RELATED TERMS: Complementarity General and restricted economies Plotnitsky (1994: 2): “General economy denotes a mode of theory that relates the configurations it considers to the loss of meaning – a loss it regards as ineluctable within any given system. The concept of general economy was introduced by Bataille and deployed by Derrida, although Nietzsche mayContinue reading “Design and General Economic Anti-Epistemology”
Category Archives: Uncategorized
Plato, Platonism and Neoplatonism
RELATED TERMS: Myth and philosophy can be seen as two forms of narrative, Keum (2021) suggests. Keum (2021) argues that during the 18th century, Plato was adopted as the original champion of philosophy’s long and continuing battle against myth. Prior to that, Europeans would have been more familiar with a different portrait of Plato’s thought:Continue reading “Plato, Platonism and Neoplatonism”
Design and the Question of Technology
RELATED TERMS: Iconic Designs and Iconic Designers; Design (as) Art (as) Philosophy Design differs from art, as discussed in Iconic Designs and Iconic Designers and Design (as) Art (as) Philosophy (pending posting), even though the boundaries between them are no longer strict and admit a certain hybridity. Design also differs from technology, although it bearsContinue reading “Design and the Question of Technology”
Entanglement
RELATED TERMS: Actantiality; Agonism and Design; Incompletion “I prefer to think of myself as being inside a tangled knot; tangled knots fascinate me. It’s necessary to recount the tangle of existence, both as it concerns individual lives and the life of generations. Searching to unravel things is useful, but literature is made out of tangles.”Continue reading “Entanglement”
Design, Narratives, Futures
RELATED TERMS: Design, Narratives, Pasts Henry Mance (2021) mentions two conflicting narratives by means of which we may project our possible futures: the continuation of an historical trend providing material and socio-political improvements; and the difficulties ahead suggested by the evidence of climate science and by ongoing geopolitical tensions. Narratives are one way to manageContinue reading “Design, Narratives, Futures”
Techne
RELATED TERMS: David Roochnik (2007: xi) states that techne, variously translated as skill, art, craft, expertise, profession, science, knowledge, technical knowledge, is not only a crucial term in the Platonic dialogues but has also been crucial in the development of Western culture itself. We currently use descendants of the term to discuss the technologies withContinue reading “Techne”
Decision and Design
RELATED TERMS: ‘Every decision you make is a design decision’ Jean-Luc Nancy, in critically rearticulating the political philosophy of Carl Schmitt, that is, Schmitt’s conception of the theologicopolitical, argues that, in terms of “becoming-secular”, the necessity of decision … is the impossibility of assigning a Subject of law and the State that would not beContinue reading “Decision and Design”
Digital Network Technologies
RELATED TERMS: Metaverse Ben Thompson, a technology commentator, suggests that there have been three epochs in the evolution of the networked world in which we currently live (Naughton, 2021). Each is defined by its core technology and ‘killer app’. The first epoch was that of the personal computer (PC), beginning in August 1981. Its coreContinue reading “Digital Network Technologies”
Environmental Psychology
RELATED TERMS: Psychology One of the domains of psychology most relevant to design practices is environmental psychology, which is a relatively new branch of psychology. Its key objective is to improve the relationship between humankind and the environment using theory, research and practice. Among the major theories in environmental psychology are geographical determinism, which believesContinue reading “Environmental Psychology”
Enlightenment
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,Continue reading “Enlightenment”
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