A Speculative Ethics for Designing with Bodily Fluids

Abstract

This essay performs a speculative ethics in designing with a researcher’s own bodily fluids. This is through the creation of “performative texts”, which are autoethnographic accounts of past experiences in which written words perform through visual and spatial compositions alongside verbal readings aloud. I present three performative texts about moments of discomfort in designing with milk from my own breastfeeding relationship. They are to reflect upon felt experiences of potential harm and to understand social and material relations of care. From these I offer three possibilities for how HCI might consider the ethics of first-person research in attending to more-than-human entanglements: unsafe spaces, situated escapes, and censored inclusion. These possibilities and the approach of performative texts contribute to research for more sustainable futures by exploring the decentering of humans through an intimate engagement with the self.