Talk: Are Derrida and Design Strangers that Have Never Met?

With Ziad Abillama

Jacques Derrida made us hope for the Other’s paradise. The Other as a paradise? or as a perfect stranger? Yet the Other never existed. If the Other is desired but never allowed to exist, then is Derrida the religion of failure or more the embodiment of the failure of religion? If the Other doesn’t look like anything, can we still speak of Derridean aesthetics?

This is one of the talks for Beirut Design Week 2012. The talks are all dedicated to the role of design in social and environmental context.