Videos by Pierluca D'Amato
Complete issues by Pierluca D'Amato
by Philosophy Kitchen - Rivista di filosofia contemporanea, Francesco Vitale, Pierluca D'Amato, Zornitsa Dimitrova, Gabriele Vissio, Emilia Marra, Federico Luisetti, Natascia Tosel, Prisca Amoroso, Gianluca De Fazio, Giulio Piatti, Carlo Molinar Min, and Veronica Cavedagna Il tema dell’impersonale costituisce il fulcro di un dibattito odierno forse sfuggente ma variame... more Il tema dell’impersonale costituisce il fulcro di un dibattito odierno forse sfuggente ma variamente presente in assi tematiche e ambiti di ricerca assai differenti. Si tratta, molto in generale, di un tentativo di rimettere in discussione la nozione di soggettività, antropologicamente circoscritta, per giungere a teorizzare una sorta di spazio impersonale, capace di fondare e articolare le linee dell’intero piano della realtà concretamente esperibile. Si potrebbe obiettare che un simile tema mantenga un’impostazione di tipo “metafisico”, intesa in senso negativo, come fautrice di una speculazione antiquata, piattamente astratta e slegata dalla contemporaneità. A questa obiezione, che tende a schivare con forse troppa leggerezza gli ammonimenti heideggeriani e derridiani – è possibile uscire dall’epoca della metafisica? O meglio, è possibile una filosofia che non sia per ciò stesso metafisica? – corrisponde un atteggiamento oggi ben radicato, che tende a svalutare il pensiero “puro”, considerato logoro e inadatto a cogliere le linee in cui si articola il mondo di oggi. Ora, è piuttosto facile rispondere a questa obiezione mostrando quanto un pensiero esplicitamente metafisico possa essere al contempo vigorosamente attuale: si prenda a titolo di esempio la figura di Gilles Deleuze, la cui riflessione scotista sull’univocità molteplice del reale finisce per chiamare in causa il problema della distribuzione dello (e nello) spazio politico. In effetti così interpretato il pensiero filosofico, lato sensu, anche il più distante dalla dimensione materiale della prassi, nell’atto stesso del suo porsi non può che implicare al contempo una concreta riflessione sulla realtà. Più precisamente – ed è l’ipotesi che vorremmo vagliare proponendovi il presente CFP – la filosofia teorica per eccellenza, la prote philosophia come pensiero della meraviglia e dell’astrazione, non è tale (“filosofia prima”) se non per la sua specifica capacità di cercare – a partire dai diversi ambiti del sapere – le ragioni e le modalità di questo primo incontro con il reale. Prendendo le mosse da una certa tradizione di pensiero, si tratterebbe allora di considerare come genuinamente “Metafisico”, e pertanto autenticamente filosofico, il tentativo di cogliere l’esperienza nel suo nascere. Significherebbe, in altre parole, approfondire la ricerca del fondamento immettendola in un processo che precede ogni polarità e che risale, appunto, al livello prettamente impersonale.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Papers by Pierluca D'Amato
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
La Deleuziana, 2016
The development of modern information and communication technologies has enabled the spread of to... more The development of modern information and communication technologies has enabled the spread of tools and procedures dedicated to the discretization of reality, already involving inconceivable and unprecedented swathes of informations. The diversity, volume and velocity of data has made possible a vast set of digital contents: this is not just a form of technical externalization, of data storage, or of symbolic representation, but also the tangible basis for a new form of power, 'algorithmic governmentality', which uses the mathematical analysis of this vast gathering of data to prescribe and proscribe particular concrete behaviours. Evaluating these procedures for the discretization of reality, together with processes of dividualization, data behaviourism and personal profiling, this article examines the complex of techniques applied to digital contents. The basis for this examination is here the Deleuzian concept of stratoanalysis: this will initially involve studying the f...
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Surveillance & Society, 2019
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Culture, Theory and Critique, 2019
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
As all philosophical concepts, also the concept of person constitutes itself referring to a parti... more As all philosophical concepts, also the concept of person constitutes itself referring to a particular problem.The analysis drafted by Marcel Mauss regarding the genesis of the aforementioned category permits to analyse the problematic nucleus to which such concept refers to, disclosing that it responds to the necessity of solving the ancient problem of the link between mind and body in a specific perspective. In this respect, bergsonian theory of images represents a solid attempt of passing not only the habitual solution of the prob- lem represented by the concept of person, but also the problem itself whereto refers.The deleuzian reading of Henri Bergson's theory leads him to define the impersonal and pre-individual field sketched out by Bergson as a plane of immanence, and this last as "a life".The ultimate aim of this paper is to analyse the nature of such plane and to suggest an interpretation of the latest Gilles Deleuze's piece of writing, L'immanence: u...
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Phenomenological Reviews, 2019
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Black Mirror and Philosophy, 2020
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Culture, Theory and Critique, 2019
Can Simondon’s thought provide us with the tools to consider the
evolution of computational techn... more Can Simondon’s thought provide us with the tools to consider the
evolution of computational technologies of power in their
intersection with capitalism’s digital turn? To answer to this
question, this essay projects a line of interaction between
Simondon’s and Deleuze’s philosophies in order to enable the
comprehension of the technical means through which twentyfirst-century domination is exerted in the form of digital
modulation. The description of this form of domination must take
into account the relation between topology and individuation and
how this relation is altered by the computational, that
reconfigures the naturalisation of technical objects as a process of
‘becoming-alive’ of digital technologies. To this end, this essay
considers Deleuze’s insights in matters of non-Euclidean spaces
and describes one of the central concepts of the Post-scriptum sur
les sociétés du contrôle, the dividual, from the standpoint of its
associated digital milieu. Attempting to update Simondon’s
mechanology to address a digital technology of power, this essay
will then describe the technical lineage of the dividual and its
peculiar process of individuation in its hybrid or monstrous
character.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
La Deleuziana 7. Symptoms – of Literature , 2018
‘À quoi sert la littérature?’, Deleuze opens his book on Leopold von Sacher-Masoch with a questio... more ‘À quoi sert la littérature?’, Deleuze opens his book on Leopold von Sacher-Masoch with a question that this paper will pose again, trying to propose an answer to it, and to put to test the methodological approach that can be obtained from that answer: what are the uses of literature and, more specifically, how could the philosopher use literature, what could be done with it?
To this end, this paper will focus on Deleuze’s symptomatological conception of literature.
The second part of the paper will be dedicated to the reading of two novels, 1984 by George Orwell and The Circle by Dave Eggers. The novels will be put in in a relation of resonation with two concepts sketched in Deleuze’s Post-scriptum sur les sociétés de contrôle: Foucauldian disciplinary societies and control societies. These novels will be considered as signaletic material, symptomatologies of two conditions of society, from which this paper proposes to extract two types of signs: Signs of Order and Signs of Suggestion. These signs will be made react with the concepts of Foucault and Deleuze, in order to see if they can produce the ground for a therapeutic. The paper will therefore combine literary symptomatologies and philosophical aetiology, in the attempt to make them react together, Foucault and Orwell, Eggers and Deleuze, to extract and describe signs from the literary material considered that may be brought to the fore only after the consideration of the causes of the most important symptoms of discipline and control.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Life and Number
The development of modern information and communication technologies has enabled the spread of to... more The development of modern information and communication technologies has enabled the spread of tools and procedures dedicated to the discretization of reality, already involving inconceivable and unprecedented swathes of informations. The diversity, volume and velocity of data has made possible a vast set of digital contents: this is not just a form of technical externalization, of data storage, or of symbolic representation, but also the tangible basis for a new form of power, 'algorithmic governmentality', which uses the mathematical analysis of this vast gathering of data to prescribe and proscribe particular concrete behaviours. Evaluating these procedures for the discretization of reality, together with processes of dividualization, data behaviourism and personal profiling, this article examines the complex of techniques applied to digital contents. The basis for this examination is here the Deleuzian concept of stratoanalysis: this will initially involve studying the forms and spaces generated and composed by digital technologies, so as to assess the viability of the concept of 'digital stratum'. By then analysing the relationship between the anthropomorphic stratum and the digital stratum, and the way that algorithmic governmentality strives to control this relationship, it will become possible to propose a line of flight that sets out and sets off from this logic of control.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
The impersonal. It is thought, it is felt, it is created
As all philosophical concepts, also the concept of person constitutes itself referring to a parti... more As all philosophical concepts, also the concept of person constitutes itself referring to a particular problem. The analysis drafted by Marcel Mauss regarding the genesis of the aforementioned category permits to analyse the problematic nucleus to which such concept refers to, disclosing that it responds to the necessity of solving the ancient problem of the link between mind and body in a specific perspective. In this respect, Bergsonian theory of images represents a solid attempt of passing not only the habitual solution of the problem represented by the concept of person, but also the problem itself whereto refers. The deleuzian reading of Henri Bergson’s theory leads him to define the impersonal and pre-individual field sketched out by Bergson as a plane of immanence, and this last as “a life”. The ultimate aim of this paper is to analyse the nature of such plane and to suggest an interpretation of the latest Gilles Deleuze’s piece of writing, "L’immanence: une vie..." that unveils its profound Bergsonism.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Conference Presentations by Pierluca D'Amato
Deleuze & Guattari Studies Conference 2021, 2021
Social life emerges from processes of mediation with the environment, always negotiated with and ... more Social life emerges from processes of mediation with the environment, always negotiated with and within its milieus. As other milieus, also the cyberspace structures the reciprocal relations of what occupies it and shapes the processes of individuation it hosts. In digital environments, however, social life is negotiated along different routes than those we are accustomed to in the analog dimension, for such milieus are structured as what Deleuze and Guattari named Riemannian or smooth spaces. As a consequence of this character, digital milieus represent not only additional settings for individuals and collectives to individuate through, but entail and characterise also the individuation of that specific type of entity only hinted at by Deleuze in his Post-scriptum sur les sociétés de contrôle: the dividual. This paper aims at describing the configuration of the cyberspace through the concept of smooth space and to define the notion of dividual in order to outline the shifting entity that constitutes the political subject at the centre of the new structures of domination set up and enforced through the use of digital technologies. In order to map how the digital is going to orient future politics away from the figure of the individual and towards the figure(s) of the dividual, the paper links the idea of the smooth cyberspace to the Foucauldian notion of hétérotopie, discusses how the digital space affects and transforms the analog ones and asks, against this background, what is of class identity when these are not composed by individuals, but by dividuals?
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
12th annual Deleuze & Guattari Studies conference, 2019
Our image of the world is increasingly mediated through computational technologies.
As platforms... more Our image of the world is increasingly mediated through computational technologies.
As platforms for control, however, digital milieus conceal bifurcations, inhibit certain capacities of bodies and discriminate their tendencies by investing specific attractors of neurologically alluring features that reinforce designed dopaminergic pathways. Grounded on the opacity of the phase space model of society that it adopts and manipulate, the digital reinforces then its power through the articulation of induced compulsions and big data analytics.
Against this background, Deleuze and Guattari’s work can be read as the effort to produce an essentially open diagram of the world that, by contrast, doesn’t try to tame or sterilise unpredictability, but makes of the virtual its liveliest core, mapping hidden possibility spaces (DeLanda 2002). It is in fact by modelling the phase space of the world as a series of interconnected complex systems that philosophy fights its epistemological ‘struggle against chaos… [in] affinity with the enemy’ (1994: 203).
This paper outlines stratoanalysis as a modelling technique that can be used to describe and dissipate digital blackboxes, whose opacity derives from the parallax effect produced by the assemblages of their different strata. Despite being mentioned only twice in A Thousand Plateaus, stratoanalysis mobilises the concepts of emergence, assemblage and machinic phylum, constituting a unique philosophical development of complexity theory.
The digital age requires a new map of the world, and stratoanalysis can function as the diagrammatic technique necessary to sketch the phase space of a reality enriched by the hybridisation of bodies with digital technologies.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
The Philosophy of Life, Utopias of Politics, Anthropology and Biology - Durham University, Institute of Advanced Study, 2018
In order to clarify the relationship between life and the digital, we need a definition of life t... more In order to clarify the relationship between life and the digital, we need a definition of life that takes into account the conditions of the hybrid nature of human life, insofar as this last is related to some form of technicality since its appearance. However, a traditional definition derived from biology will probably not satisfy the necessary requirements to accomplish this task, because the discipline maps objects based only on carbon-chain chemistry. With this presentation, I would like to propose the perspective I am adopting to develop a description of the digital and of its effects on human life, a perspective grounded on a definition of life that allows to study the set of relations originated by a coupling between heterogeneous elements: organic and non-organic, natural and artificial.
Outlining the development of non-linear physical phenomena, the consequent formation of bioids and of sympoietic systems, I will make use of some concepts drawn from the philosophies of Gilles Deleuze and Bernard Stiegler to sketch a diagram that allows to think the dynamics of what could be defined “non-organic life”, which connects the organic to the inorganic, life and techniques, into the same hybrid body.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Uploads
Videos by Pierluca D'Amato
You can find the program of the event here: https://www.iri.centrepompidou.fr/non-classe/entretiens-preparatoires-2021/
You can find the program of the event here:https://www.2021spt.com/login/?redirect_to=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.2021spt.com%2F
Complete issues by Pierluca D'Amato
Papers by Pierluca D'Amato
evolution of computational technologies of power in their
intersection with capitalism’s digital turn? To answer to this
question, this essay projects a line of interaction between
Simondon’s and Deleuze’s philosophies in order to enable the
comprehension of the technical means through which twentyfirst-century domination is exerted in the form of digital
modulation. The description of this form of domination must take
into account the relation between topology and individuation and
how this relation is altered by the computational, that
reconfigures the naturalisation of technical objects as a process of
‘becoming-alive’ of digital technologies. To this end, this essay
considers Deleuze’s insights in matters of non-Euclidean spaces
and describes one of the central concepts of the Post-scriptum sur
les sociétés du contrôle, the dividual, from the standpoint of its
associated digital milieu. Attempting to update Simondon’s
mechanology to address a digital technology of power, this essay
will then describe the technical lineage of the dividual and its
peculiar process of individuation in its hybrid or monstrous
character.
To this end, this paper will focus on Deleuze’s symptomatological conception of literature.
The second part of the paper will be dedicated to the reading of two novels, 1984 by George Orwell and The Circle by Dave Eggers. The novels will be put in in a relation of resonation with two concepts sketched in Deleuze’s Post-scriptum sur les sociétés de contrôle: Foucauldian disciplinary societies and control societies. These novels will be considered as signaletic material, symptomatologies of two conditions of society, from which this paper proposes to extract two types of signs: Signs of Order and Signs of Suggestion. These signs will be made react with the concepts of Foucault and Deleuze, in order to see if they can produce the ground for a therapeutic. The paper will therefore combine literary symptomatologies and philosophical aetiology, in the attempt to make them react together, Foucault and Orwell, Eggers and Deleuze, to extract and describe signs from the literary material considered that may be brought to the fore only after the consideration of the causes of the most important symptoms of discipline and control.
Conference Presentations by Pierluca D'Amato
As platforms for control, however, digital milieus conceal bifurcations, inhibit certain capacities of bodies and discriminate their tendencies by investing specific attractors of neurologically alluring features that reinforce designed dopaminergic pathways. Grounded on the opacity of the phase space model of society that it adopts and manipulate, the digital reinforces then its power through the articulation of induced compulsions and big data analytics.
Against this background, Deleuze and Guattari’s work can be read as the effort to produce an essentially open diagram of the world that, by contrast, doesn’t try to tame or sterilise unpredictability, but makes of the virtual its liveliest core, mapping hidden possibility spaces (DeLanda 2002). It is in fact by modelling the phase space of the world as a series of interconnected complex systems that philosophy fights its epistemological ‘struggle against chaos… [in] affinity with the enemy’ (1994: 203).
This paper outlines stratoanalysis as a modelling technique that can be used to describe and dissipate digital blackboxes, whose opacity derives from the parallax effect produced by the assemblages of their different strata. Despite being mentioned only twice in A Thousand Plateaus, stratoanalysis mobilises the concepts of emergence, assemblage and machinic phylum, constituting a unique philosophical development of complexity theory.
The digital age requires a new map of the world, and stratoanalysis can function as the diagrammatic technique necessary to sketch the phase space of a reality enriched by the hybridisation of bodies with digital technologies.
Outlining the development of non-linear physical phenomena, the consequent formation of bioids and of sympoietic systems, I will make use of some concepts drawn from the philosophies of Gilles Deleuze and Bernard Stiegler to sketch a diagram that allows to think the dynamics of what could be defined “non-organic life”, which connects the organic to the inorganic, life and techniques, into the same hybrid body.
You can find the program of the event here: https://www.iri.centrepompidou.fr/non-classe/entretiens-preparatoires-2021/
You can find the program of the event here:https://www.2021spt.com/login/?redirect_to=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.2021spt.com%2F
evolution of computational technologies of power in their
intersection with capitalism’s digital turn? To answer to this
question, this essay projects a line of interaction between
Simondon’s and Deleuze’s philosophies in order to enable the
comprehension of the technical means through which twentyfirst-century domination is exerted in the form of digital
modulation. The description of this form of domination must take
into account the relation between topology and individuation and
how this relation is altered by the computational, that
reconfigures the naturalisation of technical objects as a process of
‘becoming-alive’ of digital technologies. To this end, this essay
considers Deleuze’s insights in matters of non-Euclidean spaces
and describes one of the central concepts of the Post-scriptum sur
les sociétés du contrôle, the dividual, from the standpoint of its
associated digital milieu. Attempting to update Simondon’s
mechanology to address a digital technology of power, this essay
will then describe the technical lineage of the dividual and its
peculiar process of individuation in its hybrid or monstrous
character.
To this end, this paper will focus on Deleuze’s symptomatological conception of literature.
The second part of the paper will be dedicated to the reading of two novels, 1984 by George Orwell and The Circle by Dave Eggers. The novels will be put in in a relation of resonation with two concepts sketched in Deleuze’s Post-scriptum sur les sociétés de contrôle: Foucauldian disciplinary societies and control societies. These novels will be considered as signaletic material, symptomatologies of two conditions of society, from which this paper proposes to extract two types of signs: Signs of Order and Signs of Suggestion. These signs will be made react with the concepts of Foucault and Deleuze, in order to see if they can produce the ground for a therapeutic. The paper will therefore combine literary symptomatologies and philosophical aetiology, in the attempt to make them react together, Foucault and Orwell, Eggers and Deleuze, to extract and describe signs from the literary material considered that may be brought to the fore only after the consideration of the causes of the most important symptoms of discipline and control.
As platforms for control, however, digital milieus conceal bifurcations, inhibit certain capacities of bodies and discriminate their tendencies by investing specific attractors of neurologically alluring features that reinforce designed dopaminergic pathways. Grounded on the opacity of the phase space model of society that it adopts and manipulate, the digital reinforces then its power through the articulation of induced compulsions and big data analytics.
Against this background, Deleuze and Guattari’s work can be read as the effort to produce an essentially open diagram of the world that, by contrast, doesn’t try to tame or sterilise unpredictability, but makes of the virtual its liveliest core, mapping hidden possibility spaces (DeLanda 2002). It is in fact by modelling the phase space of the world as a series of interconnected complex systems that philosophy fights its epistemological ‘struggle against chaos… [in] affinity with the enemy’ (1994: 203).
This paper outlines stratoanalysis as a modelling technique that can be used to describe and dissipate digital blackboxes, whose opacity derives from the parallax effect produced by the assemblages of their different strata. Despite being mentioned only twice in A Thousand Plateaus, stratoanalysis mobilises the concepts of emergence, assemblage and machinic phylum, constituting a unique philosophical development of complexity theory.
The digital age requires a new map of the world, and stratoanalysis can function as the diagrammatic technique necessary to sketch the phase space of a reality enriched by the hybridisation of bodies with digital technologies.
Outlining the development of non-linear physical phenomena, the consequent formation of bioids and of sympoietic systems, I will make use of some concepts drawn from the philosophies of Gilles Deleuze and Bernard Stiegler to sketch a diagram that allows to think the dynamics of what could be defined “non-organic life”, which connects the organic to the inorganic, life and techniques, into the same hybrid body.
In order to clarify their connection, we need a definition of life that takes into account the conditions of the hybrid nature of human life, which is related to some form of technicality since its very appearance. As the discipline maps objects based only on carbon-chain chemistry, however, a traditional definition derived from biology will not satisfy the necessary requirements to accomplish this task.
With this presentation I would like to propose an alternative perspective that could help to formulate a description of the digital and of its effects on human life, a perspective grounded on a definition of life that allows the study of the set of relations originated by a coupling of heterogeneous elements: organic and non-organic, natural and artificial.
Outlining the development of non-linear physical phenomena, the consequent formation of bioids and of sympoietic systems, I will make use of concepts drawn from the philosophies of Gilles Deleuze and Bernard Stiegler to sketch what could be defined “non-organic life”, which connects the organic to the inorganic, life and techniques, into the same hybrid bodies. On this basis, it is possible to describe the process of becoming-algorithmic of human life, which is associated with another process, that could be named becoming-alive of digital technologies. Focusing on the specific functions that a thing must have in order to be considered alive, the second part of the presentation will link Aristotle’s account of life to the contemporary research in the field of Artificial Life and address the question of biological viruses and computer viruses as instances of the same process of general virality that can be found both in the biological realm and in the digital one.
Exploring the recently published essay L’homme et l’objet (2018), the paper will start by offering a general perspective on the relation between men and the object as conceived by Simondon, with specific attention to the notion of objet enveloppant (22).
Then, by sketching the difference between a fully automatic machine and machines with a great degree of indeterminacy, the paper will address the technical tendency towards indeterminacy concretised by digital technologies and how the latter are creating an unprecedented enveloping object.
As it will be argued, the exponential increase in the degree of indeterminacy of digital machines entails a significant change with respect to the notion of circulation. As a consequence of this, if with Leroi-Gourhan we see that and how objects circulate among individuals, playing a crucial role in the “invention of men”, with the Digital as an enveloping object this paradigm is overturned in a unique way: in the age of digital technologies, men circulate also and foremost within a technical object. If we think about pre-digital and also non-technical enveloping objects, this doesn’t appear as an entirely new dynamic: man circulates in all sorts of objects, from ancient temples to the engines of ocean liners. However, once we consider the cyberspace as an enveloping object, something new happens: as pointed out by Deleuze, in fact, the individual that circulates in the Digital becomes a dividual.
The key to a description of the process of individuation of the dividual will be obtained through a comparison between the critique to the hyleomorphic model and Deleuze’s account of the moulds on the basis of which Foucauldian disciplinary societies operate, a parallel against which the process of modulation operated by control societies will to be assessed as correspondent to the process of individuation.
This analysis will lead to the reconsideration of the status of objects. Moving away from the view that ‘voit dans l’objet tout ce qui n’est pas l’individu lui-même’ (11), to consider a new status of the object, originally proposed by Deleuze in his work on Leibnitz, and clearly incorporated by digital technologies, the paper will describe the nature of digital objectiles.
Offering a way to overcome the traditional difference between subject and object in its digital transmutation, the paper will therefore address the nature of the process of individuation of the dividual, describing the status of the latter not as a subject, but as an objectile in course of individuation, and from the point of view of the apparatuses of capture of the digital, through the eyes of the machine. To conclude, the paper will argue that especially in relation to the process of individuation of the dividual, and of the status of digital entities, one should speak of objectiles instead of objects, and define the nature of the latter.