Dear Friends,
First of all, may I suggest Trevor Noah’s performance in the John Bishop show?: https://vimeo.com/130619176
It has lot’s to do with colonization and decolonization.
Secondly, I must say that I sympathize with the platform’s authors dismay.
But since we are embracing this kind of decolonoscopy, I must say that I don’t think postcolonial issues are the matter here.
Postcolonial issues are so strange that I faced, more than once, Brazilian people looking like Germans, having surnames and christian names sounding German (in fact being altogether Germans) complaining with me about the gold the Portuguese stole from Brazil, their homeland… "You have stollen OUR gold”… (I always say that if I would have stollen ANYBODY’s gold I wouldn’t be there for a conference). Also I have listen to some posh looking American colleagues with Dorset looks and surnames, English to the bone, except in the accent, complaining about Portugal being a colonial power, almost suggesting that I had something to do with slave trade (slave trade that their ancestors benefited from) and claiming that USA was not a colonist power… . People from a country that even until late 1960’s had official segregation...
Although I find very true the old Portuguese saying: "Portugal e Inglaterra são muito amigos. Os Portugueses plantam a figueira, os Ingleses comem os figos”, I don’t think that colonialism has something to do with papers in conferences (especially when the organizers are a English based association)
First of all colonial and post colonial lack historical grounds as being something particularly North European. In fact I would risk to suggest that every imperial endeavor, from the Maya, the Inca, the Mongol, the Mogul, Kongo, Persians, and of course Romans (Italians), Spanish, a part of France, and part of Austria, Ottomans, Chinese, Japanese, Portuguese (why not?), Egyptians, were to some extent guilty of colonizing and are not North European. So, if you forget about Phoenician, Greek and Easter island and other Pacific islands colonies and colonizations you will find that Colonialism is a characteristic of imperialism. In fact, there is nothing wrong with colonies except when they are supported by imperialism.
There is however two European particularities in imperialism (which, I think is the root of all colonialist endeavor): The Roman Empire. It persists and was reborn especially in the USA. Look at their symbols: Capitols, their architecture of power emulating Piranesi’s engravings of ancient Rome.
The other particularity was industrialization. A History of Design based on produced objects will end always to find it’s roots in the countries that were first industrialized and mass producers.
One thing is the Portuguese expansion starting in the early 1400’s in consequence of medieval views about crusades, based in a global logic of violence and conquest, followed by Spanish, still in the fury of Reconquista.
Another is Dutch, expansion in the late 1500’s, methodically designed for comercial exploitation and distribution in the European market.
Another is British in the late 1700’s based in exploring commodities, transforming industrially, reselling.
The extent of industrialization in Europe promoted a subjugation of the world to that globally consuming frenzy of industry.
Let me underline also that Brazil was independent since 1824 and acted independently colonizing it’s own country, calling itself an Empire, importing their own slaves until 1888, attracting European immigrants, destroying their own indigenous peoples, the very same way as the USA and most of the independent countries of South America.
Colonialism as a doctrine existed. It was crystallized in the Berlin Conference in 1884. One of the things that triggered it was the conscience of the size of the Neo European monsters on the other side of the Atlantic the shift of balance in world power. By being industrialized also they were starting to participate as equals in the division of the world wealth. Africa was the main victim of this old age imperialism.
So the History of Design, if we think about looking at objects and their production is intertwined with imperialism. And since imperialism persists until our days there is some reason of using that perspective to conduct criticism, discourse and research having that in mind.
So, to be honest, and no offense on that, decolonization is nothing but a buzz word in this case. A paper was rejected by someone acting on behalf of a British based organization. Maybe his name is Johnson or even Hodgson. It is no big deal. Next time you organize your conference with your agenda (which I do sympathize with). By the way, why don’t you submit your paper to “The Radical Designist”? Cameron Tonkinwise just had a paper published there significantly entitled Designing in an Era of Xenophobia. find it at: http://unidcom.iade.pt/radicaldesignist/designing-in-an-era-of-xenophobia/
I could suggest also an oldie by Clive Dilnot: A New Thin Red Line World? Multivocality and Design also in "the Radical Designist” at http://unidcom.iade.pt/radicaldesignist/a-new-thin-red-line-world/
I thing that what you aiming by creating this platform is to achieve that multivocality that Dilnot was speaking about when he wrote:
"By contrast, the situation of contemporary multi-vocality is at the opposite end of the spectrum. The loss of narrative coherence and a unilinear model of historical development both expresses and reflects the loss of modernity in its classic sense. This loss of modernity as a singular narrative is however balanced by the coming into view of other histories and versions of the modern. As European core centrality falls away it becomes possible to value differently the emergent or once seemingly marginal 'modernisms' of the so- called peripheral countries—be they European (aspects of Scandinavian design; design in Spain and Portugal, today, the Baltic countries or eastern Europe) or global (one thinks of the recovery of modernist art, architecture and design in Mexico or Brazil for example)."
One last note: as you may remember, I was a co-chair in one DRS conference, here in Lisbon. In that conference Victor Margolin submitted a paper and one of the reviewers wrote: “this paper needs a native English speaker revision"…
A very last note: I think that Wonderground 2006 was really a mile stone in globalizing DRS. However the only thing I got from it was Nigel Cross’ two kisses in the cheek (they think we are French, thank God they don’t think we are Russians). I was joking, Nigel. You can kiss me anytime.
Eduardo Corte-Real
PhD Arch.
Associate Professor
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