Abstract
The philosophy of A. N. Whitehead has become the central source for understanding and theorizing the purposes and potentials of speculation. Whitehead’s philosophy, however, lacks a substantive political dimension which is of vital importance in our contemporary times of political, social, and ecological crisis. In this chapter, I argue that by considering an alternate foundation for speculation, we can fully explore its political potentials. I put Deleuze and Guattari’s concept of deterritorialization into conversation with the design tradition of speculative design to detail how we can create and use a speculative praxis. By using speculative praxis in research and design processes, we can prefigure the futures that we hope to work towards and enact a world-building praxis through our speculation.
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Notes
- 1.
The Charity is a fictional amalgamation of several charities that I have worked with. Build the Future is a pseudonym for a project undertaken with The Charity, to ensure the anonymity of those involved.
- 2.
The Charity framed the individuals involved as ‘civic leaders’. Attendees of the event were incredibly varied, from senior civil servants to influential individuals in large multinational corporations and CEOs of charities, hence why I have opted to refer to these subjects as ‘civic leaders’.
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Acknowledgements
The data this chapter is built upon would not have been possible without the hard work of my co-facilitators at Build the Future: Daniel Parry, Emily Barker, Sean Peacock, Sarah Armouch, Mohaan Biswas and Velvet Spors. The ideas developed here have been on a long trajectory that started with curious conversations with Dr Joanie Willett and Dr Karen Scott and were shaped along the way by Dean Pomeroy, Christian Kitson and Dr Jan Smeddinck.
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Cutting, K. (2022). Towards Speculative Praxis: Finding the Politics in Speculation with Deleuze and Design. In: Williams, N., Keating, T. (eds) Speculative Geographies. Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-0691-6_7
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