Machinic Ontology: Review: Mehdi Parsa, ‘Machinic Ontology’

The book Machinic Ontology draws parallels between books and brains and indeed models itself on a brain conceived of as a network of problems. A book is also regarded as a little machine, and in echoing Deleuze and Guattari in making this observation, Parsa’s objective in writing the book becomes apparent: it is a detailed evaluation of the becoming-concept of the machine-metaphor, one that applies a universal ‘machinism’ as a metaphysical foundation. This is a hugely important and timely undertaking, though not without various tensions, which will be examined in this review.