IngentaConnect Design: On the Global (R)Uses of a Word

Author: Dutta, Arindam

Source: Design and Culture, Volume 1, Number 2, July 2009 , pp. 163-186(24)

Abstract:

This article looks at the transition in notions of authorship from the Enlightenment to the industrial revolution. Key here is the shift in the formal status of the "copy," whose journey from classical mimesis to the reproductive technologies of the industrial revolution was given strong qualification by Kant. Kant's critique of the predicative autonomy of the subject can be seen to be conceptually necessary for the rise of "design" as an institutional prerogative in mid-nineteenth century Britain, a prerogative which moreover contravenes the anthropological non-referentiality of the Kantian critique. Thus, on the one hand, the "universal" compass of Enlightenment thought provided nineteenth-century "design" with a predicative generalizability - a faculty that could apply to all objects. On the other hand, the putative universality of design was simply an alibi for the creation of a global market for European goods, a market defined by its attendant sets of anthropological exclusion.

Keywords: DESIGN; AESTHETIC PHILOSOPHY; KANT; AUTHORSHIP; INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY; "ORIENTAL" ARTISANRY

Document Type: Research article

DOI: 10.2752/175470709X12450568847370

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