Disciplinary Disobedience: a border-thinking approach to design

Designers often live, to borrow a term from Gloria Anzaldúa, within the borderlands. “Living in the borderlands,” as she writes, “produces knowledge by being within a system while also retaining the knowledge of an outsider who comes from outside the system.”

Possessing an “‘outsider within’ status” means designers stand at one end of a discipline and tackle problems overlooking others. In this process, however, designers realize they are not accepted by either. We exclude and include, we reject and we accept, and we struggle while negotiating. “The basic concept,” argues Anzaldúa, “involves the ability to hold multiple social perspectives while simultaneously maintaining a center that revolves around fighting against concrete material forms of oppression.” This oppression in design, I would argue, are the borders of specialization.

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