Author Archives: aparsons474

RELATED TERMS: Biopolitics and Biopower According to Ekin Erkan (2019: 218), while biopower may sufficiently explain the kinds of neuroses troubling citizens in the mid-to-late 20th century, psychopower, in contrast, is globalized and diffracted. As a system, it encompasses the organization of the capture of attention made possible by the psycho-technologies developed gradually through radio inContinue reading “Psychopower”

RELATED TERMS: Defamiliarisation; Derive; Detournement; Situationist International; Methodology and method; Alienation effect (Verfremdungseffekt) In the practice of the Situationist International, psychogeography is defined as the study of the specific effects of the geographical (and topographical) environment, whether consciously organised or not, on people’s emotions and behaviour. Debord and his Situationist International colleagues proposed a setContinue reading “Psychogeography”

RELATED TERMS: Actantial model – Greimas; Agon; Antagonist; Epic theatre – Brecht; (The) Heroic; Narratology; New Materialism; Theatre The protagonist may sometimes be referred to as the main character, the focal character or the hero. In one sense, it is the actantiality around which the unfolding of the narrative unfolds: its movements and actions givingContinue reading “Protagonist”

RELATED TERMS: The terms product design and industrial design are often used interchangeably. Industrial designers, emerging during the Industrial Revolution beginning the mid-1700s, sought to generate new ideas within an industry. At a later time, product designers shifted the emphasis within industrial design away from how to make a product towards including questions about whyContinue reading “Product Design and Industrial Design”

RELATED TERMS: Dasein; Phenomenology; Heidegger Some design discourses have made use of the terms ‘present-at-hand’ and ‘ready-to-hand’, derived from Martin Heidegger, to discuss artefacts, entities, interactions and systems such as, for example, in human computer interaction (HCI), interaction design, game design and systems design (Ferris, 2003; Dourish, 1999; Dourish, 2001; Martin, 2012; Karlstrom, 2007; Tanenbaum,Continue reading “Present-at-Hand (Vorhanden) and Ready-to-Hand (Zuhanden)”

RELATED TERMS: Poeisis; Reflexivity and Reflection The term praxis is one of Aristotle’s three main categories action, alongside poiesis and theoria. Praxis is taken to mean doing or acting, rather than making (poiesis) or thinking (theoria), although ‘thinking’ here is restricted to thinking about ‘universals’. Each form of action is associated with a characteristic form of knowing: theoria with epistemeContinue reading “Praxis”

RELATED TERMS: Apparatus – Dispositif; Design Practice and Functionalism; Ontological Turn; Reflexivity and Reflection; Theoretical Practice; The ‘practice’ approach to social phenomena is very important for design, as it underlies the conceptualisation of designs as forms of spatio-temporal (social) practice. The notion of practice is a way of understanding the co-implication and entanglement of environments,Continue reading “Practice”

RELATED TERMS: Postmodernism; Semiotics; Structuralism; Theoretical practice; Method and methodology In as far as it signifies an intense engagement with language and writing and it practices a non-reductionist, relational mode of thinking, poststructuralism may be of great value in considering the language components of narrative as they are articulated in specific design practices. Metaphorically, butContinue reading “Poststructuralism”

RELATED TERMS: Critical thinking; Cultural Studies; Design Practice and Functionalism; Feminism and Materialism; Metanarrative; Methodology and Method; Modernism; Poststructuralism; Theoretical Practice; The cosmetic is the new cosmic … Koolhaas (2002: 190) One question for design practices may be to consider whether any particular design might benefit from orienting itself toward the debates generated by theContinue reading “Postmodernism”

RELATED TERMS: Posthumanism; Postanthropocentrism; Posthuman; According to Rosi Braidotti (2019), critical posthumanities is an emergent field of enquiry based on the convergence of posthumanism and postanthropocentrism. Posthumanism develops a critique of the humanist ideal of ‘Man’: Vitruvian ‘Man’ as the allegedly universal measure of all things. Postanthropocentrism criticizes species hierarchy and human exceptionalism. Post-Humanism namesContinue reading “Posthumanities”