STASZOWSKI, Eduardo; TASSINARI, Virginia (eds.)
Designing in Dark Times: An Arendtian Lexicon

Building on the revival of interest in Hannah Arendt, and on the increasing turn in design towards the expanded field of the social, this unique book uses insights and quotations drawn from Arendt's major writings to assemble a new kind of lexicon for politics, designing and acting today.

Taking 56 terms – from Action, Beginnings and Creativity through Mortality, Natality, and Play to Superfluity, Technology and Violence – and inviting designers and scholars of design world-wide to contribute, Designing in Dark Times: An Arendtian Lexicon, offers up an extraordinary range of short essays that use moments and quotations from Arendt's thought as the starting points for reflection on how these terms can be conceived for contemporary design and political praxis.

Neither simply dictionary nor glossary, the lexicon brings together designing and political philosophy to begin to create a new language for acting and designing against dark times. [publishers’ note]

With excerpts of a conversation between Thomas McQuillan and Kenneth Frampton in Preface, an Afterword by Richard J. Bernstein, and the essay, “Reading Hannah Arendt,” by Martha Rosler.

Published by Bloomsbury, 2022
Anthologies / Philosophy / Design