Metastability is a condition in which a system holds energy that has not yet resolved into a stable form — a state of charged equilibrium where transformation is possible but has not occurred. The concept originates in thermodynamics and was brought into philosophy by Gilbert Simondon in Individuation in Light of Notions of Form and Information (1958).
In thermodynamics, a metastable system is one that appears stable but contains potential energy that, given the right trigger, can drive a phase transition — a supercooled liquid that hasn’t yet crystallized, a supersaturated solution waiting for a seed crystal. The system is at rest, but its rest is provisional. It carries the conditions for its own transformation.
Simondon used metastability to rethink individuation. Classical philosophy treats individuals as given — the form is already there, waiting to be actualized. Simondon argued instead that individuals emerge from metastable fields of pre-individual potential. The individual is not a starting point but a resolution — a temporary stabilization of tensions that were present in the pre-individual field. And the resolution is never complete: the individuated being still carries a charge of pre-individual potential (what Simondon calls the “associated milieu”) that can drive further individuation.
In the Write-for-a-Month: Zombie Novel curriculum, metastability describes the ontological condition of the undead world: energy that persists without resolving into form, vitality that continues without individuating into life. Act II (Necrosis) and Act IV (Attrition) use metastability as a narrative principle — scenes saturated with unresolved potential, suspense without revelation, oscillation without climax.
Related terms
- individuation — the process by which metastable potential resolves into individuated form
- ontology — metastability raises questions about what kind of being precedes the individual
- bare life — biological existence reduced to a metastable state without political resolution