Module 4 | Politics and Powers
Welcome to the fourth module of 51272: Cultures (spring 2021), a design studies course at Carnegie Mellon University School of Design.
This course is about analyzing and discussing various aspects of human difference and relating them to the material/designed world. You can find the course description here.
Module 04: Politics and Powers
Why Politics and Powers?
Design’s ability to materialize concepts and belief systems points to the importance of knowing the contexts in which they live. This is in acknowledgment that designs do not exist in a vacuum; they are submerged in complexity that shape its multiple dimensions of meaning and utility. In this light, it is imperative that designers understand the politics and powers that inform a context as they will be one of the key lenses through which the design will be understood by a public.
Class 04
This lecture was divided into four sections to parse the dense topic of politics and powers, respectively and in relation to one another. Each section included key thought leaders rooted in political theory and intersecting with design in addition to examples that further illustrate their points.
These four sections are:
Politics and the Political
Ideology and Design
Biopolitics
The Politics of Design
l. Politics and the Political
These two terms give language and framing to understanding different types and multiple manifestations of power. Two scholars that the instructor emphasized were: Hannah Arendt (1906–1975) and Carl Schmitt (1888–1985).
Hannah Arendt was a German-born American political theorist born into a German-Jewish family. Her most influential work was The Human Condition. According to Arendt, politics is the most important form of human activity involving interactions among free and equal citizens.
Arendt makes the argument that there is no superiority nor inferiority within the relationship between vita activa (active life) and vita contemplativa (contemplative life); she also states that this does not mean they reflect one another. Rather they are in some ways in concert.
Carl Schmitt, a German and conservative political theorist, was both influential and controversial. (Controversial due to his association with Nazism) He developed ideas surrounding politics and the political. According to Schmitt, every government capable of decisive action must include a dictatorial element within its constitution.
Schmitt believed that the political is based on the distinction between us and them–the ability to choose who to include and who to deliberately exclude following the rhetoric of us vs them. Within this, holding and exercising power is to be able to act in accord with the best interests of those belonging to the group that was chosen and deliberately not in the interest of those excluded. This is the sustainment and concentration of one holding power.
The instructor equated this to the analogy of how politicians use particular language to exude best interest yet practice being in power. For instance, the use of the phrase “I act in the best interest of my people” is an instance of a people and context becoming political. Any action that withholds this stratum is exercising one’s power.
ll. Ideology and Design
In this second section, we discussed two scholars: Louis Althusser (1918–1990) and Peter-Paul Verbeek (b. 1970). Through their lenses and theories, ideology is understood as a representation of the relation humans have with the world, and seen as a structure in which its contents vary often sustained (e.g., further illustrated in the diagram below through the lens of Marxist theory).
Louis Althusser (1918–1990) was a French Algerian Marxist philosopher whose theories focused on ideology. He argued that the superstructure affects the based through ideology. He also makes the distinction between ideologies and ideology. Ideologies are specific belief systems and are historical, such as christian ideology, feminist ideology. On the other hand, ideology is structural. In this light, he argues that ideology is eternal and does not have a history.
Peter-Paul Verbeek (b. 1970) is a Dutch philosopher of technology. His work focuses on the role technology plays on influencing human behavior in particularly human-world relations. He argues that artifacts that live in the world are utilitarian and actively shape, and create, the experiences and understandings of the world.
The instructor underscored that understanding ideologies, ideology, and the role of artifacts highlight the importance of persuasion as an aspect of design. This is typically seen in advertisements that sell lifestyles, ways of being, and types of pursuits; all reflecting different forms of relating to the world around us and the structures that have been put in place.
lll. Biopolitics
In the third section, the instructor walked through the concepts that encompass biopolitics and the interplay between ideology, biopolitics, and design.
Michel Foucault (1926–1984) was a French philosopher and social theorist. He coined the terms biopolitics and biopower. In his argument, he states that biopolitics is the analysis of the strategies and mechanisms through which human life processes are managed under regimes of authority over knowledge and power. He also states that biopower is the practice of modern nation states and institutions to regulate subjects through techniques for “achieving subjugation of bodies and the control of populations.”
The instructor underscored that it is important to note that the concept of biopolitics has been interpreted in a range of ways depending if life is seen as the determining basis of politics or if the object of politics is life. They pointed to panopticism, the role of surveillance in biopolitics, as one way to think through this theory.
Varying measures in response to COVID around the globe were used as examples to illustrate the interplay between ideology, biopolitics, and design.
The role of vaccination passports have been a point of contention for many governments and national-states. Arguments have ranged from it being the best way to arrive at herd immunity to the deflection of any sort of state sanctioned control over mobility or other semblances of autonomy.
lV. The Politics of Design
In this section, the instructor began to illustrate the multiple forms through which the above sections come to life by way of design’s ability to materialize belief systems and ideologies. This section encompassed a range of scholars. Langdon Winner (theories focused on whether artifacts embodied forms of power and author, such as Robert Moses low-hanging overpasses in Long Island); Mike Monteriro (work focuses on design ethics and the blindspots that exist in the US industry as it stands); Mahmoud Keshavarz (whose work focused on the design of politics and how different material practices shape everyday perception); and Silvia Mata-Marín (whose work focuses on understanding processes of acculturation, enculturation, and assimilation through design, specifically in relation to immigrant and refugee populations).
Mahmoud Keshavarz is an Iranian senior lecturer in design studies at HDK-Valand Academy of Art and Design. He authored Design Politics of the Passport: Materiality, Immobility, and Dissent (2018). Mahmoud argues that, “design as an articulatory practice points to the importance of decision, orientation, direction, and negotiation in design actions.”
Silvia Mata-Marín is a Costa Rican full-time Design professor at Universidad de Costa Rica and an alumnae of CMU’s School of Design. Her work situates design and interrogates design’s complicity in creating and sustaining certain conditions for migrant populations around the world. She states that, “bordering, therefore, becomes a method to understanding the everyday life experience of migrants.”
“All of these “makeshift” infrastructures can be seen as the materialization of affective practices. They are forms of design that stem from other logics, its intent is to build the communal and generate social life against the state’s design to disallow it.”
— Dr. Silvia Mata-Marín
The instructor concludes the session with a provocation from Lilly Irani who speaks to intended and likely consequences to one’s designs in an episode from the Design in Transition podcast:
The class began to wrap up with two questions: how can a designer be best prepared in a situation where their designs are deemed questionable? What is their responsibility in that context? Finally, the class concluded with lines of inquiry to understand the deep complexities in which designs are a part of and disruptive to.
Class 05: Provocations
The second session for this module included Provocations in which instructors determine eight Provocateurs (in the class) to lead class discussions on the most recent class lecture. In this case, the Provocateurs prepared questions that provoked deeper thought in labor and class in relation to design as a profession, field, and study. Each Provocateur were assigned to facilitate discussions with 3–4 other classmates.
Here are some of our insights:
- Power & Responsibility: How do designers taken into account both power dynamics within the industry and the power that they might hold in relation to the general public?
- Interpretations: How do designers take into account the subjectivities and interpretations of perceived barriers and restrictions, such as data privacy, as they conduct their work and/or choose their projects?
- Ethics: How can designers shed light on their blindspots? How should they take into account their own biases particularly as the industry (in the US and Western Europe) expand their conversations on power relations, dynamics, and interpretations?
- Perspectives: When designers design for basic human needs, should we be asking the questions of from whose perspective, whose needs, whose wants, and to what relations?
- Nuanced understandings: Within this conversation, how should designers (and generally systems thinkers) take into account entities that are attempting to pull smaller leverage points, such as the company Square that aims to make it easier for small businesses to conduct business? (though it be under the umbrella of capitalism)
- Friction: How do designers address points of friction, work through such friction, and take into consideration existing frictions? (It is likely that points of friction are also where ethical concerns arise)
- Disparate Impact: Particularly in relation to state violence and services provided by the state (US), what is the designer’s role? If designers also need to make a living, what moral dilemmas arise, and how should the designer address them (similar to points of friction)? How should designers also take disparate impacts into consideration (how social issues impact groups differently)?
The class discussion delved into each of the questions above; from perspectives to points of friction, we concluded with these two questions: what does it mean for a designer — one that can enact multiple types of change in a privileged position — to be ethical without being paralyzed by idyllic thinking yet sustaining a practice that makes their best attempt at addressing ethical concerns? What does accountability look like for designers?
