Magic, Technics and Culture

Abstract

A close analysis of Simondon’s theory of magic in the third part of On the Mode of Existence of Technical Objects clearly shows its reliance on Hubert and Mauss’s A General Theory of Magic (1902–03). This will demonstrate that a considerable source of Simondon’s philosophy of technics is sociological, and explain how he conceives the symbolic function as essentially ‘techno-symbolic’. Hence two important texts of the 1960s, The Psycho-Sociology of Technicity (1960–61) and Culture and Technics (1965), can be the key to explore the relationship between religious rituals and technical instruments in the production of culture. Among these writings one can appreciate Simondon’s continual analysis of the different normativities that cross social systems, and fully understand the peculiar function he attributed to technicity – following, again, Leroi-Gourhan – in shaping the functioning of social systems today, and making of technological progress a crucially political problem.