RELATED TERMS:
Unending Discourse
The entries in this Snippets series are cut from larger texts. Although not explicitly focused on design practices, they operate as discourse-collage elements that aim to provoke broader discussions about the potential ethico-political value of what might otherwise be taken solely as the aesthetic value of design practices, particularly those that incorporate narrative strategies. To paraphrase Timothy Garton Ash (2022), they are simply elements that need to be embedded in a larger theory.
Politics, Reality, Narrativity
“Since these are merely incremental steps, they must be embedded in a larger narrative. The politics of the past decade, including those that led to the vote for Brexit, reminds us that a compelling narrative is as important as what technocrats call reality. In fact, a good narrative helps create a political reality.”
(Garton Ash, 2022)
The context for this quote is a discussion of what would be an appropriate agenda for the resetting of the relationship between the post-Johnsonian, post-Brexit UK and the European Union. Garton Ash in this article also evokes Jean Monnet, one of the primary architects of European integration. Monnet suggested that, when facing an apparently irresolvable problem, one move would be to broaden the context. Parallels might be drawn here between ‘broadening the context’ and ‘widening the narrative’ by, for example, introducing a meta-narrative, on the one hand; and ‘changing the frame’, on the other hand, by altering the perspective or taking multiple perspectives.
Discourse provocation: Design practices, by interweaving political narratives and technological-technocratic realities, alter the context by affecting the directionality, meaning and intentionality of the given narrative and, thereby, the understanding of the ‘real’ which it helps to create.
[Further investigation might be required here to decide whether it is the Lacanian ‘Real’ that is being cited here or reality as we conventionally understand it, as a shared cultural construct, a consensus about the material world and how it is to be grasped and interacted with.]
Reference
Garton Ash, T. (2022). Britain must reset relations with Europe. Financial Times Weekend, 9/10 July 2022, p.13.
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