CONCEPT
Transindividuation
Simondon's and Stiegler's term for the collective process through which individuals individuate together — producing shared knowledge, shared meaning, and mutual development that none could achieve alone.
Transindividuation names the specific form of collective activity in which individual and group individuate simultaneously, each conditioning the other. It is not simple collaboration, in which separate individuals combine their outputs. It is the process through which shared engagement produces both collective understanding and individual development that neither would have achieved alone. For Stiegler, transindividuation is the social form on which genuine knowledge depends and which automated systems tend to disrupt by interposing themselves between the individuals who would otherwise individuate through direct engagement.
In The You On AI Field Guide
Simondon introduced the concept to name the social dimension of individuation — the way individuals become themselves through participation in collective processes that also transform the collective. Stiegler extended the analysis to media and technical systems, arguing that certain technologies support transindividuation while others undermine it.
The classic example is the scientific community. Individual scientists individuate as knowers through their participation in a collective that is itself individuating as a tradition. The tradition provides the preindividual potentials —