Designing the Senses: Its Social Impact

Abstract

The Judith Butler book The Senses of the Subject allows us to better understand the subtle differences between the ways in which emotions are normally understood: as an unequivocal resolution in those who represent them or as a transience that, perhaps, was configured by the prior formation of the subject. Although Butler’s book does not refer directly to emotions or the senses as such, her reflections on the transcendence of the subject allow for new elements to be taken into consideration in theoretical discussions, allowing design to characterize the social and the individual, the public and the private, in one reciprocal movement.