O design das formas políticas na governamentalidade neoliberal

Abstract

Design is often simply considered as the production of stylish, ergonomic, and functional objects. Although these characteristics are the most evident, their practices collaborate to form conducts capable of accepting and propagating neoliberal rationality. Allied to industrial capitalism, it onsets in the 19th century, consolidating itself professionally after the First World War, aiming to respond to economic growth. During design history, it is notorious how its methodologies have been adjusted accordingly to its purposes. First, the focus was on the functionality of the product, then on the adaptation of the machines to the body, favoring the economically productive, and, without giving up these premises, since the end of the 1970s, design projects began to focus on people's desires, emotions, and expectations. Therefore, the objective of this thesis is to analyze how the designers' work affects the subjects and how they interfere in the government of conduct, considering the precepts of neoliberal rationality. Thus, this research stems from the problematizations carried out by Michel Foucault on neoliberal rationality as a political rationality that acts on the conduct of individuals and the genealogical practice of power suggested by him to study the origins of the production of knowledge of design, as well as the correspondence of multiple forces that formed the exercise of power possible to modify the global situation of contemporary society. Provided that, this exploration seeks to present the direct relationship between design and politics, not to improve their practices, or to point out what their benefits would be, but to explain how design forges with neoliberal rationality through technical procedures of creativity and innovation, shaping subjects. Finally, it is verified that today, this is a two-way relationship: just as politics interferes in the production of design, design contributes to the elaboration of new ways of doing politics