Spirituality in Simondon’s Theory of Individuation: Affect, Signification, and the Transindividual

This article offers a systematic reconstruction of the under-examined yet central role of spirituality in Gilbert Simondon’s theory of individuation. It argues that spirituality functions as the key operator that resolves the disparity between the psychic and the collective, thereby opening the domain of the transindividual. The analysis first revisits Simondon’s ontogenetic process to highlight the role of disparity and signification in the phase-shifts that lead from the pre-individual to the transindividual. It then shows how spirituality – understood as signification – emerges from the pre-individual charge carried by each being, binding the subject to the collective. Crucially, this spirituality is not metaphysical but operational: it constitutes a non-religious ‘eternity’ in which signification is deposited in technical objects and cultural forms for future reactualization. Ultimately, the article contends that spirituality names the transductive convergence of emotion and action, grounding an ethics of disparity in the metastable and open-ended process of collective individuation.