RELATED TERMS: Humanism; Post-Humanism; Posthuman
Michel Foucault argues that the term humanism should not be confused with that of Enlightenment. The importance of grasping the notions of humanism and Enlightenment for design practices is that it bears directly upon how the human is understood in the design process and in relation to the created design, that is, how human actantiality and potentiality are implicated in the ways the design acts.
Foucault argues that the Enlightenment is a set of events and complex historical processes that is located at a certain point in the development of European societies. It includes elements of social transformation, types of political institution, forms of knowledge, projects of rationalisation of knowledge and practices and technological change. All of this is very difficult to sum up in a word, even if many of these phenomena remain important today.
In contrast, Foucault characterises humanism as a set of themes that have reappeared on several occasions, over time, in European societies.
Design as understood in Incomplete … takes up a position that is critical of humanism, the view of what it means to be human that re-emerged during the societal changes signified by the name of Enlightenment.
References
Foucault, M. (1984). What is Enlightenment? In: The Foucault Reader, edited by Paul Rabinow. New York, NY: Pantheon Books, 32–50.
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