Colonial Performances in More-than-Human Design

The ecological crisis is the result of colonial capitalist domination over lands and peoples. It is therefore impossible for more-than-human design to achieve its goal of creating a more socially and environmentally just world without engaging in substantive action toward decolonization. However, critiques from Indigenous and decolonial scholarship have also highlighted the ways in which posthumanism – the dominant philosophy of more-than-human design – has inadvertently reified coloniality. This is likely because the field benefits from a perceived goodness, which can limit its ability to assess itself critically. To counter this, I analyze my own more-than-human design work alongside that of others using the concept of colonial performances as a critical reflexive framework for more-than-human design. I identify and discuss the implications of two colonial performances in the field: aesthetic plundering and recentering whiteness. By promoting a deeper awareness of positionality, this paper contributes to more-than-human design’s capacity for critical reflexivity and improve research and decision-making processes to support decolonization.