Saito, C., Freese Gonzatto, R., and van Amstel, F. (2024) Anticolonial prospects for overcoming the coloniality of making in design, in Gray, C., Hekkert, P., Forlano, L., Ciuccarelli, P. (eds.), DRS2024: Boston, 23–28 June, Boston, USA. https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2024.255
Abstract: Design has been instrumental in preserving the coloniality of making – a set of ideological, cultural, political, market and relational processes that operate to identify, categorise and hierarchise different making practices that benefit the metropolises at globalised production structures. This paper presents a theoretical examination of the coloniality of making based on the anticolonial scholarship of the Design & Oppression Network. The examination proceeds with three prospective studies to overcome this form of coloniality in fashion, interaction, and graphic design. The first part of each study denounces how design reproduces the hierarchy between intellectual and manual labour and justifies class, gender, race, technology, international geopolitics and further oppressive hierarchies. The second part announces the possibilities for reconnecting manual and intellectual labour while designing alter/native ways of being and living together.
