Pure variation and organic stratification
2012
Rosanvallon, Jérôme
The fundamental problem posed by Darwin distinguishes his theory from any transformism of the past as well as any evolutionism to come: since variation is inherent to the living, it is a question of explaining, not at all why the living varies, but instead why the living does not vary in all directions to the point of constituting a continuum of forms varying ad infinitum. What limits and stabilizes this intrinsically unlimited variation, allowing certain forms to subsist and multiply to the detriment of others, is natural selection. This double principle of intrinsic variation/extrinsic selection constitutes a vector for the unification of reality that underlies Jean-Jacques Kupiec's ontophylogenesis as well as Deleuze and Guattari's global philosophy of Nature. Therefore, everything would potentially tend to incessantly vary. The work of Kupiec and others identifies an intrinsic random variation within ontogenesis itself. For Deleuze and Guattari, it is nothing but the figure, already selected by the organic stratum, of a more fundamental or pure variation. But, in fact, nothing really varies incessantly: everything undergoes a selective pressure according to which nothing subsists as such except what manages to endure through invariance (physical stratum) or reproduction (organic stratum). Thus, organic stratification only retains from variation what ensures and augments this reproduction. In this sense, every organism stratifies, i.e. submits to its imperative of subsistence and reproduction, a body without organs that varies in itself and always tends to escape the organism, for better (intensifications of life) or worse (cancerous pathologies).
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