capacité d'affect » morphogenesis

The Social Logic of Leadership

admin — Tue, 02 Jun 2026 04:50:53 +0000

A reading of Ruben Östlund’s Triangle of Sadness through Fascist and Aberrant Leadership

Abstract. This piece puzzles about the social logic of leadership through the lens of the movie Triangle of Sadness (2022), directed by the Swedish filmmaker Ruben Östlund. A distinction is introduced between two modes of leadership, here called, respectively, ‘fascist’ and ‘aberrant’. Phenomena of leadership, it is contended, illustrate the workings of social logic ex vivo, and offer exquisite examples of how intensities intervene in social interaction, giving rise to the tensive states in which the local protagonists of interaction are caught. Östlund’s film has noticeable diagnostic power, so that the piece unfolds as a study of the sociological materials it provides, even apart from the narrative plot and the satirical or critical intentions.

Keywords: social theory, social interaction, social logic, social intensities, leadership

Now out in The Journal for Cultural Research : https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/FKVPYAEGKCASAXPCAXRC/full?target=10.1080/14797585.2026.2682597

ignorance and confusion

admin — Sat, 30 Aug 2025 08:57:47 +0000

‘We do have a limitless reservoir of ignorance, but we also have conceptual confusions that new knowledge seldom helps relieve.’

Ian Hacking

On Social Intensiology

admin — Thu, 31 Jul 2025 16:18:50 +0000

Conceptualizing social life through topological folding, braid operators and collapse functions

Abstract. Social intensiology is outlined here in its connection to morphogenesis. the latter aims to explain how form come into existence, just as the former seeks to tackle the intensive states of social life. A topological reference model is proposed for conceptualizing how social life operates immanently with saliences and pregnances. The paper starts from the famous Collatz conjecture, and reviews how it has been recently modelled by Danail Valov using braid groups and including thermodynamic irreversibility into the picture. A ‘Valov braid’ can be understood as a manifold, an entity that is, at the same time, individual and collective. Its collective structure can be reconstructed, through its operational logic, as a tensional field. An attempt is made to show how phenomena of memory and measure are intertwined with the braid’s developments, giving rise to a rich present, multi-faceted that lives in non-coincidence. Within such framework, rhythmanalysis is presented as a useful tool for assaying and experimentally improving social life.

Keywords: social theory; social modelling; topology; braid groups; rhythmanalysis

>>> draft available upon request

Something critical occurs at a fractional dimension between two and three…

admin — Tue, 03 Jun 2025 09:18:08 +0000

A proposal for knitting together semiophysics and biosemiotics

NOW OUT in Biosemiotics

https://link.springer.com/epdf/10.1007/s12304-025-09613-1

Abstract. The paper advances a proposal for binding together the insights of biosemiotics and those of semiophysics. The task of achieving an intelligible ontology, in opposition to both mechanical reductionism and metaphysical vitalism, is shared by these two approaches. Yet, there are architectural differences between the two theories. The paper reviews such a differendum, focusing in particular on the difference between Thom’s two-fold construction of saliences and pregnances, and Peircean three-fold categorial construction encompassing firstness, secondness and thirdness. An integrated semiophysical-biosemiotic graph thus encompasses five key categories. This paper suggests to arrange them as a “W” shape to chart their possible dynamical interactions.

Keywords: semiophysics; biosemiotics; theory of meaning; salience/pregnance; firstness/secondness/thirdness

pdf version

The Elemental Forms of Social Life

admin — Tue, 26 Nov 2024 13:03:19 +0000

Out now in Cosmos and History: The Journal of Natural and Social Philosophy

Abstract. The notion of elemental reality is parsed here as instrumental to a renewal of the understanding of social formations, orders, processes, events, and, more generally, social life. An attempt is made to revisit the element notion drawing insights from the classical imagination, so as to develop an ‘elementalism’ that does not imply a simple return to atomism, but rather retrieves some important insights from the Aristotelian tradition. Elementalism, it is suggested, enables us to see the limitations of both individualist and collectivist takes on social life, allowing for a more ‘environmentalist’ idea of what constitutes society. In an attempt to analyze how an elemental reality can be said to be at play, the category of ‘the visible’ is considered, so as to evince some of its constitutive dimensions, properties, and moments.

Keywords: social theory; medium theory; social environment; elemental reality; the visible

Link to OA article : https://cosmosandhistory.org/index.php/journal/article/view/1168

Also here

Ethnography and Fiction: What is the difference?

admin — Thu, 08 Feb 2024 08:18:09 +0000

Now out in Etnografia e Ricerca Qualitativa

PDF version

The external form

admin — Sun, 05 Feb 2023 15:12:57 +0000

We notice that, in a relationship between two people, the external form is rarely an adequate expression of its inner intensity. This inadequacy results from the fact that the inner relations develop continuously, while the external relations develop in a spasmodic fashion.

Georg Simmel, 1900

…toute la route

admin — Tue, 27 Dec 2022 13:37:51 +0000

“On ne peut avoir la vérité sans les risques. Il n’y a plus de philosophie si l’on regarde d’abord aux conclusions; le philosophe ne cherche pas les raccourcis, il fait toute la route.”

Maurice Merleau-Ponty

…dans la genèse de l’individu, une hantise de la forme sociale…

admin — Sun, 11 Dec 2022 08:26:43 +0000

… il n’en est pas moins vrai que les choses se passent comme si tout organisme supérieur était né d’une association de cellules qui se seraient partagé entre elles le travail. Très probablement, ce ne sont pas les cellules qui ont fait l’individu par voie d’association ; c’est plutôt l’individu qui a fait les cellules par voies de dissociation. Mais ceci même nous révèle, dans la genèse de l’individu, une hantise de la forme sociale, comme s’il ne pouvait se développer qu’à la condition de scinder sa substance en éléments ayant eux-mêmes une apparence d’individualité et unis entre eux par une apparence de sociabilité. Nombreux sont les cas où la nature paraît hésiter entre les deux formes, et se demander si elle constituera une société ou un individu : il suffit alors de la plus légère impulsion pour faire pencher la balance d’un côté ou de l’autre … dans des organismes rudimentaires faits d’une cellule unique, nous constatons déjà que l’individualité apparente du tout est le composé d’un nombre non défini d’individualités virtuelles, virtuellement associées. Mais, de bas en haut de la série des vivants, la même loi se manifeste. Et c’est ce que nous exprimons en disant qu’unité et multiplicité sont des catégories de la matière inerte, que l’élan vital n’est ni unité ni multiplicité pures, et que si la matière à laquelle il se communique le met en demeure d’opter pour l’une des deux, son option ne sera jamais définitive : il sautera indéfiniment de l’une à l’autre. L’évolution de la vie dans la double direction de l’individualité et de l’association n’a donc rien d’accidentel. Elle tient à l’essence même de la vie.

Henri Bergson 1907 (§III, 4)

Theories of Meaning in the Social and the Natural World

admin — Thu, 27 Oct 2022 08:24:26 +0000

A new seminar @unitn – starts today – with four distinguished guest speakers – check it out –