Diseña (Oct 2024)
Design Stories in the Global South: Fabulation as a Means to Decolonize Design History
Abstract
This article aims to discuss, through the critical fabulation of Saidiya Hartman, the use of fabulation in the field of design history as a decolonizing methodological tool, as it challenges and problematizes notions of truth and neutrality in research and the boundaries of scientific writing. Assuming that all writing, even that which claims to be committed to reality, has elements of fiction, I argue that researchers in design can engage in writing that, with historical rigor, utilizes imagination not as a means of falsification but as a materialization of what is suggested in documents but escapes the possibility of verification. I conclude that fabulation can be employed as a means to imagine alternative occurrences, as a way to speculate on what cannot be answered through archival materials, and as a tactic for democratizing academic discourse.
