Materialisations of space: phenomenological-archaeological investigations concerning the relations between the human organism, space and technology

In my thesis I investigate the impact the conceptual domestication and material technical transformation of space and movement has had on the behaviour of the human organism and the way it relates to its environment. In doing so l will examine the formation and structure of three non-identical yet interrelated forms of human space; rational-geometrical space, lived space, and technologically mediated space, I combine a phenomenological approach, which allows for an analysis of the horizontal relation between embodied organism and environment, with an archaeological perspective that traces the genealogy of specific symbolic and technological formations viewed in their nexus with lived, embodied behaviour.I argue that both the process of the conceptual domestication of space, particulady in the form of what Husserl refers to as the tendency of rationalisation and technisation, as well as the concrete technological transformation of the spatial environment, come into being and develop in a comparable way, While both initially directly or indirectly presuppose the perceptual' and motor activity of the embodied human organism, their subsequent development is tendentiously characterised by a relative departure from the human body in lieu of an extra-somatic organisation and materialisation of sense and behaviour.The implications for the behaviour of the individual human organism are ambivalent. On the one hand, the increasing uncoupling of technology and conceptual systems from human embodiment, has allowed for a rapid development of the human's overall technical and symbolic capacities, The result is an expansive material and symbolic 'humanisation' (Leroi-Gourhan) of the organism's behavioural and geographical environment. On the other hand, the very same process entails a behavioural regression with regard to the human organism's sensorimotor activity. I argue, by way of the former, that this may entail a constriction of the human organism's cognitive and imaginative capacities, potentially threatening its individuality