Organology

RELATED TERMS:

A general organology is an account of life when it involves not just organic matter but organised inorganic matter.

As Stiegler (2020: 73) puts it, “General organology attempts to establish a theory of technical life, conceived here as a process whose evolution is indissolubly psycho-socio-techno-logical, in addition to being relatively bio-logical, which means that the general laws of biology are put under other auspices …, if not modified strictly speaking.”

Stiegler distinguishes the organic from the organological: the organological is composed of generally inorganic and yet organised matter, as with any technical object. Organology modifies the general laws of biology. However, this does not mean that it contradicts biology.Rather, it localises biological constraints.

General organology is a method that makes possible transdisciplinary approaches. Such approaches have become absolutely essential in the current stage of organological development, that is, of technical development, which modifies both psychosomatic and social organizations. However, it does so today in an accelerated fashion. This raises completely new questions which induce an epistemological or even an ‘anthropological’ break. Stiegler prefers to refer to neganthropology rather than to an anthropological break. These questions also encounter irreducible critical problems that fall under what Stiegler calls ‘pharmacology’.

References

Stiegler, B. (2020) ‘Elements for a general organology’, Derrida Today, 13(1), pp. 72–94. doi: 10.3366/DRT.2020.0220