Designs for the Pluriverse

I would recommend that readers potentially interested in the book start by looking at the Preface. Why? Because besides giving a straightforward idea about the book’s main argument, it also does so intuitively by situating the book within my own intellectual genealogy and social context; very importantly, the Preface also gives a good idea about the book’s stakes. There, I introduce the idea of “civilizational transitions” as the most capacious concept to convey the multi-headed crisis facing the world at present. As one of my close colleagues in Chapel Hill (Dorothy Holland) likes to say (just upon hearing me speak about the book – she hasn’t read it yet), the book sounds as if it is about redesigning the entire world. And in a way it is! Needless to say, these are not just my inflated claims, but also those of some of the design theorists on whom I lean; some of them talk even about “redesigning the human,” or, as I mentioned above, see their task as contributing to bringing about a new civilization altogether. Bold claims indeed. More importantly, as I make it abundantly clear in the book, similar arguments are being made by many social movement activists in the Global South (particularly, but not only, indigenous peoples and peasants), and increasingly in the North as well.

The more analytical readers might jump to pp. 19-20, where I summarize the book’s argument and contents in four short propositions. Those most interested in the emerging field of transition studies may do well to skim Chapter 5, which presents a range of transition frameworks that have been emerging with clarity and force in recent years, in both the Global North (e.g., degrowth, commoning, the Great Transition Initiative, transition to the Ecozoic Era, and Transition Towns) and the Global South (Buen Vivir, postdevelopment, and transitions to post-extractivism). It also provides a detailed analysis of two transition design frameworks: the Transition Design doctoral program at Carnegie Mellon University, and Ezio Manzini’s elaborate conceptualization of “design for social innovation.” This chapter argues for the significance of transition thinking for design studies. Finally, those interested in Latin America and in territorial struggles may glance at Chapter 6, which lays down the rudiments of an autonomous design framework, largely based on intellectual-activist debates taking place in Latin America at present. Autonomy is conceptualized by relying on Maturana and Varela’s notion of autopoiesis and on current Latin American debates on autonomy and the communal. The proposal is illustrated with two experiences involving autonomous and transition design exercises in Colombia’s southwest. I highlight these two chapters because they are possibly the two most original contributions of the book to design debates.

My wishes with the regards to the book’s potential impact are both very modest and ambitious. They are ambitious in terms of the argument; as I stated above, the book’s goal – in tandem with related arguments by other design theorists – is to contribute to redesigning design. This task has two sides to it: the first is addressed to designers, in the hope that some of them will reexamine and reorient their practice, placing it at the service of transitions to the pluriverse. The second concerns scholars, activists and policy-makers in non-design fields; at this level, my hope is that this diverse group will take design seriously as a fundamental space of intervention that indelibly shapes – moreover, makes – the contemporary world, including creating us as particular kinds of human. Design is ubiquitous; anywhere we look, we see design busy at work, from our hand-held devices to cities, and from education and health to food and agriculture. Social theorists have not taken design seriously at this level; conversely, designers have gone about their task without sufficient critical awareness of the fundamental fact that what they do indelibly shapes the kinds of subjects we become, the ecologies we inhabit, what we enable or destroy – in other words, as design critic Anne-Marie Willies puts it, that design designs: we design the world and the world designs us back.

I am perfectly aware that the design profession, and the academy for that matter, will largely continue to be what they have been for the past century if not more: central political technologies of patriarchal capitalist modernity. It is in this sense that my goal is quite humble. To put it in the starkest possible terms, I believe that design and the academy are part of the forces of ontological occupation of people’s lives, experiences, and territories. I say this because of their cultural proximity and commitment to capitalist modernity. None of this will change radically overnight. That said, my hope is that with the emergence of critical design studies we might be able to convey persuasively the notion that design is a critical domain for thinking about life itself, and for constructing the world otherwise than it is, in an Earth-wise manner. In design we find a great potential for re-localizing the economy and many other daily activities; for re-communalizing social life, as a counter to the profoundly isolating individualism that is wreaking havoc on the planet and impoverishing ever more our cultural and social lives; and for engaging with others on the Liberation of Mother Earth, a concept proposed by the Nasa indigenous people from the Northern Cauca region in Colombia’s southwest as a principle for all progressive political strategies on Earth’s behalf. As I say somewhere towards the end of the book, what emerges out of these reflections is a notion of design as an open invitation for us all to become mindful and effective weavers of the mesh of life.