Abstract

It has been argued that “knowledge is power.” This short essay in two parts will review looking at ideas about power through the lens of Hannah Arendt, we hope to offer some thoughts about how actions and words inform the way power manifests. In particular, about the way that power in reproducing knowledge can be aided by design that shapes intentions in action, choosing either to assist democracy or to erode it --- Building on the revival of interest in Hannah Arendt, and on the increasing turn in design towards the expanded field of the social, this unique book uses insights and quotations drawn from Arendt's major writings to assemble a new kind of lexicon for politics, designing and acting today. Taking 56 terms – from Action, Beginnings and Creativity through Mortality, Natality, and Play to Superfluity, Technology and Violence – and inviting designers and scholars of design world-wide to contribute, Designing in Dark Times: An Arendtian Lexicon, offers up an extraordinary range of short essays that use moments and quotations from Arendt's thought as the starting points for reflection on how these terms can be conceived for contemporary design and political praxis.