Designing for Posthuman Legalities: Legal Design(ing) and the Ontological Turn
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Date
2024
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Abstract
Designing for posthuman legalities explores ways of projecting new human-nature-technology relations within the frame of legal rights. We do so, addressingthe problematic notions of human, nature, and technologies – all three of whichare hallmarks of modernity. In times of a global climate crisis and accelerated digitalisation, the legal system needs to shift the human-centred paradigm to considerother ontologies that account for our posthuman condition. Problematising thecurrent human-centred design practices, this paper explores other ways of designing beyond the Anthropocentric worldview. This demands a reworking, on both theepistemic and ontological levels —ways of knowing and ways of being— of the design part as much as the legal part. Against this context, we explore the designingof the rights of nature and the rights of machines. We elaborate five propositionsregarding ways of designing for the posthuman in the realm of law and justice. Thepropositions are 1) prototyping as a way of disclosing worlds, 2) posthuman legalities as trans-ontological liminality, 3) from explanations to describing, performing, and becoming, 4) posthuman solicitations, affectivity, and attunement, and 5)posthuman co-incidences, resonances, and frictions. At the end of each one of thepropositions we share experiences from our projects on designing for the posthuman. The propositions are not meant to be a checklist, but to provide possibilitiesfor action to the reader. Thus, fellow researchers and practitioners will find in thispaper a rich conceptual reference, as well as strategies to explore and disclose other worlds. It will also serve as an invitation and encouragement to delve into thecomplexities of the emergent posthuman legalities.