We have never been Human

Design History and Questions of Humanity

Abstract

In this essay, I challenge the concept of humanity and the false universalisms proposed in relation to design that are key to Are we human? Notes on an archaeology of design (2016). Once the critiques of humanism laid out by Sylvia Wynter, Walter Mignolo and Madina Tlostanova and others are taken into account, it is clear that design writing of the sort exemplified by Are we human? reproduces claims that are grounded in coloniality. I argue that in spite of the recent date of its publication the book reproduces the tropes of the well-established Western design history canon and therefore can be considered a classic – in spirit if not yet by renown. With this essay I want to argue that we need to continuously re-examine and challenge the canon and the classics in order to dismantle the normative gaze that reproduces Eurocentric and colonial interpretations of the human.