Dr. Peter Buwert P.Buwert@napier.ac.uk
Lecturer
This paper presents a conception of aesthetic justice which builds on
thoughts of Theodor Adorno and Wolfgang Welsch and attempts to reconcile design’s relationships with both aesthetics and ethics. Where legal justice operates on a principle of homogenising equality, aesthetic justice recognises the full heterogeneity of experience and as such cannot tolerate the injustice of treating things which are not alike as if they were. Building on this theoretical conception a project of design for a blind-spot culture is outlined. Design, rather than contributing to societal anaestheticisation of the ethical can instead utilise its aesthetic influence to shine light on dark places, nurturing an atmosphere of sensitivity to differences, exclusions, oppressions and intolerances. Design’s potential to act, and fail to act, in such ways is discussed through examples of aesthetic artefacts relating to the 2016 British EU referendum, U.S. presidential election, and the Black Lives Matter movement.
Buwert, P. (2017). Aesthetic Justice. Design for a blind-spot culture. Design Journal, 20(sup1), S38-S48. https://doi.org/10.1080/14606925.2017.1353017
Journal Article Type | Conference Paper |
---|---|
Conference Name | Design for Next. 12th Eurpoean Academy of Design Conference |
Start Date | Apr 12, 2017 |
End Date | Apr 14, 2017 |
Acceptance Date | Mar 1, 2017 |
Online Publication Date | Sep 6, 2017 |
Publication Date | Sep 6, 2017 |
Deposit Date | Apr 21, 2017 |
Publicly Available Date | Mar 7, 2019 |
Journal | Design Journal |
Print ISSN | 1460-6925 |
Electronic ISSN | 1756-3062 |
Publisher | Routledge |
Peer Reviewed | Peer Reviewed |
Volume | 20 |
Issue | sup1 |
Pages | S38-S48 |
DOI | https://doi.org/10.1080/14606925.2017.1353017 |
Keywords | Tolerance, Sensitivity, Ethics, Black Lives Matter, Anaesthesia |
Public URL | http://researchrepository.napier.ac.uk/Output/831539 |
Additional Information | Volume 20, 2017 - Issue sup1: Design for Next: Proceedings of the 12th European Academy of Design Conference, Sapienza University of Rome, 12-14 April 2017 |
Aesthetic Justice. Design for a blind-spot culture
(1.4 Mb)
PDF
Publisher Licence URL
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Copyright Statement
The Version of Record of this manuscript has been published and is freely available in The Design Journal http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14606925.2017.1353017
Shepard Fairey’s inauguration posters may define political art in Trump era
(2017)
Digital Artefact
Defamiliarisation, Brecht and Criticality in Graphic Design
(2016)
Book Chapter
Designers are seizing Wall Street – but can they improve your life?
(2016)
Digital Artefact
An/Aesth/Ethics: the ethical potential of design
(2015)
Journal Article
Examining the Professional Codes of Design Organisations
(2018)
Conference Proceeding
About Edinburgh Napier Research Repository
Administrator e-mail: repository@napier.ac.uk
This application uses the following open-source libraries:
Apache License Version 2.0 (http://www.apache.org/licenses/)
Apache License Version 2.0 (http://www.apache.org/licenses/)
SIL OFL 1.1 (http://scripts.sil.org/OFL)
MIT License (http://opensource.org/licenses/mit-license.html)
CC BY 3.0 ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/)
Advanced Search