s the 'telling' of defuturing, this text arrives as something confronting n impossibility and a necessity. What is impossible is the telling of the story, ...

The aim of this essay is to contribute to the development of a paradigmatic shift in how design is understood, transformed and practiced in the Global South. It does this by establishing the case for building a strong contextual relation between design, colonialism, and the mobilised counter-agency of decoloniality. Thereafter, design for/by the Global South is presented within a critical epistemological reframing subordinate to a situated imperative of the ‘Sustainment’.

What this chapter brings together are five key transformative factors that are changing the conditions, form and space of war. Starting with climate change, it is understood historically and futurally as a cause of war as it will increasingly impacts on natural systems and displaces large populations. Many climate-linked associated conflicts are also seen as adding to the propensity of asymmetrical conflict. Changes in war itself are coming from three in particular source: robotic technology, especially autonomous weapon systems; forms of (...) ‘unrestrictive warfare’—as it extend war across many domains beyond its tradition forms, and the extension of war into space; and fifth is the expectation of war in megacities, which are not just seen environments of future wars but also as a major warfighting challenge well beyond the capability of current urban warfare methods. (shrink)

The category of violence is not to be taken as self-evident. Rather it needs to be examined as a complexity within and beyond its forms in war. Underscoring discussion of modes of violence are fundamental questions about the relation between ‘the human,’ violence, and nature, as they have been theorised. So posed violence is reviewed with reference to those philosophical and socio-biological debates that assert and contest the claim that our species is naturally violent and aggressive. In this context, a (...) number of epistemological perspectives are presented, including how violence is articulated to aggression, power and force. What is made clear is that the plurality of expressions of violence is not divisible into disconnected forms. But from the socially overt to the psychologically concealed it is actually a continuum, this notwithstanding its pragmatic division into genres. (shrink)

By consolidating prior thoughts on Unstaging War what is now outlined is a proto-process able to be developed as a theoretically informed critical practice of unstaging framed by the concept of ‘the event.’ The performative dimension of the event will be seen as being philosophically underscored. In total, the objective of the process as it has been conceived is directed toward its establishment as a redirective praxis. Contextually, advancement of the entire approach is acknowledged as requiring the creation of situated (...) understandings of specific condition of critically—the dangers of which being identifies by intelligence gathering integrated within unstaging practice. Unstaging War is conceptualised as process and counter discourse that will encompass ontological understanding of care. (shrink)

By establishing the historical and contemporary relation between war and philosophy this chapter makes specific connections to the unbroken history of trauma and theories of warfare. Substantial consideration is then given to rendering a series of key issues of concern, these include: ethics, reason, unreason, epistemology and the ‘un-thought.’ The sum of what has been presented constitutes a backdrop against which a reconfiguration of how war and philosophy now need to be approached, this recognising the challenges and complexity of conflict (...) in the present and foreseeable future. In particular, and acknowledging that peace has been shown to no longer provide a viable ethical foundation from which to oppose war, three practices linked to Unstaging War are put forward. How they are understood is elaborated to provide a basis for redirective action—the practices are conviviality, care and friendship. (shrink)

Acknowledging that Unstaging War does nor exist as a familiar idea, method or practice what is addressed is its creation as process—elemental to it is embracing a more developed and complex comprehension of the concept of ‘proximity,’ this to the ways war is mediated by word, voice, image and sound as they all constitute the content of representational technologies. Thereafter, what becomes known, including of proximity, is to brought to transforming the critical distance, as seen, thought and felt, by the (...) subject to the prospect, representation or actuality of war (in its contemporary forms). (shrink)

There is now a significant gap between common perceptions and representations of war and its actual and emergent actualities. What will now to be presented provides a variety of ways in which the think war that are more appropriate to present times. The overall framing is via the concept of ‘the event’ as it has been theorised by a number of philosophers, and as it occupies a central position in developing approaches to Unstaging War. What will become apparent in exposing (...) substantial changes in the nature of war is that they are many ontological transformations underway. The ranges of these changes of war are extensive and multidimensional and have taken war beyond conventional characterisations of warfighting. By implication the narrativization of war needs to change. The most substantial change being acknowledged is that as an event war it can no longer be appropriately viewed as discrete in space, time, form or as separate from the unsustainability of the ‘human’ condition. The argument of the chapter is complimented with a case study on the weaponisation of design that links to transformations of war now happening and to the concept of unstaging. (shrink)

A discussion of peace continues here, but moves from a conjunctural critique of the concept to examine the political and ideological contexts. There will be a critical, historical and contemporary politically framed focus upon nationalism, idealism and cosmopolitism. The argument put forward will acknowledge that geopolitical tensions and climate change are currently transforming perspectives of how the relations between the Global North and Global South are seen—including acknowledging those perspectives from indigenous cultures. Again, but in the context outline, Unstaging War (...) will be introduced strategically and futurally as an opening into another way of thinking and acting in recognition of the redundancy of the concept and institutions of peace and its accompanying political ideologies. (shrink)

Unstaging War is introduced in the context of a global crisis and challenge that relationally connects geopolitical reconfigurations, the rapid transforming of technology, massive problems gathered under the category of unsustainability as all linked to the current and future impacts of climate change as associated loss of biodiversity and current and prospects of conflict. This situation being viewed in the recognition of the unsettlement of the human condition as connected to how the sum of the impacts of all global environmental, (...) techno-economic, geopolitical and socio-cultural transformations are the changing nature and risk of more small and potentially major wars. The chapter ends with and outline of the narrative structure of the three parts of the book. (shrink)

Two major factors that have substantially altered the relation between war and law will be examined. One is the rise and scale of asymmetrical warfare and insurgencies. What this development over recent decades has made clear is that the abandonment of the laws of war has been part of a strategy to offset tactical disadvantage. Key to this is the use of terror mobilised against civilian local populations to disarm resistance and impose compliance, and then, via its representation induce fear (...) in a wider population. The second factor is the pre-emptive use of force, which even when done under a United Nations resolution is legally questionable. Even more problematic are pre-emptive ‘surgical strikes’ by semi-autonomous weapon, most notably drones, in non–protagonist nations. Besides these two examples of the abandonment of law there are fundamental problems of the law itself. Again two in particular examples are to be registered: the contestable status of the claim of a ‘just war;’ and lack of clarity and problems associated with the unresolved definition in law of ‘a war of aggression.’. (shrink)

What is now brought into question is what, as a fragmenting species, we are and are becoming. In doing so the Eurocentric construction and universalization of the human by modernity is exposed as a problematic imposition on the beings of other cosmologies. The past of the human is exposed as a cultural invention of global export rather than as ‘natural and universal being.’ The future of our being is also considered, and what can be starting to be seen as plural (...) with the potential birth of another or sub-species. In this uneven situation (contrary to the telos of many technocentric futurists) are a series of multiple modes of becoming: the biopolitically abandoned human, the inhuman, the residual human, and the posthuman (technoid and critical). These emergent ‘developments’ denote not just a crisis of what we in difference are becoming but also expose a potential new arena of conflict in the war on our selves that directly connects to how Unstaging War is thought. (shrink)

While prior reference has been made to the breakdown of the binary relation between war and peace it is now looked at in some detail. Initially, the problem of the concept of peace in the late modern world, and the nature, hopes, failures and history of peace activism and studies are all considered—this from the perspectives of philosophy and institution. Then the redundancy of peace is considered against the backdrop of the changing character and future of war. The relation of (...) peace to the state and democracy is also discussed. Unstaging war is then positioned, this as underpinning the entire critique of peace, and in the recognition that another discourse and practice is now needed to counter the propensity and omnipresence of the pluralisation of war. (shrink)

This book presents the concept of ‘unstaging’ war as a strategic response to the failure of the discourse and institutions of peace. This failure is explained by exploring the changing character of conflict in current and emergent global circumstances, such as asymmetrical conflicts, insurgencies, and terrorism. Fry argues that this pluralisation of war has broken the binary relation between war and peace: conflict is no longer self-evident, and consequentially the changes in the conditions, nature, systems, philosophies and technologies of war (...) must be addressed. Through a deep understanding of contemporary war, Fry explains why peace fails as both idea and process, before presenting ‘Unstaging War’ as a concept and nascent practice that acknowledges conflict as structurally present, and so is not able to be dealt with by attempts to create peace. Against a backdrop of increasingly tense relations between global power blocs, the beginnings of a new nuclear arms race, and the ever-increasing human and environmental impacts of climate change, a more viable alternative to war is urgently needed. Unstaging War is not claimed as a solution, but rather as an exploration of critical problems and an opening into the means of engaging with them. (shrink)

The book presents the case for the making of a new political imagination by offering a critique of existing political institutions, philosophy and practices that are unable to provide the thinking, means and leadership to deal with the complexity and crises of specific locales and the world at large. The authors make clear that there is a fundamental disjuncture between the complexity of the combined critical conditions that are now putting life on Earth at risk, and the divisions and theories (...) of knowledge that are dominantly and instrumentally trying to understand the situation. In response this work makes the case for the need for a new political imagination that rejects the sufficiency of existing political ideologies (including democracy) being the end point of politics. The book tackles the political underpinnings of social and economic life in a world still embedded in the inequities of the afterlife of colonialism and state socialism. Thereafter it engages narratives of change, rethinks imagination and critical practices, to finally present a relationally connected way to move forward. (shrink)

This book is an essential contribution to the transdisciplinary field of critical design studies. The essays in this collection locate design at the center of a series of interrelated planetary crises, from climate change, nuclear war, and racial and geopolitical violence to education, computational culture, and the loss of the commons. In doing so, the essays propose a range of needed interventions in order to transform design itself and its role within the shifting realities of a planetary crisis. It challenges (...) the widely popular view that design can contribute to solving world problems by exposing how this attitude only intensifies the problems we currently face. In this way, the essays critique the dominant modes of framing the meaning and scope of design as a largely Anglo-European "problem-solving" practice. By drawing on post-development theory, decolonial theory, black studies, continental philosophy, science and technology studies and more, the contributions envision a critical and speculative practice that problematizes both its engagement with planet and itself. The essays in this collection will appeal to design theorists and practitioners alike, but also to scholars and students generally concerned with how the past and future of design is implicated in the unfolding complexity of ecological devastation, racial and political violence, coloniality, technological futures, and the brutality of modern western culture generally. (shrink)

Heidegger and the Televisual Explores an ontological theory of television as it authors culture and expands beyond the limit of the technology and its social and economical institutions. As well, it employs ideas deliverd by Martin Heidegger as a way of understanding and investigating the Being' of what the book names as the televisual - the thinking of television beyond that which is normally characterised as television.'.