Definition of Individuation

What is Individuation?

Individuation is a term that Gilbert Simondon (1924-1989) introduced to give a name to the process by which disparate forces working across very distinct registrars come together to give rise to the emergence of something distinct. No individual thing simply pre-exists. All things individuate: ideas, processes, humans, species, tornadoes, social movements. The (creative) question is how. 

The fact that reality is composed of processes does not mean that it is all fluid and amorphous. Processes progressively individuate. All creativity involves novel individuations—novel ontogenesis. In technical terms, an individuation “is the integration and resolution of a distributed and differential systems, that is, a system in which multiple processes interact such that  qualitative changes in the behavior of the system occur at singular points in the relation to their rates of change” (John Protevi). 

The logic of integration and resolution of distributed processes is key. We, for example, as humans, individuate via the integration and resolution of bacteria, social forces, tools, environments, cellular processes, rituals, dynamics of embodiment, etc. This process is ongoing; individuation is ongoing; it is not a process that comes to an end: The making and the made always co-exist; they are not sequential. That we have a stable sense of identity is because of the ongoing stabilizing dynamics of how we creatively individuate as human individuals. 

It is important to sense that there is an integration of individuations. Given the distributed nature of such processes, we are of a world-in-the-making. 

Creativity is the invention of novel processes of individuation and the stabilization processes of those individuations. Given that individuations involve distributed and differential systems, it is always a collective, collaborative, emergent process in which there is no way to assign a final authorship. All creativity is without a “creator” and all living is multiplicity that becomes individuated in ways that exceed and add to the multiplicity. 

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Another Way to Describe Individuation?

Rather than starting with individuals and discreet things as givens – whether it be people, chairs, forests, or code – we need to understand them in light of the creative processes which gave rise to them, allows them to stay in existence, and transitions them into other states.

From the perspective of creativity everything is a process of coming into being, stabilizing, and eventually transforming into other forms of being. 

Creative Processes produce unique singular events. These can be said to individualize or better yet “individuate”. 

Everything that comes into being individuates. 

Organizations, living beings, large-scale events, weather systems – these all follow dynamic creative processes to individuate. 

The focus on the “end product” – the stable state in the processes gives us a false sense of ourselves and other things as something that is just there – as if we were always already individuals. But complex creative forces individuate us out and in relation to a dynamic milieu (ecosystem) in an emergent manner. 

No matter how stable something is, it is an ongoing dynamic creative process of individuation situated in a dynamic inseparable milieu. 

We are not individuals in the sense that we are autonomous, independent, entities with a discreet essence. 

But, we are individuals (as are organizations, ecosystems, and social movements) in the sense that we do individuate – we do come into being via creative processes that individualize us out of and in relation to a dynamic assemblage/ecosystem/milieu. 

Some of the key questions in regards to creativity are how – how do things individuate and what is their agency in this process. 

But what is important to avoid is assuming that creativity is a thing that some individuals uniquely possess – and then and only then asking the (false) question: what is creativity? To ask “what is creativity?” starting at this point leads to a whole series of false problems (e.g. where is creativity in the brain?) and equally false practices.

Creative processes are an inherent part of all reality that gives rise to multiple scales of individuations – from each of us to social systems, to species – all of which then come to have agency in an dynamic intra-dependent manner in these dynamic emergent processes.

The question of creativity is one of individuation.

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What Does Individuation Have to Do With Creative Processes?

The ongoing creative processes by which an aspect of a particular organized relational system becomes a distinct entity within that larger processual network. Individuals, systems, organizations, processes, trends, movements, groups, etc. all emerge from, change, and persist as individuations arising from relational networks (assemblages). Where concepts like individual suggest both a radical separation, wholeness, and uniqueness – individuation as a concept gives us a way to consider how all things come into being, persist, and transform. We have shifted from a search for the fixed and essential to a creative question of how any form that is distinct individuates (is an emergent achievement of a dynamic configuration). 

With the processes of individuation, the boundary between "self" and "environment" is not a fixed line but an emergent property of the density of mutually determining relations. Importantly it allows us to consider on an equal footing how individuals, groups, organizations and cultures are all equally processes of individuation – without resorting to the linear, essentialist and additive logic of: individuals are the given, and then they come together via by choice or force to make up groups – but the individual is always there at the beginning and at the end (think of the role the individual plays in the classical western political theories of Rousseau or Hobbes).

See: Creativity, IDA, Change-in-kind, worldmaking