Design(ing) Disruptions: Towards Intimacies between Feminist Situated Knowledge, Gossip and Design

Author

Senjuti SangiaFollow

Date of Award

Fall 12-11-2024

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Arts (MA)

Program

Global Arts and Cultures

First Advisor

Naimah Petigny

Second Advisor

Damian White

Third Advisor

Ahmed Ansari

Abstract

This project highlights and problematizes the knowledge traditions and politics foundational to problem-solving paradigms in design education and practice. By emphasising the ontological nature and turn in design (Willis, 2006, Fry, 2012) , this thesis critically appraises the aforesaid formulations by extending intersectional feminist theories to dominant design epistemology. Drawing on the sociological framing of the matrix of domination, I investigate the dichotomy of the designer and user- as designers, users, and communities find themselves at different junctions in the matrix of domination. Further, I critique design frameworks from the analytical lenses of feminist situated knowledge, In so doing, I highlight the central and irreplaceable role of community knowledge and the culpability of empathy, an ethical mainstay in design ideology, in the field. The last section of the project takes a speculative turn in arguing for a specific form of situated knowledge, gossip, and its multifaceted potentiality for re-tooling design. The research argues for gossip’s transient and speculative promise— offering provocations for doing, theorizing, and historicizing design through gossip’s whisper network. Drawing from the my embodied experiences and anecdotes with gossip as a design student and practitioner, as well as an experimental workshop on gossip as knowledge framework, the research presents the potentiality of gossip to recover and rewrite design history as well as reorient design methodologies.

Recommended Citation

Sangia, Senjuti, "Design(ing) Disruptions: Towards Intimacies between Feminist Situated Knowledge, Gossip and Design" (2024). Masters Theses. 1352.
https://digitalcommons.risd.edu/masterstheses/1352

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