The Rope-Dancer’s Fall: “Going Under” as Undergoing Nietzscheo-Simondonian Transindividuation

I initially marveled at Simondon’s exemplification of transindi-viduation through Zarathustra’s experience of the rope-dancer’s death in Also Sprach Zarathustra. Transindividuation — a being’s passage from psychic to collective existence — operates through affects and emotions that express a lack, a void, a gap in the fabric of its interrelation with others. A prior state of things having seemingly little to do with the end result is necessary for collective modes of existence to emerge. The perspective is so-bering, especially in comparison with an overoptimistic but all too common view of the formation of networked collectivities. Such contemporary ideologies of the good tell us innate proper-ties of contemporary information networks improve knowledge production and sharing, communication, and, by implication, human culture.