The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Episode 1
In February, I discovered an article on Twitter about “decolonizing graphic design,” published in the summer of last year. These sorts of articles are incredibly useful for showing exactly what’s going on in the Critical Social Justice mindset once you know how to read them, and this one doesn’t disappoint. After quickly threading about the article on Twitter to show it and explain it to my followers, I grabbed my microphone for an impromptu discussion of what I read.
A key point on the issue of what “decolonization” means in design includes that colonization doesn’t mean what we usually think it means. Instead, it means “embedding Western ideology” into whatever is being “colonized.” The effect of this is to “devalue other ways of knowing.” They also say that this is a “process” with no “finite end.”
Together, what this means is that “colonization” refers to expecting people to think and act in ways that Critical Social Justice identifies with white, Western, Eurocentric, and patriarchal culture, and this needs to be torn down for alternatives. In this sense, “decolonization” means tearing apart those established systems (not necessarily for good reasons) and replacing them with other “ethnic” and “sensitive” ones. A value of “shattering the familiar,” they call it in the article.
Another key point is that decolonizing design includes giving design work to people in minoritized groups. “Design,” (like everything) they tell us, is “intrinsically political.” The goal is therefore colonizing the field of graphic design with transformative politics and doing so in the name of decolonization.
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7 comments
wow.
They use the phrase “indigenization” now as it’s not about undoing the past but injecting woke marxism. They presume this is interchangable with how indigenous people acted for thousands of years. One practice that would be an expression of indingenization would be to burn children from other tribes alive as the Dakota did. Their “indigenous ways of knowing” thought it was good to do that.
I was shortlisted for a chair role at a school like this. Salary was $250k. (I didn’t get it as they despise me.) You should see the job postings there. They are insane. Half of it is woke belief requirements. You have to have activism on all their fetish beliefs in order to be considered. And you have to meet their racial standards too. I have indigenous family and put good things I’ve done that one might consider “activism”. Instead they put a guy in who didn’t have most of the requirements to my knowledge. But was an insider as neurotic and authoritarian as they are.
And in case any think james is hyperbolizing, I went to an event at that school, “decolonizing design praxis” where the mulatto keynote speaker said “We need to replace (white faculty) dinosaurs with *people who look like us*”. The black dean sitting in the front row had an ear to ear grin on her face as she nodded enthusiastically.
When they interviewed me I asked what the school’s policy was for dealing with extremism. The reason I asked was because one of the people in the room on the hiring committee had publicly posted that trump supporters are nazis who should be punched. At one point they asked what should be done about faculty accused of sexual misconduct, I said they should be investigated. And I found it strange they seemed not to have their own policies determined for this. Then they asked the same about racism and I have the same answer. The fellow who said on twitter that trump supporters are “nazis” who should be “punched” raised his voice and said “you must condemn racism!”
Wow so my old field is now being destroyed, makes sense given soome ofthe stuff I have seen,. just awful regressive, backwards stuff
I personally would not hire a woke graphic designer. Something tells me their art probably sucks 🤣
In the book ‘WOKE: A guide to social justice’ by the satirical character Tatiana McGrath, she concludes a feminist rant by saying “Only when females are treated as superior to males will equality have been achieved.” In the book it’s a joke…
and as of September 1, 2020 it has made it into House Beautiful
https://www.housebeautiful.com/design-inspiration/a33855711/design-vocabulary-eurocentric-decolonize/
Excellent decolonization of decolonization from scholarship period!