This network engages critical posthumanism via design practices, education, and research. We are designers, artists, educators, and scholars who critically examine biases in all things that make up design, its entanglements with anthropocentric worldviews and complicity in reproducing structures of power. At the same time we nourish our curiosity and belief regarding the need for designers to pay better attention to more-than-human earthlings like animals, plants, and everything in-between and beyond.
Together we want to explore how design can grow and thrive in contact with posthumanism – and how designerly and artistic approaches in turn can inform critical posthumanism and related discourses.
The network started in Sweden in 2018 but since then has grown into an international and decentralized network.
WHY POSTHUMANISM?
A critical posthumanist perspective reflects on the human subject increasingly destabilized by digital media technologies, resists the purported human exceptionalism among the species, and scrutinizes the social power relations within images of humanity. Critical Posthumanisms are related to many fields of study that historicize, contextualize, or investigate power dynamics such as gender studies, queer feminist theory, disability studies, eco feminism, critical race theory, and more.
Thus, they can help us inquire into design: How does design reinforce contemporary notions of “normal” or “accepted” human embodiment and how can it challenge normative ways of being? How have the value systems at the basis of nature-culture, mind-body, or gender binaries shaped design? What political, social, environmental, or technological critiques can develop at the nexus of design and posthumanism? What are the possibilities and limits of designerly engagements with critical posthumanism for more socially and environmentally just futures? Exposing the value systems and worldviews that historically have shaped and continue to inform design is key to addressing a multitude of design and design-related practices.
WHAT’S ON THIS SITE?
In this platform we welcome contributions about different ways in which design intersects with Critical Posthumanism:
- Network News: Structural or organizational updates about the network itself or news on network events, meetings, etc.
- Stories: Personal reports, thought pieces, or short essays on critical practices, pedagogies, research, or approaches in design, or chances and limits of critical posthumanism for the discipline.
- Events: Invitations to and open calls for on- and offline non-institutional and academic events such as conferences, symposia, talks, workshops, etc. at the intersection of design + posthumanism.
- Projects: Design (or design-related) projects that work with critical posthumanism as a framework or approach, or engage with the discourse via a designerly approach.
- Teaching: Reports about past or future institutional and non-institutional courses, seminars, workshops, or projects, including syllabi or retrospectives.
- Publications: (Formats like but not limited to) book, paper, podcast, or exhibition recommendations, including short description and review.
- Stitches: Micro interviews with community members, designers, scholars, researchers, or artists.