I am investigating the notion of affect as elaborated by Baruch Spinoza (17th century Dutch philosopher – 1632-1677) and, drawing from Spinoza, also by Gilles Deleuze (20h century French philosopher – 1925-1995) who has written extensively about this subject in relation
to the constitution of subjectivities. The general framework I am following is given by the critique of current forms of the unelaborated concept of ‘emotion’ in user experience design studies, which I am inclined to replace by ‘affect’. This term underlines the coagulation of different levels of production, reproduction and control concerning regimes of signs, circulation of knowledge and affectus/(affectatio), language and desire, the chemical
and neurological composition of subjectivities and so on.
I also will address these different levels of production and reproduction through what is elaborated by early twentieth-century French Philosopher Gilbert Simondon as ‘transindividuality’ or ‘transindividuation’. What we describe as ‘the individual’ in the works of economists and philosophers in 19th century is eclipsed by a social imaginary. Such a social imaginary is not only collectivity, but more importantly the point of intersection between collectivity, or social relations, and the individual. In today’s world, the two have become a strict binary: either we think in terms of the individual, making it both an analytic and evaluative center of our thought, or we affirm an all-encompassing collective, which washes the individual away. Today’s masses are connected by new forms of media, and are engaged in different relations of economic dependence and domination from those that haunted the nineteenth century. Similarly, our isolation and fragmentation have been transformed as well. Technology and economic relations have made it more and more possible to be alone, to work and live without intersecting with others. The problem is not just that we lack any understanding of collectivity, but also that we lack any understanding of how individuality and collectivity affect and transform each other. The terms transindividuation or transindividuality are drawn most directly from the work of Gilbert Simondon, most notably his massive L’individuation à la lumière des notions de forme et d’information which encompasses both L’individuation et sa genese physic-biologique and L’individuation psychique et collective.
Simondon’s concept of transindividuality is framed by two general theses. The first is a radical break with the centrality of the individual in philosophical thought. Rather than assume that everything that exists must be an individual, that individuality is a principle that encompasses everything, Simondon argues that individuation must be thought of as process. Individuation is a process through which a pre-individual state, a state that is necessarily in tension or conflict, resolves itself, or is resolved into a process of individuation. Simondon understands this general relation to define physical, biological, psychic, and collective individuation, all of which individuate or are individuated differently. This problematic, or incomplete, nature of individuation explains Simondon’s second general thesis, one that is just as striking with respect to conventional wisdom. Simondon argues that psychic individuation, the individuation that constitutes a character, personality, or psyche, is not opposed to collective individuation, but rather is integral to it, and vice versa. It is because individuation is never complete, that the pre-individual sensations and affects which form the basis of our individuation never cohere, that psychic individuation must attempt to resolve itself in collective structures and relations. Transindividuation is the process by which the individual and collective are constituted. Simondon’s concept of transindividuation thus breaks with a longstanding binary that sees the relationship between individual and collective as a zero-sum game – seeking instead their mutual points of intersection and transformation.
I see here a progression from Betti Marenko’s work on how the production of subjectivities within a biopolitical /affective framework is mediated by psycho-pharmaceutical technologies (Marenko 2009a) and on the emotional entanglement that characterizes our relationship with objects, which she has reframed within a neo-animist paradigm (Marenko 2009b). I argue that we cannot look at design without first addressing how emotion itself is being designed as labor within the current new spirit of sociality that is created through the binary of collectivity or individuality described in the 19th century. In this sense the increasing emphasis on emotion in design reflects and reinforces what is currently at the core of late capitalism, that is, the shift to affect, knowledge, information and experience. Against this backdrop I refer to Bernard Stiegler’s ideas of psycho-power and the capture of attention. My intention is first to map the territory of what we mean by affect, as distinct from emotion (Spinoza and Deleuze). Finally, I will position these ideas in relation to designed objects and the process and practice of design, specifically in relation to what is known as emotion-driven design and offer a new paradigm by conceptualizing digital form and materiality as two reciprocal aspects of digital artifacts based on the perspectives from relevant disciplines including design, material culture and philosophy of technology. The conceptualization will emphasize the process of making, personal meanings, and socio-cultural values of digital artifacts, constructing a new theoretical framework for exploratory and critical research approaches. In the end I will discuss a proposal for form-driven interaction design research as a new approach to HCI with its focus on form and materiality aspects of digital artifacts based on the reflection of my theoretical propositions.