Dear Tiphane,
Thank you for your message.
In regard to doing my homework, can you give some references for the incidents you mention around the Decolonising Design Group and the Papanek Foundation?
I am sorry to say that the Decolonising Group was new to me, so that it came as an unexpected pleasure to read the sensible observations in their manifesto.
I also found a recent AIGA article on decolonizing, which among other things points to the patronizing distinction traditionally made between design and craft. I like to think that this time-honoured snobbery may be weakening today not just for its shaky intellectual rationale, but also because, even in Western contexts, 3D printing is making industrial materials accessible to the precision aesthetics of low-volume craft production.
In the words of Quentin Crisp: "In an expanding universe, time is on the side of the outcast. Those who once inhabited the suburbs of human contempt find that without changing their address they eventually live in the metropolis."
Best wishes,
Heidi
On Wednesday, July 15, 2020, 04:21:31 a.m. EDT, KAZI-TANI Tiphaine <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
Dear Don, dear all,
I'm part of the list's hoi polloi, the silent many.
I'm also queer, assigned female at birth, non-anglophone, not tenured and workind in a B-list design school. I'm white, valid, with a neuro-typical passing.
While most of the posts on the list are informational and cordial, I'm unfortunately often disappointed by the barely perceptible signs of condescendance if not symbolic violence typical of the "canonical" organisation of academia. Academia should be here understood as one of the numerous avatars of our democratic institutions that are still infused with hierarchical differentialism of all kinds (racism, sexism, classism, agism, validism, etc.). That's the reason why I introduced my situation : I'm well aware that my individual and collective subjectivity makes me a minor voice as well as a prized token in certain circumstances. A prized token when academia needs people like me as a badge of good will towards "inclusivity" and "openness", a minor voice, mostly unheard if not roughly kept silent, when wanting to question the obvious difference of privileges that regularly expresses itself here — like many of you, I've seen peers being bullied because they were reclaiming their decolonial and feminist positions, I've seen peers refusing to check their privileges, for the sake of science (?), as if Haraway and Harding's works on the situatedness of research and researchers had never existed.
So, I'm sorry to say that, no, to me, it's not just a dozen of trolls regularly bullying this list — "a pity, for sure, but you can't help it, boys will be boys" — it is the mundane, essentialised and dreadful expression of this very differentialist systemic violence who allows some to oppress many, in telling them what to think, how to think, to designate the expression of their mind as "opinion" or "valuable thinking" regarding a validation framework that has been too unsufficiently deconstructed yet. I keep in mind the pitiful incidents that opposed The Decolonising Design Group and DRS in 2016, then the Papanek Foundation in 2019.
Dear Don, as long as this place won't be safe for female academics to ask their male counterparts to "do their homework" as Ahmed Ansari put it, as long as young scholars will be lectured, as long as the referential framework for design will be rooted in the Western psyche and historiography, as long as we won't be able to adress humbly and sincerely the most serious ethical issues of systemic violence in design and design academia, as long as the privileged among us won't be able to understand that they sometimes need to remain silent to welcome us, we'll leave.
This is what Albert Hirscman has framed in Exit, Voice & Loyalty : while many of us are still remaining loyal to the institution and what it has to offer, some of us find no other choice than voicing the disagreement and/or leave.
So if you want us to stay, it is the responsability for the most privileged to understand how they prevent this place to be an actual safe intellectual haven.
Do your homework.
Tiphaine KAZI-TANI,
[http://www.citedudesign.com/signature/logo_esadse.jpg] <http://www.esadse.fr/> [http://www.citedudesign.com/signature/facebook_esadse.jpg] <https://www.facebook.com/esadse> [http://www.citedudesign.com/signature/logo_sainte_unesco.jpg] <https://www.facebook.com/SaintEtienneCreativeDesign>
[http://www.citedudesign.com/signature/white_70.jpg]
[http://www.citedudesign.com/signature/signature_std_biennale2021.jpg]
________________________________
De : PhD-Design - This list is for discussion of PhD studies and related research in <[log in to unmask]> de la part de Don Norman <[log in to unmask]>
Envoyé : mardi 14 juillet 2020 21:21
À : [log in to unmask] <[log in to unmask]>
Objet : It is unfortunate when people leave the list
It is unfortunate when people leave the list. Many of you who leave (or
wish to leave) are precisely those who are needed to make the list more
constructive and supportive.
Please note that the negative tone is generated by a remarkably small
number of people -- less than 10 -- where the mailing list is numbered in
the several thousands. Do not allow the few to destroy the many.
Long ago I suggested that people refrain from attacking one another. I
suggested that no response could be longer than 1/2 the length of the
previous one (some mailing lists I am on follow that rule). By simple
mathematics, the third post would only be 1/8 as long as the first, at
which point people tend to stop because the fourth post would be far too
short to say anything vile.
I failed. Note that unless we switch to a moderated list, we have no
control over what people post. (Moderated lists have their own problems.)
----------
How do I cope? I am mostly a reader, not a poster. I make frequent use of
the DELETE key. There are 2-3 people whose posts I simply delete without
looking at the contents. And for the in-depth back and forth nonsense, some
of which are written by intelligent sensible people who often say
informative, useful things, (but who can't resist getting into silly,
useless, uninformative, never-ending fights with a few others), I read the
first posts and then DELETE all that follows, without reading any of it.
I refuse to attack others or to respond to attacks. I don't post often. And
most of those are original contributions -- not responses to others.
(When I wish to disagree with someone''s post, I do it by a personal email
to just that person.)
Please stay. And please participate more frequently.
Recently, we had an outpouring of wonderful essays where people described
their backgrounds and interests. It was a wonderful set of postings -- just
what this list should encourage. We heard from people who are normally
silent. Alas, after their single posts, they went silent again.
The best way to change the list is to post more frequently in a positive,
supportive way. Do not allow the few to destroy the many.
Don
-----------------------------------------------------------------
PhD-Design mailing list <[log in to unmask]>
Discussion of PhD studies and related research in Design
Subscribe or Unsubscribe at https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/phd-design
-----------------------------------------------------------------
-----------------------------------------------------------------
PhD-Design mailing list <[log in to unmask]>
Discussion of PhD studies and related research in Design
Subscribe or Unsubscribe at https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/phd-design
-----------------------------------------------------------------
-----------------------------------------------------------------
PhD-Design mailing list <[log in to unmask]>
Discussion of PhD studies and related research in Design
Subscribe or Unsubscribe at https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/phd-design
-----------------------------------------------------------------
|