(Designing) Beyond the Modern
Limits, Dialectic, and Potentialities
Buying pre-order items
Ebooks and Audiobook
You will receive an email with a download link for the ebook or audiobook on the publication date.
Payment
You will not be charged for pre-ordered books until they are available to be shipped. Pre-ordered ebooks will not be charged for until they are available for download.
Amending or cancelling your order
For orders that have not been shipped you can usually make changes to pre-orders up to 72 hours before the publishing date.
Payment for this pre-order will be taken when the item becomes available
Description
(Designing) Beyond the Modern is the second volume in a trilogy by Eduardo Staszowski and Virginia Tassinari, following Designing in Dark Times: An Arendtian Lexicon (2020).
This book is a provocation: how can we begin to move beyond the modern when so much of how we think and make remains entangled in its logic? Among the forces that have both shaped and been shaped by the modern project, design occupies a central role. Rather than treating it as a neutral tool, this book approaches design as a practice deeply implicated in modernity's extractive, colonial, and anthropocentric foundations. The parenthesis in the title signals an ambivalence about whether “designing” can remain a relevant or viable practice. Without offering a conclusion, the book confronts the legacy of the Modern and calls for a caesura: a rupture, a pause, or an interval where a critical praxis, whether called design or not, might begin to take shape.
Drawing on philosophy, decolonial thought, and design theory, it challenges the logics that continue to shape modern institutions and imaginaries. Through essays, fragments, and engagements with the work of Tomás Maldonado, along with a conversation with Arturo Escobar and a contribution from Aílton Krenak, this book traces tensions and potential shifts that emerge when thinking and acting beyond the Modern.
Accessibility Information
Additional accessibility information
- EPUB 3.0
- Conforms with the requirements of EPUB Accessibility Spec v1.1
- WCAG level AA
- WCAG v2.2 compliant
- accessibility@bloomsbury.com
Hazards
The publication contains no hazards
Support for non-visual reading
- No accessibility features offered by the reading system, device or reading software are disabled or otherwise unusable with the product
- Has alternative text descriptions for images
Visual adjustments
Appearance of the text and page layout can be modified according to the capabilities of the reading system (font family and size, spaces, as well as color of background and text)
Navigation
- Page list to go to pages from the print source version
- Elements such as headings, tables, etc for structured navigation
- All or substantially all textual matter is arranged in a single logical reading order
- Content is enhanced with ARIA roles to optimize organization and facilitate navigation
- Purposes of all links are made clear
Rich content
Language tagging provided
Table of Contents
PREFACE
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
INTRODUCTION
i. Moving Beyond
ii. Critical Praxis
iii. The Structure of the Book
THE MODERN
Many Faces of Modern
Reframing the Modern
Catastrophe
Colonial
Human
DESIGNING
Designing Today, Tomás Maldonado
Commentary on Maldonado
Design-as-Modern
Dilemma
Nihilism
Dialectics
Expertise
Denaming and Renaming
Idiocy
Tomás Maldonado, Design and The Future of Modernity, Emanuele Quinz
BEYOND THE MODERN
Beyond
A Conversation with, Arturo Escobar
Language
Exteriority
Caesura
Affirmative Critique
Potentialities
Ancestral
Get Out of This Concrete Nightmare!, Aílton Krenak
AFTERWORD
Index
Product details
| Published | May 28 2026 |
|---|---|
| Format | Ebook (Epub & Mobi) |
| Edition | 1st |
| Pages | 216 |
| ISBN | 9781350164413 |
| Imprint | Bloomsbury Visual Arts |
| Series | Beyond the Modern |
| Publisher | Bloomsbury Publishing |
Related Titles
