ABSTRACT

In a context of environmental and civilizational crisis, the societal approaches found in design disciplines point to the importance of design research for an ecological and ecosystemic way of thinking about the world, through the notion of coercion by apparatus. Whether the target is the user, the consumer, the citizen, the designer herself or the design disciplines, strategies to emancipate, liberate, de-subjugate and uplift individuals can be seen in new visions, utopias, charters, and manifestos. Yet the expected results, both on our ecosystems and on individual and collective behavior, remain limited. Any attempt to regulate production and consumption flows comes up against the contemporary challenges posed by a capitalism that is renewing itself by monopolizing and commodifying the criticisms it receives. The destructive component of this capitalism, on which design has hitherto relied, seems to be correlated with consumerist behavior catalyzed by the assertion of an individual, resource-consuming subject. In order to mask the fundamental terror of its naked subjectivity, the individual has become an ecophagus insofar as it renews its condition as an individualized subject by becoming a consumer of subjectivations. Incidentally, the singularity promised by access to the desires of individual emancipation has been transformed into coercion: individualization has mutated into voluntary servitude through a process of egophagy. The mortifying system of these two phagic phenomena lies at the heart of the thesis, which proposes to grasp the problem from the point of view of a paradigm shift of the individual through its individuation process, offering possible solutions for design. Thus, design, which has accompanied, promoted and aestheticized the destructive model of consumerism, must today consider questioning its societal role. But to experiment with different ways of thinking about the world, we need to work on our own understanding of the world. Making the world habitable, i.e. rethinking the world's habitability, is also proving to be a colonial position for humanity, depriving it of the opportunity to reflect on its dependent relationship with the world. 

 Within this new framework, the role of sentinel design can be based on three strategies identified in current research and practice: 

1. Resistance to apparatus by assessing societal constraints on them;

2. Discreet practice to avoid commercialism;

3. Objectivation of individuals.

From then on, design must provoke a paradigm shift in the individual, through individuation. A re-reading of proto-design, contemporary design, philosophy and aesthetic criticism supports the hypothesis that individuation raises the stakes of societal design by revealing, with the help of complex thinking, apparatus at work on the individual whose common denominator is the subject/object dialectic. 

This questioning implies a decolonization of thought, for a new reflection on its relationship of dependence to the world, other than through the subjectivation processes that stipulate it. Is human empowerment to modify and destroy the environment at will still viable? In fact, this dependence on the subject/object dialectic should be reversed by a dialogical opening that enables transitional design to mutate into a transition of design, with design transforming itself in the face of the apparatus that constrain it. With the realization of individuationist counter-apparatus based on objectification, new virtues - such as recognition and consideration - could foster a new objectified relationship of the individual. In this framework, the traditional positioning of design would avoid apparatus in a new, transversal way, allowing these apparatus to be not only escaped, but also shown. The emancipatory factors of individuation - such as critique, objectification, actuality, and revolt - are capable of emancipating design as a vector of individuation and transformation of the individual. Individuationist design could then adopt a new, a-moral stance, engaging in a process of objectification to become not social but societal design. In order to outmaneuver this ecophagy/egophagy system, this thesis proposes a paradigm shift of the individual and its relationship to the common good, by envisaging new virtues of transcendence through the concept of proberty, derived from factors of natality, consideration and recognition. A new teleology emerges from the substitution of individuation for individualization. Based on a pedagogy of apparatus deconstruction, this new vision of design would teach the ontological and epistemological conditions that saw its birth. With an individuationist discipline of design, a design auctor, decolonized from the economy, weaves a way of thinking habitability and appropriation of the world that recognizes and reconciles the finitude of the earth and the human.

Individuationist design could then adopt a new, a-moral stance, engaging in a process of objectification to become not social but societal design. In order to outmaneuver this ecophagy/egophagy system, this thesis proposes a paradigm shift of the individual and its relationship to the common good, by envisaging new virtues of transcendence through the concept of proberty, derived from factors of natality, consideration and recognition. A new teleology emerges from the substitution of individuation for individualization. Based on a pedagogy of apparatus deconstruction, this new vision of design would teach the ontological and epistemological conditions that saw its birth. With an individuationist discipline of design, a design auctor, decolonized from the economy, weaves a way of thinking habitability and appropriation of the world that recognizes and reconciles the finitude of the earth and the human.