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WRAP THESIS ODonnell 2001
An Ethics of the Pre-individual
A Warwick dissertation on difference, the virtual, and an ethics grounded in pre-individual excess rather than fixed identity.
Archive condition
The extracted text is present, but the work has not yet had a full editorial pass. The page stays public and linkable while treating quotation and interpretation cautiously.
What survives here
O'Donnell builds an ethics that begins before the bounded individual. The pre-individual names a state of excess, transformation, and virtual potential that cannot be reduced to stable identity categories.
The thesis moves through difference, capitalism, racism, resistance, and the virtual to argue that ethics should be organized around singular transformation rather than recognition of already-formed selves. Political and ontological questions remain inseparable throughout.
Within the Warwick formation context, the dissertation matters because it shows how questions of difference and becoming were already being pressed toward ethics and politics. It broadens the picture of the local scene beyond more familiar male-lineage summaries.
Reading note
Read the introduction and the chapter openings first. The key payoff is in how the pre-individual is tied to difference, capitalism, and transformation rather than treated as an abstract metaphysical term.
Track the movement from ontology to political stakes. The dissertation is strongest where virtual excess becomes an ethical and social problem.
Representative extracts
Definition · paragraph 7
This thesis explores the question of ethics, and I invcstigate the possibilities of an ethics of the pre-individual. Consequently this enterprise involves the development of an alternative ontology of becoming corresponding to a philosophy of difference.
History · paragraph 2
An Ethics of the Pre-individual by Aislinn O'Donnell A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Continental Philosophy University of Warwick, Department of Philosophy June 2001
Appears in sections
Warwick and Formation Primary section
How the CCRU emerged around Warwick, Sadie Plant, Nick Land, and an unstable collaborative scene.