Design as politics / Tony Fry.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 253-288) and index.

Design, politics and defuturing. Facing finitude -- Inadequate solutions of now -- Redirection: design and things -- Re-framing the political. The political, sovereignty and design -- In the shadow of Carl Schmitt's politics -- Pluralism is a political problem -- Remaking sovereignty -- Design futuring as making time. Neu Bildung for a new world -- On freedom by design -- Design beyond the limits.

Design as Politics confronts the inadequacy of contemporary politics to deal with unsustainability. Current "solutions" to unsustainability are analysed as utterly insufficient for dealing with the problems but, further than this, the book questions the very ability of democracy to deliver a sustainable future. Design as Politics argues that finding solutions to this problem, of which climate change is only one part, demands original and radical thinking. Rather than reverting to failed political ideologies, the book proposes a post-democratic politics. In this, design occupies a major role, not as it is but as it could be if transformed into a powerful agent of change, a force to create and extend freedom. The book does no less than position design as a vital form of political action.