Abstract
If any individual is determined by its affects as they are catalyzed in the technicities it unfolds, then one can no longer speak of posthumanism or transhumanism but of transaffectivity. Among genetic, epigenetic, and epiphylogenetic elements, there unfolds a play of intensive material informational exchange that determines both the structural and operational affects of any entity. Hence, evolution returns to its original Latin meaning, namely from the term evolutio: to unfold. Contrary to the logic of the survival of the fittest, unfolding does not dictate in advance which forms come forth, but instead, it determines which of them are not viable. In other words, it is the condition that brings forward a new world, one that is viable through the very differentials that determine the condition, and not the other way around. In this paper I will examine how structurally coupled individuals unfold an intensive continuum where there is no natural selection prescribing any outcome, but a continuous natural drift. The affective potentials that produce and are produced in the technicities of the drifted unfolding do not need to be the best, but simply good enough. Put succinctly, evolution, or more precisely, individuation, is satisficing rather than optimizing. Love—human, machinic, everything in between—and not Darwinian struggle or opposition is what determines evolution: not an affective diminution but instead an affirmative, transaffective amplification, where any individual structurally coupled with another brings forth a world through an aberrant nuptial, not because it must but simply because it can.
Original language | English |
---|---|
Pages (from-to) | 76-85 |
Number of pages | 10 |
Journal | Journal of Posthuman Studies |
Volume | 4 |
Issue number | 1 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 2020 |
Bibliographical note
Green Open Access added to TU Delft Institutional Repository 'You share, we take care!' - Taverne project https://www.openaccess.nl/en/you-share-we-take-careOtherwise as indicated in the copyright section: the publisher is the copyright holder of this work and the author uses the Dutch legislation to make this work public.
Keywords
- Structural coupling
- technicity
- individuation
- ethology
- epiphylogenetics