The older ways of talking about the self as stable and singular have been slipping away for some time now. Instead we have begun to speak of the self more as a crowd of elements or as an ecosystem.
According to the ‘ecological’ metaphor of the self it is possible to say that the self as an ecosystem of thoughts, beliefs and desires. I would like to speak about this ecological metaphor using two ideas taken from the work of Richard Rorty. First, it is Rorty’s position that there is no intrinsic self that has thoughts, beliefs and desires. Rather, the self is these.[1] This is an important distinction to make. The self is thus not somehow separate from the ecosystem, nor does it contain the ecosystem. It is the ecosystem. Rorty’s second idea that will help us construc this metaphor of ecology is that the self is really a “network of beliefs and desires which is continually in process of being rewoven.”[2] The self, as represented by Rorty, is continuously in a process of flux as “it reweaves itself, in response to stimuli” encountered in larger networks. This new image of the self, as opposed to earlier, less flexible and partitioned images, is better able to accommodate the irony and multiplicity required of a 21st century pluralist liberal democracy.
This metaphor of ecology has the potential to be very powerful and useful when combined with the image of the cyborg, the sort of ironic metaphor that may help us escape from the ‘logics and practices of domination’ described by Donna Haraway in her ‘Cyborg Manifesto’. And it is all the more powerful and useful when extended to describe social and cultural manifestations and when the lines begin to be blurred between physical and mental ecologies. As Gregory Bateson has written, “there can be an ecology of bad ideas, just as there is an ecology of weeds,”[3] but the big question of the day is: can the ecology of bad ideas be connected to the ecology of weeds? If we are trying to talk about the contiguity of the mental and the physical, maybe it would be useful to talk about ideas and weeds as being parts of the same ecosystem.
As an electro-nomadic cyborg I am an ecosystem. I consist of abiotic components [machine], biotic components [body], and mental components [thoughts, beliefs, desires]. These integral components are always engaged in reciprocal, dynamic relationships with each other, and also with phenomena outside of the system. As a network, I must deal both with my physical and cultural context as well as with other networks of similar scales [other people]. And, since ecosystems have soft and flexible edges [Rorty’s reweaving in response to stimuli], there is always a reciprocity between all of these things. There is also a dynamic reciprocity between different scales of ecosystems. When we move up in scale, smaller ecosystems begin to act as organisms as they relate to one another and to the abiotic factors operating at this expanded scale. This image of concentric ecosystems has resonances of William Mitchell’s image of the self as a nomadic “system of nested shells, with carefully articulated and controlled interconnections among the levels.”[4] In fact, when we cross these three images, the image of the cyborg, the image of the self as ecosystem as augmented by Rorty, and Mitchell’s image of radiating networks, we get quite an astonishing picture of the world: my ecology of parts interacts with and absorbs a layer of personal electronic equipment; outside of this ecosystem is a ‘bio-region’, including our vehicles and our buildings and also our close networks of family and friends; beyond this we are surrounded by larger communities of people, cultural constructions, and “large scale, long-distance infrastructure and geographically dispersed networks.”[5]
So here’s where architecture comes in. Architecture exists at a very specific scale in this picture, at the scale of our immediate communities, containing us and mediating our relations with the larger world. It is through architecture that we are connected to many larger-scale networks such as energy grids, water distribution systems, sanitary systems, and up until recently, telecommunication networks. Architecture also mediates our relationship with air, with the sun, with rain, with animals, birds and insects. If the air is too cold, our architecture warms it for us; if the sun is too hot or it is raining, it shelters us; if we want to avoid insects or animals, our architecture also can provide a zone of refuge for us from them. Buildings mediate the boundaries between our intimate surroundings and the next scale of network. I believe that in this mediation architects should take their cue from Donna Haraway when she calls for “pleasure in the confusion of boundaries and for responsibility in their construction.”[6] Architecture calibrates our lived relationships with ‘nature’, our technological networks, and with other people.
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