Tendency and Intuition in Simondon's "Genesis of Technicity"

Abstract: This article aims to reconsider the use of the term tendency in Gilbert Simondon's On the Mode of Existence of Technical Objects (1958). The term tendency is used throughout the book, but more concentratedly in Part III, "The Genesis of Technicity." Simondon often uses the term to describe the process of a bifurcation of phases; for example, the magical phase bifurcates into a religious tendency and a technical tendency, and each bifurcated phase then has the tendency to further bifurcate into a theoretical and practical part. This article aims to trace this term back to its primary source in Henri Bergson's The Two Sources of Morality and Religion (1932) and its continuation in André Leroi-Gourhan's Milieu et Technique (1945), to analyze how Simondon's appropriation of the term incorporates Bergson's and Leroi-Gourhan's concept of tendency, in order to propose a more comprehensive model of the genesis of technicity.