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.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Similar content being viewed by others
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’.
References
Asad, M. (2019). Prefigurative design as a method for research justice. Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction, 3(CSCW), 200:1-200:18. doi:https://doi.org/10.1145/3359302.
Asad, M., Le Dantec, C. A., Nielsen, B., & Diedrick, K. (2017). Creating a sociotechnical API: Designing city-scale community engagement. Proceedings of the 2017 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (pp. 2295–2306). doi:https://doi.org/10.1145/3025453.3025963.
Auger, J. (2013). Speculative design: Crafting the speculation. Digital Creativity, 24(1), 11–35. https://doi.org/10.1080/14626268.2013.767276
Boggs, C. (1977). Marxism, prefigurative communism, and the problem of workers’ control. Radical America, 11(6), 99–122.
Bowker, G. C., & Star, S. L. (2000). Sorting things out: Classification and its consequences. MIT Press.
Colebrook, C. (2020). The future is already deterritorialized. In R. Harrison & C. Sterling (Eds.), Deterritorializing the future: Heritage in, of and after the anthropocene (pp. 346–383). Open Humanities Press.
Coleman, R. (2017). Developing speculative methods to explore speculative shipping: Mail art, futurity and empiricism. In M. Savransky, A. Wilkie, & M. Rosengarten (Eds.), Speculative research (pp. 1–8). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-98390-5_118-1
Cutting, K., & Peacock, S. (2021). Making sense of ‘slippages’: Re-evaluating ethics for digital research with children and young people. Children’s Geographies, 1–13. https://doi.org/10.1080/14733285.2021.1906404
Debaise, D., & Stengers, I. (2016). The insistence of the possible. For a speculative pragmatism. Multitudes, 65(4), 82–89.
Deleuze, G. (2004). Desert islands and other texts, 1953–1974. Semiotext(e).
Deleuze, G., & Guattari, F. (1983). Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and schizophrenia. University of Minnesota Press.
Deleuze, G., & Guattari, F. (1987). A thousand plateaus: Capitalism and schizophrenia. University of Minnesota Press.
DiSalvo, C. (2016). The Irony of drones for foraging: Exploring the work of speculative interventions. In R. C. Smith, K. T. Vangkilde, M. G. Kjærsgaard, T. Otto, J. Halse, & T. Binder (Eds.), Design anthropological futures (pp. 139–152). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003085188-11
Dunne, A., & Raby, F. (2013). Speculative everything: Design, fiction, and social dreaming. The MIT Press.
Fisher, M. (2009). Capitalist realism: Is there no alternative? John Hunt Publishing.
Forlano, L. (2013, September 26). Ethnographies from the Future: What can ethnographers learn from science fiction and speculative design? Ethnography Matters. https://ethnographymatters.net/blog/2013/09/26/ethnographies-from-the-future-what-can-ethnographers-learn-from-science-fiction-and-speculative-design/
Foucault, M., & Trombadori, D. (1991). Remarks on Marx: Conversations with Duccio Trombadori. Semiotext(e).
Jeffrey, C., & Dyson, J. (2020). Geographies of the future: Prefigurative politics. Progress in Human Geography, 0309132520926569. https://doi.org/10.1177/0309132520926569
Katz, C. (1996). Towards minor theory. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 14(4), 487–499. https://doi.org/10.1068/d140487
Keyes, O., Hutson, J., & Durbin, M. (2019). A mulching proposal: Analysing and improving an algorithmic system for turning the elderly into high-nutrient slurry. Extended Abstracts of the 2019 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (pp. 1–11). doi:https://doi.org/10.1145/3290607.3310433.
Lucero, A., Dalsgaard, P., Halskov, K., & Buur, J. (2016). Designing with cards. In P. Markopoulos, J.-B. Martens, J. Malins, K. Coninx, & A. Liapis (Eds.), Collaboration in creative design: Methods and tools (pp. 75–95). Springer International Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-29155-0_5
Mazzei, L. A. (2020). Speculative inquiry: Thinking with Whitehead. Qualitative Inquiry, 1077800420934138. https://doi.org/10.1177/1077800420934138
O’Sullivan, S., & Zepke, S. (Eds.). (2008). Deleuze, Guattari and the production of the new. Continuum.
Savransky, M., Wilkie, A., & Rosengarten, M. (2017). The lure of possible futures: On speculative research. In A. Wilkie, M. Savransky, & M. Rosengarten (Eds.), Speculative research (pp. 1–8). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-98390-5_118-1
Shaviro, S. (2007). Deleuze’s encounter with Whitehead. 26. http://www.shaviro.com/Othertexts/DeleuzeWhitehead.pdf
Shaviro, S. (2019). Defining speculation: Speculative fiction, speculative philosophy, and speculative finance. ALIENOCENE, 1(6), 12.
Shonkwiler, A., & Berge, L. C. L. (2014). Reading capitalist realism. University of Iowa Press.
Tironi, M. (2018). Speculative prototyping, frictions and counter-participation: A civic intervention with homeless individuals. Design Studies, 59, 117–138. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.destud.2018.05.003
Williams, N., & Collet, C. (2020). Biodesign and the allure of “grow-made” textiles: An interview with Carole Collet. GeoHumanities, 0, 1–13. https://doi.org/10.1080/2373566X.2020.1816141
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.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2022 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
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
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-0691-6_7
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore
Print ISBN: 978-981-19-0690-9
Online ISBN: 978-981-19-0691-6
eBook Packages: Social SciencesSocial Sciences (R0)