Design and the Question of History (Design, Histories, Futures)

"Design and the Question of History offers a new perspective on the historical significance of design, showing how design is an agent of historical change rather than a single aspect. Despite a historical sensibility being essential in making critical and directional choices, Design History presents an extremely selective view, which cannot deliver the historical knowledge to sufficiently and sensitively inform designers and design thinkers' practice. Focusing on how the relationship between design and history is understood and presented, this book uses a methodological approach to address this problem. The book covers the issue of history and how design in history needs to be understood by recognising that design is always historically embedded in a relational context; the efficacy of Design History as a sub-discipline within design; and the delivery of a more substantial historical sensibility to emergent designers, identifying the pedagogic problems it presents and discussing the agency of such knowledge in practice. This book is the flagship of the Design, History & Futures series, edited by Tony Fry, Lisa Norton and Anne-Marie Willis."-- Provided by publisher Cover page Halftitle page Series page Title page Copyright page CONTENTS PREFACE, PRE-FACE ESSENTIAL READING ESSAY ONE WHITHER DESIGN/WHETHER HISTORY INTRODUCTION On design and history Design history and history History totalized On forgetting history History and humanism Ontology and history Now Futuring education: Designand history Appropriation and the new university 1 REMEMBERINGS AND DISMEMBERINGS History: Points of difference in a world of fragments Out of historicity: Casting back History without historians: Fundamental thinking Past and future: A question of imperatives 2 ANOTHER HISTORY, ANOTHER DESIGNING Seeing and the textual lens Reading, writing and speaking history What’s in a name? “TheHolocaust”—a case study Design and the inhuman History, ambiguity, event—who speaks, what can be spoken, silence Witnessing the witness Dachau and Mauthausenwork camp 49 On considering Theresienstadt An outline historical view of the camp Auschwitz: Writing after the surplus of the excess 3 DESIGN IN THE MAELSTROM OF TIME World and the question of world history The world of modernity The time after the modern Ethics: An opening and an ending NOTES Introduction 1. Rememberings and dismemberings 2. Another history, another designing 3. Design in the maelstrom of time ESSAY TWO HISTORY, DESIGN, FUTURES: CONTENDING WITH WHAT WE HAVE MADE 1 OUR HISTORY, OUR UNHAPPINESS I The structure of existence is undergoing a fundamental change The necessity of history Reopening towards the future II The character of our unhappiness Symptoms of unhappiness in design and architecture Rescuing measure, rescuing the future 2 THE ARTIFICIAL AND WHAT IT OPENS TOWARDS I Thinking the artificial The artificial as a qualitatively new historical condition II What the artifi cial opens towards/overcoming destructiveness Issue 1—No law, the propositional,the possible Issue 2—Mediation, negotiation,incommensurability Issue 3—Surpassing technology Issue 4—The question of the drive Issue 5—Overcoming the proscription of possibility Issue 6—The situation as the site of ethics, design and politics 3 ACTING IN REGARD TO HISTORY I The problem of how to act II A Berlin Moment Experiencing the event Writing history: What an event does In lieu of a conclusion NOTES 1. Our history, our unhappiness 2. The artificial and whatit opens towards 3. Acting in regard to history ESSAY THREE AND SO TO ANOTHER SETTING . . . 1 ON CARE ANDEDUCATION Preliminary clarifications Performative associations 1: Hold Performative associations 2: Care Performative associations 3: Ontological design Learning Performative association, character and design history NOTES INDEX "Design and the Question of History is not a work of design history. Rather, it is a mixture of mediation, advocacy and polemic that takes seriously the directive force of design as an historical actor in and upon the world. Understanding design as a shaper of worlds within which the political, ethical and historical character of human being is at stake, this text demands radically transformed notions of both design and history. Above all, the authors posit history as the generational site of the future. Blindness to history, it is suggested, blinds us both to possibility, and to the foreclosure of possibilities, enacted through our designing. The text is not a resolved, continuous work, presented through one voice. Rather, the three authors cut across each other, presenting readers with the task of disclosing, to themselves, the commonalities, repetitions and differences within the deployed arguments, issues, approaches and styles from which the text is constituted. This is a work of friendship, of solidarity in difference, an act of cultural politics. It invites the reader to take a position--it seeks engagement over agreement."--back cover Design and the Question of History is not a work of Design History. Rather, it is a mixture of mediation, advocacy and polemic that takes seriously the directive force of design as an historical actor in and upon the world. Understanding design as a shaper of worlds within which the political, ethical and historical character of human being is at stake, this text demands radically transformed notions of both design and history. Above all, the authors posit history as the generational site of the future. Blindness to history, it is suggested, blinds us both to possibility, and to the foreclosure of possibilities, enacted through our designing. The text is not a resolved, continuous work, presented through one voice. Rather, the three authors cut across each other, presenting readers with the task of disclosing, to themselves, the commonalities, repetitions and differences within the deployed arguments, issues, approaches and styles from which the text is constituted. This is a work of friendship, of solidarity in difference, an act of cultural politics. It invites the reader to take a position – it seeks engagement over agreement.