Life, Politics and the Outside of Language — Cartographies of the Imperceptible and the Relational

Abstract

Based on the intertwining of philosophy and experience, this article investigates the ways of life that emerge outside of linguistic and representational paradigms, articulating the concepts of “becoming”, “individuation” and “a life” in Gilles Deleuze and Gilbert Simondon with the practices of Fernand Deligny. The gestural wanderings of autistic children, accompanied by Deligny without the intention of adapting them to a majority pattern of existence, configure an ontology of difference that finds resonance in Alfred Whitehead’s philosophy of process. It is about thinking of life as continuous creation, an expression of the pre-individual, establishing a politics of the sensitive that opens space for forms of existence not subject to hegemonic models of recognition and subjectivation.