Remediating Orientation DISSERTATION Presented In
Depth Technology: Remediating Orientation DISSERTATION Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University By Peggy Eileen Reynolds Graduate Program in Comparative Studies The Ohio State University 2012 Dissertation Committee: Professor Brian Rotman, Advisor Professor Philip Armstrong Professor Barry Shank Copyright by Peggy Eileen Reynolds 2012 Abstract According to sociologist Niklas Luhmann, "The 'blind spot' of each observation, the distinction it employs at the moment, is at the same time its guarantee of a world." To make a distinction, in other words, is to build a world, to establish a boundary, a bounded interior, a self. It is to orient oneself by separating inside from outside and to further the possibilities of one’s persistence by incorporating into this newly formed interior a sign or map of this initial distinction. Tracing the originary orienting gestures of the human and the form these take as sign or map then constitutes the central theme of this dissertation, one which opens onto an exploration of how the new digital economy contributes to the radical reflexivity which characterizes the current material- discursive milieu, even as, by expanding access to the virtual, it increases the potential for an immanent orientation of the human. My method, then, is to investigate the co-constitutive orientation strategies of the human and those forms and patterns which help it construct and distinguish itself from its material-discursive environment. Such forms as grids, circles, hierarchies, vortices, spirals, vortex rings and fractal structures are regarded as little machines; each works in and on the human in unique ways, and each has developed methods to insure its continued survival, collaborating with entities at various scales, including the human, ii to replicate its morphogenetic program.
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