On the technological unconscious: thinking the (a)signifying production of subjects and bodies with sonographic imaging

Abstract

This paper develops the notion of the technological unconscious by engaging with the geographic relationship between technology and the production of subjectivity. Drawing upon research with the Alternate Anatomies Laboratory in Australia, the paper advances this relationship through an empirical encounter with sonographic imaging. Contributing to conceptualisations of the ways technologies participate in unconscious activity, in this paper ultrasound imaging (sonography) is turned to as one way to think about the enunciation of subjectivity that assists the ultrasound technician in homing-in to particular signifying and a-signifying semiotic cues. Rather than siding with broad understandings of the technological unconscious, the paper articulates the production of specific processes of the technological unconscious via machinic enunciation, which reveals ways of rethinking human-technology relationships through infra-sensible semiotic operations.