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Sustaining Intensities: Materialism, Feminism and Posthumanism Meet Sustainable Design

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Sustaining Intensities: Materialism, Feminism and Posthumanism Meet Sustainable Design Sustaining Intensities: Materialism, Feminism and Posthumanism Meet Sustainable Design by Petra Hroch A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of Sociology University of Alberta © Petra Hroch, 2014 ABSTRACT This dissertation explores the concept of environmental sustainability and design by connecting posthumanist philosophies of materiality to material practices. This research complicates the idea of sustainability by posing sustainability as a problem or a question: What is sustainability? Or, indeed, what is worth sustaining? To explore these questions I engage with materialist and process-based philosophies such as the work of Deleu$e and Guattari and materialist and posthumanist feminisms and connect them to theories and practices of environmentally sustainable design and design activism. My objective is to ask: (ow can these philosophies and practices critically and creatively inform ways of thinking and/as doing sustainable environmental relations? How can they promote building bridges, cultivating difference, and generosity toward future generations? This project contains four chapters that examine the relationship of onto- epistemologies of subjectivity to environmental ethics, the potential of design as an intensity-sustaining discipline, the ways contemporary rhetoric of sustainability serves to reinforce an unsustainable status quo, and the ways designers themselves engage with sustainability as a concept and problem. The first chapter begins by thinking differently about the relationship between subjectivity (+me,- and spatio-temporality (+milieu,- through the concept of habit, habitat, and co-habitation. I connect Deleu$e and Guattari.s immanent concept of a “people-yet-to-come, to what I call the “planet-yet-to-come, and argue that the intensive difference-generating processes ii of the refrain or “ritournelle, present a therapeutic-ethic of co-habiting with the earth. The second chapter deterritoriali$es Deleu$e and Guattari.s “three domains of thought, in relation to design as an interdiscipline. I interrogate their critique of majoritarian design and its complicity with “creative, capitalism and explore “minor, modes of design (such as Toronto fruit-picking organi$ation Not Far From the Tree- that seek to sustain intensities and activate heterogenous connections and collective flourishing. The third chapter connects the concept of “social sustainability, to what describe as its contemporary “schi$oid, modes: the rhetoric of “social resilience, and “social innovation., I draw on materialist and posthumanist theories of affect in order to complicate the kinds of social “grassroots, initiatives in which individuals today are being invited to participate and situate these within the broader context of a neoliberal ecological and economic milieu. I propose “intensive resistance, as a relational response to a diagram of power that locates agency in the “dividual., The fourth chapter “entangles, encounters with Deleu$o-Guattarian and materialist and posthumanist feminist philosophies together with conversations with designers and case study examples of their sustainable design concepts and practices. I extend the methodological “mud mode, developed in the dissertation to experiment with making “composthumanist, ((araway, 2012- philosophies “meet halfway, (3arad, 2007- with sustainable design practices in order to generate thought-bridges that cultivate more generous (3raidotti, 2005, p. 257- modes of mingling with our milieu. iii PREFACE This dissertation challenges contemporary concepts and practices of sustainability and sustainable design oriented toward the maintenance of status quo ways of thinking, making, and doing. I posit a generative concept of environmental sustainability by inviting us to understand it as an intra-action of ecology, economy and equity and figuring sustainability as a process of sustaining intensities, generating differences, and fostering the emergence of heterogenous connections. Through an engagement with Deleu$e and Guattari.s toolbox of concepts as well as materialist and posthumanist feminisms, this project connects critical theoretical approaches rooted in materialist philosophies with creative material practices of sustainable design in order to ask: How can we think and design different styles, habits, and signatures of co-habiting with the earth? How, I ask, can we begin to develop an environmental ethic that, inspired by the Iroquois Confederacy.s Great Law, thinks spatio-temporal intra-action through the concept of generationality and its related concepts: inter-generationality, generativity, regeneration, and generosity? I explore, in particular, concepts and/as practices that problemati$e the ways we conventionally understand subjectivity and ownership, and posit ways of co-habiting with the earth that are re-habilitative, generous to future generations, and treat life as a material expression of perpetual spatio-temporal “borrowing, and “giving away., Drawing inspiration not only from indigenous ways of knowing but also from previous generations of feminist thinkers that trouble divisive binaries, this work seeks to think with middles or milieus – from the both/and rather than the either/or : in order to destabili$e the distinctions we too often draw between the subject/object, human/non-human, living and non-living while emphasi$ing singularity, specificity, severality, and situatedness. I propose a methodology I describe as thinking in a “mud mode, that emphasi$es becomings, movements, and processes, iv and that embraces murkiness, imbrication, and “sticking with it., This methodological, onto-epistemological, and ethico-aesthetic approach is located in a present that holds together pasts and futures, inheritances and inventions, what is given and what one can give. It revels in the recognition that knowledge is always situated and thus limited and celebrates the co-constitutive and co-constructive role of uncertainty that inheres in any working knowledge. This project opens sustainability as a concept, a practice, and an ethic onto a plane of immanence through bridge-building, connections, hori$ontality, tangles of roots, rhi$omes, relations, and intra-action as images of thought. It bridges humanist and posthumanist theories of affect as they relate to ecology and invites us to imagine how we can think about our relation to the environment as entanglement rather than separation, as imbrication rather than isolation, and as phenomenal rather than apocalyptic or utopian. In doing this, my objective is to contribute to emerging environmental and design imaginaries and practices of sustaining the intensities of the earth that sustains us. This thesis is an original work by Petra Hroch. The research project, of which this thesis is a part, received research ethics approval from the University of Alberta Research Ethics Board, Project Name “ nterviews with practitioners of sustainable design,, No. MS1_Pro00027225, May 3, 2012 (Renewed: May 2, 201C-. v CHAPTER ONE OF THIS THESIS HAS BEEN PUBLISHED AS: (roch, P. (2012-. Deleu$e, Guattari, and Environmental Politics: Ritournelles for a Planet-yet-to-come. In Deleuze & Guattari, Politics, and Education Eds. M. Carlin and D. Wallin. London, UE: Bloomsbury, pg. 47-75. CHAPTER TWO OF THIS THESIS HAS BEEN PUBLISHED AS: (roch, P. (2012-. Sustainable Design Activism: Affirmative Politics and Fruitful Futures. In Deleuze & Design. Eds. B. Marenko and D. Brassett. Edinburgh, UE: University of Edinburgh Press. CHAPTER THREE OF THIS THESIS HAS BEEN PUBLISHED AS: (roch, P. (201C-. Resilience versus Resistance: Affectively Modulating Contemporary Diagrams of Social Resilience, Social Sustainability, and Social Innovation. MediaTropes. Foucault/Deleuze A Neo-liberal Diagram (Special Issue). Eds. G. Elmer and M. Tiessen. 4 (1-. 17-25. vi DEDICATION To Matthew, and in memory of Mirko. vii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS begin by extending my warmest thanks to my supervisor, Rob Shields, and Dianne Chisholm and Cressida Heyes, the members of my supervisory committee, whose support, generosity, and insight have been invaluable in sustaining this project to its completion. I thank Dason Wallin and Tim Antoniuk, my internal external examiners and Adrian Parr, my external examiner, for their enthusiasm and their generous insights. Thank you all for your support and for the inspiration of your own work. Thank you also to Michelle Meagher, the Chair of my PhD defense committee and Nancy Evans, the Graduate Program Coordinator, for all of their support. Thank you also to Steven Harris, who supervised my earlier work on Deleu$e and Guattari and Paul Klee – the kernels of which germinated into this current project. extend heartfelt thanks to Rosi Braidotti, whose generosity, passion, and joyful thinking inspired me since my first years as a graduate student. Thank you for your support and insight as host supervisor at the Centre for the Humanities (Cf(- at Utrecht University. My thanks also to Esther Rinkens, Cornelie Germaas, Nina Pigaht at the Cf( for providing me with “a room of one.s own, in the attic on both occasions during which I had the opportunity to be a visiting PhD fellow. am grateful to my parents, George and Giera Hroch and to Paul and Hildi Froese Tiessen for their love, support, and encouragement of my graduate work. And to my grandparents and extended family in Bratislava. Warmest thanks to my Edmonton extended families and friends – Wes and Luise Penner, Ron and Carol Dyck,
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