Creative Democracy: an Anthropology of and by means of Design

This is a theory-based research which I intend to be a contribution to all practice of design that are, in one way or another, concerned with the question of democracy. Building on the critical accounts raised by scholars within the field of design for ‘making publics’ I propose, in this work, a departure from the thinking of John Dewey and an exploration into another strand of thought, that also investigates the link between democracy and social creativity, and which is based on the work of Cornelius Castoriadis.

Dewey and Castoriadis moved from very similar concerns but the two thinkers also differed on key points, and the main difference between their two strands of thought could be found in the fact that whilst Dewey attempted to ‘socialise the political’, Castoriadis aim was rather to ‘politicise the social’.

I open this monograph articulating the reasons for design practitioners and scholars to look into the work of Cornelius Castoriadis and I continue in my writing to describe what I have learnt by exploring how and if design has a role to play - through its repertoire of creative tactics – in order to advance creative democracy as an everyday practice. I will describe the issues I encountered in my two fieldworks within the area of design for mental health and I will articulate what I discovered about the limitations of current conceptions of creativity, as elaborated and practiced within neo-liberal modes of design practices.

Through this work I will advance as my main contribution to knowledge a proposal for a renovated mode of design, which I have called ‘Design for the Radical Imagination’ and which has - as its main ambition - the creation and the nurturing of a collective subject that can interpret and change the world politically.

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