Description
Book SynopsisHow to do cultural studies in the twenty-first century? This essay collection is not a handbook, encyclopedia, or a "state of the field" compendium. Instead, it is a reflexive exercise in cultural studies, featuring fifteen accessible essays on a selection of critical key works published since 2000. The contributors aim to provide readers with a fresh and engaging look at recent criticism, exploring the interdisciplinary traffic of theories, methods, and ideas within the field of cultural and literary studies. This book shows how the work of Lauren Berlant, Rita Felski, Fred Moten, Anna Tsing, and others can inspire new thinking and theorizing for the twenty-first century.
Table of ContentsIntroduction: Critical by design? An introduction; Genealogies: What is a critical object? Design as «desubjugation» (after Foucault); The vitality of the negative: critical design between social philosophy and conceptual art; Ask what can be! Modal critique and design as drivers of accidence; What are the politics of ontological design? A critical reflection on the mutual becoming of «the human» and «the world»; Engaging in epistemic disobedience: on the decolonialization of design discourses; Unsettling individualized design practice through collaboration; «Ci concimiamo a vicenda»: building support structures as part of design practice; Re-visioning pelvic care through design; Trojan horses: ambiguity as a critical design strategy; Grey design: critical practices of design at the peripheries of the discipline; The ineliminable aesthetic dimension of art; Design culture as critical practice; What might be the speculative social?; Biased design, or the misery of neutrality; Undesign and understanding; Epilogue: The life and death of critical and speculative design: post-disciplinarity, post-truth, post-self and post-capital; Appendix: Critical by design? The book's design as SF figures; List of Figures & Tables; Biographies; Imprint.
