Made in Criticalland

Critical and theoretical concepts and theories are now firmly embedded within design education, but to what goal? How will the practice of design develop and change under the ethos of critical inquiry? Indeed, what version of ‘critique’? Taking inspiration from Latour’s essay 'Why Has Critique Run out of Steam? From Matters of Fact to Matters of Concern (2004), this paper will outline how we are introducing concepts and methods derived from science and technology studies (STS), principally developments in actor-network theory (ANT), as part of the BA and MA design programmes at Goldsmiths. To begin, we provide a brief reading of Latour’s essay, discussing its relevance for design education. In doing so we aim to propose an alternative version of critical practice: a criticality that is oriented towards a non-reductive empirical realism tracing the complex messy entanglements of societies with all their strange, weird and wonderful hybrid objects. At the core of the paper, then, is the question of how designers might adopt a realist empirical approach towards the research of societies, actors and networks, whilst allowing for creative speculation. To address this question we present two case studies to highlight the benefits and shortfalls of an STS and ANT inspired approach to design. The first describes a series of workshops with which we encourage our students to adopt the concepts and methods of STS and ANT as part of their design practice. In the second case study we present a design brief in which we ask students to seriously address fictional futures through the associative mingling of statistical entities. In doing so we are exploring how design can address the mediation of expectations and temporality: how, for example, designers might act with ‘matters of concern’ to prospect futures. Each of the case studies highlights a problematic found within both ANT and Design: the first issue is one of truncation. How, in accepting an empirical logic of connectivity, designers delimited and edit their networks of observation and influence. The second case study focuses on the issue of temporality, or more specifically 'future orientation', 'potential' or 'prospect'. Here, design can be seen as a means of ‘departure’ in the material-semiotic lives of objects. Ward and Wilkie | Made in Criticalland Page 2 of 7 Introduction: Towards a Critical Practice When starting a paper taking its cue from Bruno Latour’s 2004 paper Why Has Critique Run Out of Steam? From Matter of Fact to Matters of Concern we have to clarify our position with regard to the context in which we write; where do we aim to act and what do we wish to achieve? Our position here is one of design educators, charged with the development of the next generation of designers. We are interested in how the concepts and methods of science and technology studies (STS), particularly developments in actor-network theory (ANT), can be fruitfully utilized within the teaching of design processes: in design ‘means’ not ends. The aim of this paper is to sketch out how we have been encouraging novel STS informed design practices, whilst reconsidering the role of critical theory in design education, research and practice. Over the last two decades UK design education has embraced the conceptual orientation of poststructuralism and the implications of postmodernity. Throughout the UK Critical and Contextual Studies in Art and Design tout the wares of thinkers such as Baudrillard, Derrida and de Certeau. The word ‘critical’ has been thoroughly integrated into the vocabulary of young designers and has become the banner under which non-normative design practices are taught. Taking our cue from Latour and the cohorts of STS scholars we argue that an emphasis on realist empiricism within design education provides an alternative version of critical practice: a criticality that is oriented towards tracing the complex messy entanglements of societies1 with all their strange, weird and wonderful hybrid objects. On the one hand there is intense interest emerging within STS in topics such as product design (Verbeek, 2005; Shove, 2007), architectural design (Yaneva, 2005), human-computer interface (HCI) design and computer-supported cooperative work (CSCW) (see for example: Danholt, 2005; Jensen, 2001; Suchman, et al. 2002).2 More broadly, scholars are also exposing the significance of design as a ‘creative’ industry of serious significance within western capitalism (Thrift 2008, p.33). On the other hand design is starting to take interest in STS, not least testified by the theme of this conference, but also the contribution of Latour to Domus (see for example: 2004, June) suggesting a nascent courtship between design and STS. One early example of interdisciplinary work between design and STS is the work of govcom.org, in particular studies involving the issuecrawler search engine and visualization tool (see for example: Rogers, 2000; Marres, 2005). Moreover, in the commercial realm, industrial social scientists are increasingly drawing upon STS (see for example: Nafus and Anderson, 2006) in the inventive ethnographic production of societies. What, then, does STS provide designers? Moreover, what form of criticality does STS afford students of design? We’d like to sketch out a response to this question by drawing out some pertinent points from Latour’s essay (2004). First, Latour calls for a renewed empiricism, a realist attitude (Latour, 2004, p.231) to what, after Gabriel Tarde and A. N. Whitehead, he names societies. Second, Latour further specifies that this form of empiricism approaches objects as heterogeneous ensembles that are irreducible to single analytic categories, whether human, natural, social, technological and so on. The reductive nihilism of other forms of critique, argues Latour, is that they are incapable of taking the complexity of real objects seriously.3 Put another way, being critical in the Latourian sense is about an empirical 1 It is important to note that in using the plural of society we are recognizing that there is not a homogenous ‘social’ but rather a diversity of emergent collectives and societies that do not necessarily bind together in unity. 2 HCI and CSCW have a longer history of involvement with STS since the turn of attention of scholars in science studies to technology. 3 Latour also argues against this form of empirical and theoretical approach in Irreductions (Latour, 1988). We might also say that being critical in the Latourian sense is set against the distancing and reductive acts of critical discourse. Being critical, in the non-Latourian sense, can be understood as the practice of setting up empirical distance by reducing a technology or an object of concern to an underlying ideological programme or pre-given normative capacities and as such it comes to be understood as a channel of negative force and singular agency. Latour’s empiricism, on the other hand, calls for a proximity to objects of concern, and in doing so acknowledging the complexity of objects and their inherent multiplicity. Ward and Wilkie | Made in Criticalland Page 3 of 7 attention to and fascination with ontological multiplication.4 Arguably, Latour’s essay can be read as part of his continued critical shift from the judgment of ontological difference as made in early forms of ANT towards an ethos of ever-more connectedness. In what follows we will present two examples of how we are translating this additive version of empiricism into design education.