Calling for a more critical design studies: appraising decoloniality and post-development in design discourse and practice

This essay attempts to provide a critical survey of decolonial design and the design literature on post-development by focusing on the seminal interventions by the post-development scholar and anthropologist Arturo Escobar into design research and practice. Using David Scott’s practice of reading discursive terrains in terms of the problem-spaces they constitute, I argue for the necessity of critical design studies to pay attention to the kinds of questions and problems the decolonial turn in design is failing to engage with at present.