Another Use, Another Sociality: Some Reflections on Giorgio Agamben’s Radicalization of Use

Abstract

This article addresses Giorgio Agamben’s radicalization of the category of use, attempting to map out some of the key insights this yields, and seeking to establish the importance that this longstanding preoccupation of the Italian philosopher can have for design studies. It will be proposed that rethinking use with Agamben means rethinking the way we relate not only to artifacts but also to each other, thus possibly inspiring the design of experimental practices of sociality. In other words, it means reconsidering the way we organize and reorganize our senses and movements throughout everyday instances of entanglement with the world. Design debates have tended to subordinate the question of use to concerns over users, artifacts, and production. This exploration pledges instead to focus on alternative potentialities for use itself, ultimately interpreting Agamben’s articulation as the interplay of a certain attitude and a certain relationality that might, if only intermittently, take us beyond the individuating logic of sovereign intentionality.