What an extraordinary episode in the economic progress of man that age was which came to an end in August, 1914! The greater part of the population, it is true, worked hard and lived at a low standard of comfort, yet were, to all appearances, reasonably contented with this lot. But escape was possible, for any man of capacity or character at all exceeding the average, into the middle and upper classes, for whom life offered, at a low cost and with the least trouble, conveniences, comforts, and amenities beyond the compass of the richest and most powerful monarchs of other ages. The inhabitant of London could order by telephone, sipping his morning tea in bed, the various products of the whole earth, in such quantity as he might see fit, and reasonably expect their early delivery upon his doorstep; he could at the same moment and by the same means adventure his wealth in the natural resources and new enterprises of any quarter of the world, and share, without exertion or even trouble, in their prospective fruits and advantages; or he could decide to couple the security of his fortunes with the good faith of the townspeople of any substantial municipality in any continent that fancy or information might recommend. He could secure forthwith, if he wished it, cheap and comfortable means of transit to any country or climate without passport or other formality, could dispatch his servant to the neighboring office of a bank for such supply of the precious metals as might seem convenient, and could then proceed abroad to foreign quarters, without knowledge of their religion, language, or customs, bearing coined wealth upon his person, and would consider himself greatly aggrieved and much surprised at the least interference. But, most important of all, he regarded this state of affairs as normal, certain, and permanent, except in the direction of further improvement, and any deviation from it as aberrant, scandalous, and avoidable. The projects and politics of militarism and imperialism, of racial and cultural rivalries, of monopolies, restrictions, and exclusion, which were to play the serpent to this paradise, were little more than the amusements of his daily newspaper, and appeared to exercise almost no influence at all on the ordinary course of social and economic life, the internationalization of which was nearly complete in practice.
We find ourselves in a world we make, and find that we are made and
unmade in the making of it. What are we to make of the abiding artifice
that is "the political"? What are we doing when we are doing design and
what do we do when we discern that design has designs on us? In this
seminar we will think design as a site through which politics are done,
but typically done by way of the gesture of a circumvention of the
political. At the heart of this disavowed doing of politics we will
contend with a perverse conjuration of "the future." The good life is a
life with a future, and it is to the future that design devotes its
anti-politics at the expense of the open futurity in the political
present. Design as a site of "designation" is a gesture of naming as
mastery, of reduction as revelation, of problems as provocations to
instrumental technique and not stakeholder struggle, an aesthetic with
its own paradoxical temporality, publicity, linearity, knowledge. Design
as a site of the "designer label" is an indulgence in fetishism, of the
commodity-form, an auratic posture, the psychic compensation of lack
and its threat. To elaborate and pressure these propositions, we will
spend quite a bit of time in the critique of three design discourses in
particular: (one) "Green" design which would accomplish sustainability
without history, (two) social software design which would accomplish
democracy without participation, and (three) eugenic design which would
accomplish life-enhancement without lifeway diversity. In your
individual presentations I hope we will ramify our attentions to other
design sites: comparative constitutions, fashion design, food styling,
graphic design, industrial design, interior design, landscape design,
"life coaching," and more.
