding of life and life-shaping forces that is biopolitics. Furthermore, I was surprised to find no references to either Povinelli's Geontologies: A Requiem to Late Liberalism or Thacker's After Life, both of which would make great interlocutors. The former for showing how very difference between the Life and Non-Life are constituted through power relations of "late liberalism", the latter for showing the way beyond philosophy's "biocentrism". Both of these books and issues they raise are great challenges to any "organism-oriented philosophy".