about this book

This book names and wrestles with design and institutional design education’s pseudo-neutral relationship with colonial capitalist world orders—and what it means to teach and design today. It weaves together reflections on designing as a mechanism of maintenance and on teaching against bureaucratic inertia, asking: How does design give form to social fictions? How do design and the professionalization of design schooling uphold the priorities of nations and capital?

Through pedagogical expressions of rage, generosity, forgiveness, slowness and chaos, contributions in the form of lectures, essays and interviews reflect on the weight of being, and the possibilities—and sometimes impossibilities—of un-doing and un-maintaining the enduring legacies of colonial powers. With contributions by Uzma Z. Rizvi, Ahmed Ansari, Kelly Walters, Hayfaa Chalabi, Maya Ober, Lauren Williams, Elaine Lopez, Danielle Aubert, Silvio Lorusso and John Jennings.

This book was selected by Tique for Objects & Sounds.