Strategic Design, Cosmopolitics and Obscure Situations

Abstract

This reflection takes as its starting point the assumption that what matters for strategic design is something that dwells in an obscure realm. Various concepts are explored in order to think about how to strategically design within such darkness. To engage with this obscurity, the strategic designer has to radically modify the position of Authority frequently employed, instead adopting a democratic, cosmopolitical modification that accentuates response-ability and permits the murmuring of the idiot. It also requires substituting the concept of context with the concept of situation, since the situation makes us think in dark organizational terms; its dynamics exceed the plain process of defining and recognition presented in the idea of context, instead driving one toward a radical transformation at the core. In this regard, the dark matter of organizations needs to be triggered with care, through a pluri-relational tentacular approach that perturbs its ordinary condition and brings its neglected actors to the fore, thereby allowing strategic design.