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On Modes of Existence as Technical Objects: Ontological Pluralism and Technodiversity - Global Philosophy
This article seeks to integrate the concept of “technodiversity” or “cosmotechnics,” initially developed by Yuk Hui, in the broader context of “ontological pluralism,” which in recent years has been condensed into reflections on the concept of “mode of existence.” To do so, it will start from On the Mode of Existence of Technical Objects by Gilbert Simondon, perhaps the first to place reflection on technology in the context of conscious ontological pluralism. The article unfolds using the arguments of Bernard Stiegler and Yuk Hui himself to criticize the following, interrelated aspects of Simondon’s proposal: the limitation, in the third part of the book, of the role of technology to one mode of existence among others; the postulation of a “pre-individual,” univocal, and indeterminate being that constrains his ontological pluralism; the choice to make magic, and therefore non-Western culture, the generic counterpart of this impersonal being, which is incompatible with the latest developments in anthropology. Instead, it will be argued that technology plays a “transcendental” role in the structuring of cosmologies (Stiegler), and that therefore modes of existence can be considered “technical objects” in their own right; and that technology itself is not univocal, but is always relative to a certain cosmology (Hui), an insight which must open up a ‘diplomatic’ approach. Once Simondon’s proposal is integrated with these insights, it once again becomes a crucial paradigm for the philosophy of technology, ontological pluralism, and anthropology.
