Assemblage Arrangement, or Manuel DeLanda's Simulation of Ontology

Abstract

The article presents an analysis of the assemblage theory of the modern American philosopher Manuel DeLanda. The task of assemblage theory is to translate the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze into the scientific-like language of realism. DeLanda borrows the contents of Deleuzian concepts from the natural sciences. His philosophy relies on a parameterized description of the objects and concepts themselves. DeLanda had to omit an important aspect of Deleuze's philosophy connected with the transcendental status of experience through which the existence of subject and object is realised. The main achievement of the theory of assemblage is the description of relations as exterior, that is, multiple and qualitatively different. Para-metrization has provided DeLanda with the opportunity to describe phenomena in the form of simulations representing correlations, not causes. The ability to quantify singular and unique phenomena makes assemblage theory a suitable candidate for the conceptualization of correlations found in informational data. The cost of this is the loss of the individual existence that falls out of DeLandian optics. An example of the metaphysics of multiplicity, also borrowing many concepts from the natural sciences, but keeping individual existence in focus, is the theory of individuation by Gilbert Simondon. For the latter, individuation is a transductive relation between the continual environment and the discontinuous structures of objects. This relation is an information - acquiring by the individuating object a form as the operations of interaction.