Designing futures: a Deleuzian take on design as embodiment of virtuality

My paper intends to investigate ideas of radical design as manifestation of possible virtual future(s) by drawing on Deleuze’s philosophy. The notion of speculative design is amply articulated in the work of current practitioners and theorists and it will be addressed by using Deleuze’s ideas on virtuality and becoming as main theoretical backdrop, as well as articulated through pertinent case studies.
Moreover, another aspect of Deleuze’s oeuvre will be addressed: the centrality of affects in the constitution of subjectivity, which is increasingly relevant to contemporary critical theory (see also Patricia Clough’s notion of ‘affective turn’). This is explored in order to address its relevance for an object-based notion of future. Drawing from a Spinozist notion of affect, “the trace of one body upon another”, I intend to examine the affects emerging, and circulating, in the triangulation of future-ing, subjectivities and the materialiaty of designed objects.

Hence, this paper looks at the network and circulation of affects engaged in, and emerging from, a practice of future-designing that is potentially liberating as well as constitutive of new forms of subjectivities.
Can speculative design be seen as a material interrogation into, and embodiment of, a Deleuzian-inspired ontology of becoming? Where can evidence of this be found in the work of current practioners? Can design play this role?