Design History and Design Futures: Beyond Anthropocene Ontopolitics

Design History and Design Futures: Beyond Anthropocene Ontopolitics. Dr. Joanna Boehnert, @ecocene + @ecolabs Design & Transcience. Design History Society Annual Conference 2022
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Dr. Joanna Boehnert @ecocene Design & Transcience, Design History Society Annual Conference 2022
Design History and Design Futures:
Beyond Anthropocene Ontopolitics

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Design History and Design Futures:
Beyond
Anthropocene
Ontopolitics
Content
1. Anthropocene
2. Ontopolitics
3. Design

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A link to slides including some
AI generated images can be found
on my twitter account
https://twitter.com/Ecocene.
* AI image making processes
have been used to illustrate this
slideshow.

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I agree with Gary Taxali, AI images are the product of a “regurgitation machine”! JB

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Introduction
The implications of the Anthropocene
diagnosis have yet to be integrated into
normative design.

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Content
PART ONE.
Anthropocene
The Anthropocene is the name
of the new geological Epoch
where human activity has caused
dramatic change in the Earth
systems including disruptions in
planetary boundaries.

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PART TWO.
Ontopolitics
Is a concept that combines
“Ontology’, i.e. the branch of
philosophy that describes reality
and being
– and “Politics” – in this case the
politics that emerge from shifts in
ontological perspectives brought
on by the Anthropocene.

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PART TWO.
Ontopolitics
Anthropocene Ontopolitics:
described by Prof David Chandler
as “a new set of ontological claims
that form the basis of discussions
about what it means to know,
to govern and to be a human
subject.” (2018, 15)

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PART THREE.
Design
Anthropocene Ontopolitics has
wide reaching implications for
how we think about both design
history and design futures.

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Part One. The Anthropocene

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The Anthropocene signals
dramatic changes in Earth systems
due to human activities and the
end of the relative ecological
stability that made civilisation
possible in the Holocene, an epoch
which lasted for 11,700 years.

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The term itself has been
critiqued as an idea that works
in counterproductive ways
by limiting the scope of social
transformations.
Moore 2015
Haraway 2015
Latour 2017
Demos 2017

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Are “Anthropos” (humans) – as a
generalised category – responsible
for climate change and other
planetary crises?

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Environmental historian Jason Moore:
“conceptualisations of a problem and
efforts to resolve that problem are
always tightly connected. So too are
the ways we think about the origins
of a problem and how we think
through possible solutions” (2015,
169).

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“This universalizing discourse allocates
agency to generic “human activities”
and as such “avoids the politicisation
of ecology that could otherwise led
to the practice of climate justice,
which demands the politics of
equality, human rights, and historical
responsibility be taken into account”
Demos 2017, 21

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Designers have a role to play in
shifting the current trajectory,
but this will not happen without
a major realignment of design
priorities and practice.

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The Pandemic as Transitional Space?
Arundhati Roy describes the pandemic
as not just a disruption, but as serving
an evolutionary purpose:
“Historically, pandemics have forced
humans to break with the past and
imagine their world anew. This one is
no different. It is a portal, a gateway
between one world and the next.”
Roy, 2020

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Benjamin Bratton’s description of
emerging positive biopower.
“people learn to see society as
epidemiology does, not as self-
contained individuals entering into
contractual relationships, but as a
population of contagion nodes and
vectors” (2021, 32).

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Bratton describes positive biopolitics,
using the examples of nations that
thrived in the pandemic.
These societies are characterised by
1) cultures where data matters;
2) healthy public governance; and
3) societies where technology is
harnessed to: “sense, model, and act
back upon itself” (2021, 55-56).

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The foundation for post-pandemic
positive biopolitics are the
development of new capacities for
social self-organization.
Bratton, 2021 29

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Part Two. Ontopolitics

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Anthropocene
Ontopolitics
Prof David Chandler:
“a new set of ontological claims that
form the basis of discussions about
what it means to know, to govern and
to be a human subject” (2018, 15).

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Gregory Bateson’s 1972 book
Steps to an Ecology of Mind.
“most of us are governed by
epistemologies we know to be
wrong”
Bateson, 1972, 493

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“I suggest that the last 100 years or
so have demonstrated empirically
that if an organism or aggregate
of organisms sets to work with
a focus on its own survival and
thinks that is the way to select its
adaptive moves, its ‘progress’ end
up with a destroyed environment.
If an organism ends up destroying
its environment, it has in fact
destroyed itself.”
Bateson, 1972, 457

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“When you narrow down your
epistemology and act on the premise
‘what interests me is me or my
organization or my species’, you
chop off consideration of other loops
of the loop structure. You decide
that you want to get rid of the
byproducts of human life and that
Lake Erie will be a good place to put
them. You forget that the ecomental
system called Lake Erie is a part of
your wider ecomental system – and
that if Lake Erie is driven insane,
its insanity is incorporated in the
larger system of your thought and
experience.“
Bateson, 1972, 460

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“When you separate mind from the
structure in which it is immanent,
such as human relationship, the
human society, or the ecosystem,
you thereby embark, I believe, on
a fundamental error, which in the
end will surely hurt you.”
Bateson, 1972, 493

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Felix Guattari’s
The Three Ecologies
(1989 - 2000 in English).
Guattari proposes that mental
ecology, social ecology, and
environmental ecology are
three realms that cannot be
disconnected. mental ecology
social ecology environmental
ecology

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In theory and practice we must
work with the three ecologies
(human subjectivity, social
relations, and the environment)
simultaneously.
human
subjectivity
social relations
the environment

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“So, wherever we turn, there is the
same nagging paradox: on the one
hand the continuous development
of new techno-scientific means to
potentially resolve the dominant
ecological issues and reinstate
socially useful activities on the
surface of the planet, and, on the
other, the inability of organized
social forces and constituted
subjective formations to take hold
of these resources in order to
make them work.”
Guattari, 2000, 22

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In response to this dilemma, Guattari
calls for a theory of ecosophy, an
“ethico-political articulation” (2000,
19) that will consider the dynamics
between the three ecologies. A
new praxis to “ward off, by every
means possible, the entropic rise of a
dominant subjectivity” (2000, 45).
the environment
social
relations
human
subjectivity
The Three Ecologies

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This work will be done by
“literally reconstructing the
modalities of ‘group-being’...
through ‘communicational
interventions’ for the modification
and reinvention of the ways in
which we live by ‘the motor of
subjectivity.’”
Guattari, 2000, 24

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Guattari evokes an ecological
revolution that takes into
account “domains of sensibility,
intelligence and desire.”
Guattari, 2000, 20
mental ecology
ecology

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“In its final account, the
ecosophical problematic is the
production of human existence
itself in new historical contexts.”

Guattari, 2000, 24
mental ecology
ecology

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“There is at least a risk that
there will be no more human
history unless humanity
undertakes a radical
reconsideration of itself.”
Guattari, 2000, 45

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Ontopolitics in the
Anthropocene:
An Introduction to Mapping,
Sensing, and Hacking
David Chandler
2018

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“Start from an empirical reality of
the world as it appears rather than
from assumptions of modernist
progress, universal knowledge or
linear causality.”
Chandler, 2018, 4

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“Natural processes can no longer
be separated from historical, social,
economic, and political effects”
Chandler, 2018, 5

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“Modernist forms of politics assumed
that governance could be centrally
directed on the basis of ‘command-
and-control’ understanding. Power was
understood to operate hierarchically
on the basis that knowledge could
be centralised and operationalised in
universal and linear ways.”
Chandler 2018, 21

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Part Three. Design

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“All three governance modes of
– Mapping, Sensing and Hacking
– reject modernist perspectives
on progress and their universal
knowledge assumptions as well
as the modernist binary divide of
culture/nature, seeing the human
subject as relationally embedded
or entangled rather than as an
autonomous rational subject
distinct from the world.”
Chandler 2018, 23

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1. Mapping
“Mapping assumes that causality is
non-linear and that knowledge is not
universal; in other words the same external
stimulus may produce different responses
depending on the social, historical and
economic relations of a particular entity
or society. It is therefore these internal
relations that require tracing or mapping as
a precondition for any policy intervention
into these processes.” Chandler 2018, 21-
22.

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1. Mapping
“The understanding that causality is
not the unfolding of fixed essences or
relationships but a process of complex
interaction in which the outcomes are
non-linear. Non-linearity means that
outcomes are mediated, i.e. that they
depend not merely on ‘inputs’ into the
system but rather how these inputs,
in terms of information, interactions,
system disturbances, etc. are
perceived, understood and responded
to. Mapping thereby develops as
the study of internal relations and
interactions.” Chandler, 2018, 36.

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2. Sensing
“based on correlation rather than causation,
depends upon the ability to see things in their
process of emergence. It is for this reason that
new technologies are often crucial to the
deployment of Sensing” (Chandler 2018, 22).

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2. Sensing
“not so much as preventing problems
but minimising their impact or
disturbance” Chandler 2018, 22.

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3. Hacking
Hacking encourages participatory
practices that create new agencies,
and repurpose artefacts or systems for
new uses.
“A person who enjoys exploring the
details of programmable systems and
how to stretch their capabilities.”
(Jargon File quoted in Busch 2014, 50).

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3. Hacking
Hacking as a means of establishing
collaboration between different
points of view, “by which the
expertise of either standpoint can
be combined, and enhanced, to
bring out new understanding”
(Chandler 2018).

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3. Hacking
As a collective process to that
distributes information and control
and creates systems/artefacts
that are evolutionary and self-
organising (Chandler 2018).

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3. Hacking
“Hacking is an activity to improve
things by acquiring and disseminating
knowledge of the inner workings
of systems and a mastery of the
techniques that modify these systems.
Hacking means to open black boxes,
reverse engineer their circuitry, and
build a new plug-in to the system,
challenging it and releasing new
capabilities from it…bending the
system in a more desirable direction
through hands-on interventions and
constructive acts.”
Otto von Busch, 2014

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3. Hacking
“hacking produces hands-on tools
and engagements for self-reflection,
challenging the interpassive
imperative of consumption.”
Busch 2014, 51

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Modernity Rationality Linear causality
Culture/
nature divide
Progress
Mapping Autopoiesis
Non-linear
causality
Depth/
immanence
Adaptation
Sensing Homostasis Correlation
Surface/
effects
Responsiveness
Hacking Sympoiesis Experimentation
Entanglement/
becoming with
Radical
openness
Modernity, Mapping, Sensing and Hacking (Chandler, 2018, 23)

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Mapping helps us understand
multi-dimensional contextual
information.
Sensing helps monitor variables to
catch emergent phenemonoen.
Hacking increases agency and
participation.

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Relational Design

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Social Design

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Design theorist Rachel Armstrong:
“…the side effects of industrialization,
with its relentless consumption of
natural resources and fouling of our
environments, set up feedback loops
that destabilize the very systems that
sustain us, the hyper complexity, and
nonlinear character of the biosphere
evades our ambitions to bring these
runaway consequences back under
our control through the tools of
modern synthesis...
Yet, the harder we try to ‘solve’ the
unfolding ecological catastrophe,
the more it evades our attempts at
resolution. Currently, we are reaching
the limits of modern technology to
address the challenges of ‘wayward’
nature and are faced with the
daunting prospect of reimagining our
position within the world and the way
we construct the idea of value in the
Ecocene.”
Armstrong 2017, 188

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Felix Guattari called on all cultural
practices ‘in a position to intervene
in individual and collective
psychical proceedings’ (2000,
27) to participate in this ethico-
aesthetic project to nurture a new
ecological subjectivity.

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Integrating Anthropocene
ontopolitics into design is a social
and political challenge.

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Susan Yelavich describes design as in
a state of identity crisis (13):
“Politically neutral, never
demanding, the popular perception
of design threatens to override its
criticality and obscure its capacity to
engender agency, in the best sense
of the word. We are at risk of losing
sight of design’s part in enabling us
to live well with each other and to
live wisely with finite resources.”
(2014, 14).

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“every object, place, and
phenonmenon is understood to
exist in an ecology of forces and
counterforces” (Yelavich, 2014, 14).

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Thank you!
Dr. Joanna Boehnert
jboehnert@eco-labs.co
@ecocene

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