Affect, Assemblage and Modes of Existence. Towards an Ethological Design-Driven Social Innovation

Since Viktor Papanek, at least, the ethics of designing has been organised according to moral imperatives: be authentic not phony, take notice of needs not wants . . . and so on. The social innovation that drives its creative urge from design practices appears not to have strayed far from Papanek’s path. To rid itself of such reactive ideologies, and so to create other conditions for the possibility of its creativity, design-driven social innovation might do well not merely to pitch itself as a morality articulated by, or in the thrall of, a transcendent authority, but maybe even to be occupied with different account of ethics altogether. This paper will seek to elucidate such a different ethics as an ethology along the lines Spinoza proposed and Deleuze championed. That is, it will therefore call for an affective designing that deals in the creation of modes of existence, from whose assemblages emerge other social and communal apparatuses. This paper is constructed of several sections – looking at assemblages (via Deleuze and Guattari and De Landa), affects (via Spinoza and Deleuze), modes of existence (via Souriau and Latour) – each of which is its own moment in this call with its own value and agenda, but with points of collision with the others. This paper will conclude by gesturing towards the type of social/collective that might emerge from this discussion.