Plural Bodies, Pluriversal Humans: Questioning the Ontology of ‘Body’ in Design

Abstract

All designing, as well as everything designed, is ontological: things shape and form humans, just as humans shape and give form to them (Willis, 2006, Fry, 2013). However, there is no ontology of the human in the singular sense, but plural, multiple ontologies, and therefore, no human, but only humans. This paper proposes the introduction of a provocation to disturb notions of the ontologically designed body, and in fact, of how we think of what a ‘body’ is, by turning to the insights offered up by a body of literature hitherto relatively unexamined in design research: the ontological turn in anthropology. By turning to a survey of the work done by cultural anthropologists on different cosmologies and cultures, I intend to demonstrate that the Anglo-Eurocentric conception of the ontologically singular body, signified in terms of the “universality” of human biology, is in fact, only one of many ways of bodily being and relating to the body; that matters of the body are locally situated and specific to communities and environments; and therefore, what we mean by ‘the body’ is in fact also plural, multistable, and wrought with incommensurabilities between human communities and cultures. The essay will end with a re-evaluation of ontological designing and speculations on what design could do, through an engagement with examples of ‘other’ ontologies and definitions of body.