Organism-Oriented Ontology - by Audrone Zukauskaite

About the Book

Reconsiders the notion of organism as central for contemporary philosophy

Book Synopsis

Discussing different aspects of the philosophy of Gilbert Simondon, Raymond Ruyer, Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, and including some contemporary thinkers, such as Catherine Malabou, Bernard Stiegler, Bruno Latour, and Donna J. Haraway, Audrone Zukauskaite argues that all these threads can be seen as precursors to organism-oriented ontology.
Rather than concentrating on individuals and identities, contemporary philosophy is increasingly interested in processes, multiplicities and potential for change, that is, in those features that define living beings. Zukauskaite argues that the capacity of living beings for self-organisation, creativity and contingency can act as an antidote to biopolitical power and control in the times of the Anthropocene.

From the Back Cover

Reconsidering the notion of organism as central for contemporary philosophy Discussing different aspects of the philosophy of Gilbert Simondon, Raymond Ruyer, Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, and including some contemporary thinkers, such as Catherine Malabou, Bernard Stiegler, Bruno Latour, and Donna J. Haraway, Audrone Zukauskaite argues that all these threads can be seen as precursors to organism-oriented ontology. Rather than concentrating on individuals and identities, contemporary philosophy is increasingly interested in processes, multiplicities and potential for change, that is, in those features that define living beings. Zukauskaite argues that the capacity of living beings for self-organisation, creativity and contingency can act as an antidote to biopolitical power and control in the times of the Anthropocene. Audrone Zukauskaite is Chief Researcher in the Department of Contemporary Philosophy at the Lithuanian Culture Research Institute.

Review Quotes

This is an extraordinary book. Zukauskaite has marshaled the resources of a wide range of contemporary thinkers-- Simondon, Ruyer, Canguilhem, Deleuze and Guattari, Malabou, Stiegler, Latour and Haraway--to develop an organism-oriented ontology that is focused not only on the body but, more profoundly, on the multiple processes of individuation that constitute the body. Zukauskaite is charting a path to the philosophy of the future that the rest of us can only follow.-- "Daniel W. Smith, Purdue University"

This is an original and groundbreaking development in contemporary philosophy of life and biology. By defining a new branch of ontology of life as organism-oriented ontology, Audrone Zukauskaite makes important new steps in respondingto the now classical problem of what form biopolitics should take.-- "James Williams, Honorary Professor of Philosophy, Deakin University"

About the Author

Audrone Zukauskaite is Chief Researcher in the Department of Contemporary Philosophy at the Lithuanian Culture Research Institute. Her publications include From Biopolitics to Biophilosophy (2016, in Lithuanian) and Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari's Philosophy: The Logic of Multiplicity (2011, in Lithuanian). She co-edited Life in the Posthuman Condition: Critical Responses to the Anthropocene (Edinburgh University Press, 2023), Interrogating Antigone in Postmodern Philosophy and Criticism, (Oxford University Press, 2010), Deleuze and Beckett, (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015) and Resisting Biopolitics: Philosophical, Political and Performative Strategies, (Routledge, 2016).