Techno-subjectivities: The architecture of subject formation and third-thumbs

Abstract

This thesis explores the augmented prosthetic third-thumb, investigating how the technics of technological augmentation are intertwined with subjectivity within socio-political and economic assemblages. Drawing from Félix Guattari and Suely Rolnik's Molecular Revolution in Brazil (1982), the research positions the third-thumb as machinic assemblage participating in 'mutant subjectivity' production.[1]

The investigation operates across interconnected registers: philosophical-psychoanalytic subjectivation mechanisms, socio-political assemblages that frame these processes, and the architectural implications of prosthetically augmented corporeality. Through Guattarian thematics such as the molecular revolution, transversality, and the formation of heterogeneous subjectivity, this research demonstrates how the third-thumb participates in technological subjectivation, reshaping socio-political conditions and ultimately architecture itself.

The thesis traces prosthetic technologies as existential territories that generate new affects, perceptions, and architectural relations affecting socio-political transformation, rather than merely functional augmentations. Prosthetic augmentation catalyses transformations that extend beyond functional considerations, positioning prosthetic technologies as active participants in subjectivity's molecular revolution. The term I have coined, techno-subjectivities, demands architectural thinking that accommodates multiplicitous embodiments within techno-social assemblages.

[1] Suely Rolnik; Félix Guattari, Molecular Revolution in Brazil, trans. Karel Clapshow; Brian Holmes, vol. 1 (Semiotext(e), 2008), p.454.