Biological, Technical and Social Normativity

Abstract

The reference to Leroi-Gourhan is central to Simondon’s conception of the relation between biology, technology and the social system. This chapter explores Leroi-Gourhan’s influence on Simondon, particularly relying on Evolution and Technics (1943–1945), the work in two volumes that the latter read under the influence of George Canguilhem. It is on the basis of Canguilhem’s idea of a ‘general organology’ and Leroi-Gourhan’s palaeoanthropology that Simondon understands the different kinds of normativities implied by the biological and technical processes which structure and frame what he names the ‘transindividual’. On this background I shall try to read Simondon’s conception of culture as the regulatory mechanism through which the social system makes the different normativities it emerges from and is crossed by compatible. Hence it will be possible to grasp the ethical and political function Simondon attributes to the figure of the ‘technician’ as dependent on the kind of collective normativity it embodies rather than on some kind of individual heroic features.