RELATED TERMS: World; World-Building; Worldlessness #1; Worldlessness #2: Worldlessness and Design METAPHYSICS No need to know what it is. Laugh at it: this creates an impression of great intelligence. (Flaubert, The Dictionary of Received Ideas) “Folks cried and laughed and hugged each other and called out loud for the end of the world. No oneContinue reading “Worldlessness #3: Saving the world / at the end of / the world / is not enough”
Category Archives: Theories
Theory [Snippets 11]
RELATED TERMS: Posthuman; Postmodernism; Poststructuralism; Structuralism; Theoretical Practice What is the state and status of theory in the 2020s? For example, could it be argued that one can speak of a cycle, a story cycle, a twisted tale from which there is no escape, one that traces the turns and returns within an intergenerational inheritanceContinue reading “Theory [Snippets 11]”
Econarratology
RELATED TERMS: Narratology “as Arendt puts it, ‘real stories, in distinction from those we invent, have no author.’ ” (Batuman, 2008) The question underlying this post is the issue of what an adequate narratology would be for the practice of the design of narrative environments, an approach to designing that emphasises the (necessary) inter-relationships among people,Continue reading “Econarratology”
Iconic Designs, Critical Designs
RELATED TERMS: Iconic Designs and Iconic Designers; Imaginary The Iconic As acknowledged in Iconic Designs and Iconic Designers, the iconic approach to design is not wholly without merit. For example, it recognises that designs have cultural meanings and other-than-utilitarian uses, such as in the construction, maintenance and performance of self-hood and social standing. In otherContinue reading “Iconic Designs, Critical Designs”
Visual Arts and Visual Media
RELATED TERMS: Mode and medium; The proper goal of sculpture and of all the visual arts, it might have been held at one time in the past, is the depiction of physical beauty. However, this universalistic horizon, as well as the horizon of critics and philosophers of the Enlightenment, are rendered problematic by the opacityContinue reading “Visual Arts and Visual Media”
Story (fabula) and Plot (sjuzet)
RELATED TERMS: In medias res; Genre; Tragic theatre – Aristotle; Defamiliarisation, Ostranenie or making strange; Narratology; Montage, Collage, Assemblage and Bricolage “The more solitary and isolated I become, the more I come to like stories.” Aristotle, Fragmenta, fragment 668. Design practices, it is argued, would do well to consider the notions of story, plot, chronology,Continue reading “Story (fabula) and Plot (sjuzet)”
Speculative Realism
RELATED TERMS: New Materialism; Object-Oriented Ontology; Postanthropocentrism; Posthumanism; Poststructuralism The term speculative realism was coined by Graham Harman, Quentin Meillassoux, Ray Brassier and Iain Hamilton Grant as a title for a conference held at Goldsmiths, University of London in 2007. According to Avanessian and Malik (2016) speculative realists positioned themselves in distinction to both poststructuralismContinue reading “Speculative Realism”
Object-Oriented Ontology
RELATED TERMS: Actor-Network Theory; New Materialism; Ontological Designing; Postanthropocentrism; Posthuman; Posthumanism; Speculative Realism; As an inheritor of the line of thinking developed by actor-network theory, on the one hand, and phenomenology, on the other hand, object-oriented ontology (OOO) may be of interest to design practices in as far as it concerns the relationship between theContinue reading “Object-Oriented Ontology”
Narratology
RELATED TERMS: Actantial model – Greimas; Architecture; Reception Theory and Reader-Response Criticism; Story (fabula) and Plot (sjuzet or sjuzhet); Structuralism; Telos and Teleology “The study of narrative has become so popular that the French have honored it with a term – la narratologie. … Modern narratology combines two powerful intellectual trends: the Anglo-American inheritance ofContinue reading “Narratology”
Framing Narrative
RELATED TERMS: Narratology; Metalepsis; Use for: Frame narrative A framing narrative contains a second, or further, embedded narrative, or narratives, for which it provides a context or setting. Sometimes the framing narrative begins and ends the narrative as a whole, providing book ends. At other times, it is simply present at the beginning of theContinue reading “Framing Narrative”
