Becoming Undone

This book is an attempt to address a series of imperceptible movements, modes of becoming, forms of change, and evolutionary transformations that make up natural, cultural, and political life.I have called these movements ”becomings,” but what it is that becomes, and what it becomes, are less clear and less interesting than the movement itself.Movement does not attach to a stable thing, putting it in motion; rather, movement preexists the thing and is the process of di√erentiation that distinguishes one object from another.I am interested in the processes that make and unmake objects, whether these are natural objects, manufactured objects or those objects that live and experience.These various forms of movement, forms of accomplishment or actualization, constitute material and living things.This book explores the conditions under which material and living things overcome themselves and become something other than what they were.It elaborates the di√erence that constitutes things, including subjects, and that structures the relations between things.Things undergo becomings, which transform them in ways which are unpredictable and irreversible.These becomings are the testament to the di√erences that constitute whatever identity things-including subjects, living beings-might have.Becomings complexify, transform, overcome in ways that are measurable but also imperceptible.I will look at how change occurs, that is, how di√erence elaborates itself, whether it is at the level of material and natural objects and forces, or at the level of