Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Thesis Format

Monograph

Degree

Master of Arts

Program

Theory and Criticism

Supervisor

Russell Duvernoy

2nd Supervisor

Michael Gardiner

Abstract

Félix Guattari’s ecosophy advances an ecologized vision of the world tied to Guattari’s machinic and schizoanalytic project. Ecosophy rejects both mythos and logos and instead develops its own an eco-logos linked to Guattari’s tripartite ecological registers (environmental-machinic, social, psychic). This thesis applies ecosophy to contemporary digital technics to understand digital media’s impact on processes of subjectification. Guattari’s radically heterogenous, machinic ecological vision provides an effective framework in which digital media can be articulated as environmentally oriented artefacts machinically connected to other ecological systems. Following Heidegger’s call in The Question Concerning Technology to rethink the meaning of technê, this thesis will similarly argue that digital technology demands new, ecologically oriented, considerations regarding the purpose and meaning of the technical. Rather than thinking of technology anthropologically-instrumentally as ‘means’ taken up by human agents in the process of production, digital media instead require a shift towards ecosophic notions situated on the mechanosphere.

Summary for Lay Audience

In Félix Guattari’s work The Three Ecologies he speculates on the effects computerized technology would have on future creations of subjectivity. Digital-computerized devices, what Guattari called ‘post-media,’ seemed to hold significant promise in allowing for individual subjects to connect with large scale projects which would realize a global-ecological sensibility. This ecologization of the world stems from Guattari’s ‘ecosophic’ thought based on the particular, finite ecological registers Environmental-Social-Psychic. This thesis seeks to take up Guattari’s speculations of a computer aided ecological sensibility and to apply many of his critical insights contemporary shifts in media ecology. Media will play an active role in facilitating transformation across the three ecological registers, media thus constitute an essential element in the creation of “existential universes,” a technical term of Guattari’s that refers to the overlapping of the environmental-social-psychic registers. The result of this ecological overlapping is the production of pluralistic forms of individual-group subjectivity and meaning that are nevertheless oriented towards the earth. The thesis will be striated across three levels mirroring the structure of environmental-social-psychic. Chapter one sets the foundation for a machinic ontology that challenges the antagonism typically held between ‘nature’ and ‘technology.’ Nature and technology will instead be treated as interacting processes capable of forming complex environmental arrangements and associated milieus. Chapter two focuses on social ecology, which concerns how the technological object is treated in relation to culture. This chapter will engage in a critical Martin Heidegger and Gilbert Simondon in a critical dialogue with one another, two thinkers who advance crucial frameworks for rethinking technics in the wake of the industrial revolution. Chapter three takes up psychic ecology, which concerns the transformations in the realms of desire, sensibility, the body and phantasy operant within our contemporary media ecology. The project aims to advance the conception of technological objects beyond means-end implements, situating them within ecological relational networks capable of engendering new modes of being. An ecosophic investigation concerning digital media is intended to expand on current discussions on the digital technology’s effects on human societies as well as to provide theoretical tools for reconceptualizing our relationship to technology more broadly.

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