Dear Ken:

I usually find your posts interesting, and appreciate the way that you take
the time to document your sources. However, in the post attached below,
among other things you commented:

"The charge was that anthropology as a discipline or field is driven by
colonial impulses. That is a way of saying that every anthropologist and the
entire field serve[s] the geopolitical strategy of colonialism and that the
field is therefore an extension or form of imperialism." (See full text
below.)

And

"The issue of colonization in the notes on anthropology was not a matter of
disciplines colonizing one another, but a question of whether anthropology
as a field was corrupted and driven by colonial impulses. Anyone who knows
the history of colonialism and its imperialist priorities must see this as a
harsh indictment."

While it is clear that your intention is to protect the virtue of
anthropology as a field, I believe that, at least on the University of
Wisconsin campus, it would be a simple task to find many scholars spread
across disciplines that strongly disagree with you. Colonialism as a
driving force in the focus of 19th and 20th century scholarly activity and
practice is a major research area in the humanities here, and cuts across
traditional disciplinary lines. In this environment, the idea that academia
was/is corrupted and driven by colonial impulses is accepted as a given, and
the focus is more on trying to figure out what this means for us as
scholars.

Just one random example which supports my assertion, from the "GLOBALIZING
THE UNCONSCIOUS: Histories of Colonialism & Psychoanalysis" research circle
Web site (affiliated with the department of medical history and bioethics):

"For most of the twentieth century, psychoanalysis was a tool both of empire
and of anti-imperialism. Insights from psychoanalysis shaped European ideas
about the colonial world, the character and potential of "native" cultures,
and the anxieties and alienation of displaced white colonizers and
sojourners. Moreover, this intense and intimate engagement with empire came
to shape the global psychoanalytic subjectivities that emerged in the
twentieth century, whether European or non-European."
http://www.internationalresearch.wisc.edu/GlobalUnconscious/

As examples of others with similar interests, the UW International Institute
Web site hosts a number of Research Circles, made up of researchers with
overlapping interests, and colonialism and its latent effects on scholarly
disciplines is an important part of that research. Other Research Circles
are at http://www.internationalresearch.wisc.edu/ . These are only a few of
the groups on campus that incorporate colonialism and its legacies within
academic disciplines as a topic. Others include the Visual Culture Cluster
and Women's Studies.

Closer to the design world, other scholars actually focus on areas that
overlap with design, using colonialism as a lens to look at how designers
and their designs were tools of colonialism, both consciously and
unconsciously. Their work may not directly critique fields such as
anthropology, but that critique is implicit in their methodology. One
colleague whose work I enjoy because of its implications for design is Jill
Casid, (http://www.wisc.edu/arth/bio/casidbio.html) She is finishing up a
book that addresses this type of issue, looking at projection devices in the
19th century and their use as tools of colonialism and power:
Shadows of Enlightenment: Reason, Magic, and Technologies of Projection
(University of Minnesota Press, forthcoming). She has also published a book
that addresses landscape and colonization, also of interest to designers
because of its implications for "innocent" designers who do not have
colonial impulses themselves.

As another example, in my own academic department, we have a Material
Culture program, and one of many subtexts is the relationship between
designers, designed objects and colonialism. Anthropological source
material related to material culture includes colonial biases and filters,
and ignoring this can be a problem. (And this is different from saying we
all have biases, just live with it. Some issues overshadow most others, and
colonialism is one of those issues in this context.)

Most disciplines these days in the humanities have people who spend a lot of
time looking at their own fields and thinking critically about the
assumptions that shapes those disciplines. Many researchers would agree
that anthropology was and is shaped by colonialism and often finds itself as
a tool for gaining power; this applies even when anthropologists are not
actively engaged in creating colonial tools. However, rather than seeing
this as a negative it could be seen an opportunity to learn something.
Perhaps design research could use a bit more of this self-critique from
within, because others outside of the field are already doing so, sometimes
without the insights into the finer points of what it means to design.

So, I feel a bit like someone who is criticizing the good deed of a helpful
citizen who just assisted an infirm person across a busy street corner. I
applaud the good-hearted interest and intent, but am suggesting that the
infirm person may not really have intended to cross that street in the first
place.

Regards,
MSC



PS:
So, as long as I am on the verge of sermonizing, I might as well go ahead
and say that what I would propose is that as design researchers we need to
look more closely at our own field and think a lot about issues such as
embedded patterns of gender, colonialism and power. I believe that this is
something that can best come from academia rather than from practice, and
design could use a bit of naval gazing about its role in things such as
subjugating oppressed people. This includes not just the obvious things
such as children working in sweat shops but less obvious things such as the
use of Modernist architectural theory to erase indigenous culture design
traditions. This research is already being done by scholars outside of the
design field.

M.S.C. Nelson
Assistant Professor
Environment, Textiles and Design
University of Wisconsin-Madison
Room 235
1300 Linden Drive
Madison, WI 53706
608-261-1003
 

-----Original Message-----
From: PhD-Design - This list is for discussion of PhD studies and related
research in Design [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Ken
Friedman
Sent: Friday, July 27, 2007 5:02 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Colonialism -- a Carefully Delimited Response

Dear Johann,

Thanks for your note. This really addresses the main thread -- and I
have not entered it (yet).

Since you ask me, though I would argue that we have not actually had
quite this debate before, though we've addressed some of these issues
in different ways.

If I were to enter the thread, I'd agree that we draw on many fields
-- this is necessarily the case for design as an interdisciplinary
field. (Something that I have argued before.) I'd even argue that
this is true of both the professional practice of design and of the
research disciplines that support design.

But that's not the way in which the question of colonialism came up.
The post I answered criticized the field of anthropology not the
field of design. The charge was that anthropology as a discipline or
field is driven by colonial impulses. That is a way of saying that
every anthropologist and the entire field serves the geopolitical
strategy of colonialism and that the field is therefore an extension
or form of imperialism.

I did not write to address design issues at all -- my comments
focused on anthropology, and I wrote to disagree with this, stating
that anthropology is a field of processes and practices that examine
all kinds of human beings and cultures rather than a field that
serves colonial empires by examining and dominating third-world
cultures from an imperialist first-world perspective. My own focal
interest was cultural interaction and contemporary art practice in
the United States and Europe, and I used anthropological concepts and
methods to gain a great understanding of these issues. (I also found
anthropology helpful in understanding other processes and practices
in contemporary culture.)

While I often change headers, I retained the header "Mythologies of
anthropology and design" to relate my note to Dori's note on the four
sub-fields of anthropology.

I'd agree that colonists can become new citizens through a long and
difficult process, but I was defending anthropology against the
charge of colonialism in its original, political sense. I was not
defending colonialism.

The colonists who came to North America displaced and destroyed the
lands and much of the culture of the native peoples. They also
slaughtered many of the first people in the course of doing so. The
Spanish in North America and Central America and the Spanish and
Portuguese in Central and South America were guilty of equally dark
deeds. Estimates suggest that European colonists and their
descendents in the Americas killed more that 90% of the original
population. While disease for which native Americans lacked immune
defenses killed more people than warfare or the Inquisition,
warriors, violent settlers, and the church killed many, ruthlessly
and without conscience.

The story of the colonial powers in Africa was nearly as bad, and
when you add the slave trade to the conquest of territory, the murder
of peoples, and the theft of resources, there is little good to be
said. While it is true that British imperial rule was better, say,
than the Mugabe government or the warlords of many destabilized
nations, one must ask whether another, better history might have been
possible colonialism and empire-building by the European powers. This
includes the struggle over African territory and resources by the
Boers and the British, one being a group of immigrant settlers who
took the land they wanted from its prior residents, the other being
loyal colonial subjects or military forces of a European kingdom.

Then there's India and Pakistan, Australia, and the Pacific nations
of Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Malaysia. The one somewhat bright spot seems
to be New Zealand Aotearoa where the first peoples and the nation
signed a foundational treaty -- the Treaty of Waitangi -- that the
government seems to honor, despite confusions and disputes in
interpretation. Stuggling imperfectly to honor such a treaty is
better than breaking and ignoring treaties as the government of the
United States generally did, or simply expropriating the land and its
resources, which was an even more common pattern.

The history of colonialism is so bloody and bitter that I felt quite
uncomfortable to see anthropology as a discipline blamed for the
deeds of imperialists, conquistadores, slave traders, and
practitioners of genocide.

Your description of enrichment between and among disciplines is
excellent. That belongs to the main thread.

The issue of colonization in the notes on anthropology was not a
matter of disciplines colonizing one another, but a question of
whether anthropology as a field was corrupted and driven by colonial
impulses. Anyone who knows the history of colonialism and its
imperialist priorities must see this as a harsh indictment.

Some individual anthropologists certainly further colonial goals. So
did some dentists, some physicists, some geographers, some
physicians, some schoolteachers -- and more than a few native
collaborators among the colonized peoples. The fields as a whole, the
professions as a whole, and the native peoples as a group are not
responsible for those driven by colonial impulses.

That was the very narrow and specific nature of my comment on
anthropology and colonial impulses.

Yours,

Ken



Johann van der Merwe wrote:

>Dear Ken and List
>Just a short guerrilla post ...
>Hasn't this debate appeared before? What's yours cannot be mine, etc.
>Design supreme.
>We are unashamedly thieves, bricoleurs ... we are allowed to be because
>good ideas do not belong to any single person or discipline.
>And if a good idea could be tainted by some indiscretion of an author, I
>would not be able to use Heidegger's work as I do.
>I find it impossible to debate the merits or not of original work when
>applied to design ... to me that borders on intellectual plagiarism
>("above all be true to the source!" = nonsense), and it goes without
>saying that any good idea must change when you, the design theorist,
>brings it back from wherever you found it, and wish to use the idea
>(behind the original work) as a design input. In doing so you confront
>your ideas with this new upstart, and the "colonizer" becomes the
>(blended) new citizen.
>
>Equally, design thinking does not belong to so-called "designers" alone
>.... which is one of the many reasons I find the work of Maturana so
>amazing (not to mention illuminating). Do I wish to colonize biology, or
>think that "it" will colonize or somehow contaminate design? Enrich is
>the real word, and that is renewal in design thinking ... "we" HAVE to
>take/borrow from other disciplines, and as Wolfgang Jonas reminds us,
>desig is a groundless field ...
>
>Johann


--

Prof. Ken Friedman
Institute for Communication, Culture, and Language
Norwegian School of Management
Oslo

Center for Design Research
Denmark's Design School
Copenhagen

+47 46.41.06.76 Tlf NSM
+47 33.40.10.95 Tlf Privat

email: [log in to unmask]