Posthumanist approaches to design: Object oriented ontology, actor-network theory, spherology

Due to the destructions experienced in the 20th century and the life-threatening effects of the ecological crisis today, the progressive attitude rooted in the Age of Enlightenment and Humanism as a part of it is criticized for envisioning humans as autonomous entities placing them at the center of the universe. Instead of this approach, Posthumanism, which considers all beings, including humans, as equal, with the perspective of 'Flat Ontology,' conceiving humans as a part of a whole, is being adopted as a new approach. Especially considering the effects of developing technology and the blurring of the nature-culture boundary, comprehending and expressing the increasingly complex relations between humans and non-humans in contemporary life has become problematic by the dualist schemes produced by the human-centered view of Modern epistemology as a way of knowing. The Modern epistemology approach, shaped by the division of the "human subject and the objects subject to him," also determines the conventional view of the Industrial Design discipline, like all disciplines. However, since Industrial Design is a discipline that occurs in the encounter of humans and nonhumans, interpreting and discussing this encounter with the help of new Posthumanist Theories is critical for developing the discipline. In this thesis, three theories adopting the Posthumanist approach, Graham Harman's Object Oriented Ontology (OOO), Bruno Latour's Actor-Network Theory (ANT), and Peter Sloterdijk's Spherology (Spheres Theory), will be introduced; at the end of the thesis, with the Spherological Method developed by Peter Sloterdijk, the complex relations of contemporary life in the coexistence of humans and non-humans will be exemplified through a case by applying the Foam metaphor, which is used to conceptualize by spatializing. Key Words: Industrial Design, Posthumanism, Non-Humans, Flat Ontology, Object Oriented Ontology, Actor-Network Theory, Spherology, Spheres Theory, Foam Metaphor