Erotics, Bonds and Interdependencies: Designs of Care

Abstract

The legacy we have inherited from European modernity is a Cartesian, rationalist, mechanistic, dualistic and positivist world. Nature and culture have been divided, the same has happened for objects and subjects, art and science or epistemology and ontology. The following paper explores some modern epistemic limits, and introduces erotics as a way to learn/make bonds and enable connections among humans and non-humans. These bonds signal relations of interdependency and care. Analyzing the importance of objectivity, critique and aesthetics as privileged sources to attain knowledge, we will also explore some of their outcomes in relation to contemporary design, understood as an ontological practice. Erotics will be considered as a way in which to make sense/care of a material world that needs to escape from the dichotomies and splits inherited from the enlightened modernity and instrumental rationality.