Critiques Of Speculative Design

Appropriated by the system, speculative practice again becomes a practice supporting the status quo – rather than examining it, bringing it into question and changing it (Revell, 2019). Such criticism of speculative practice shows that it does have weak spots, including a frequent inability to step out of the dominant (capitalist) system from which it emerges, and through the critique of which it is trying to emancipate itself. Critics of the current dominant approach to speculative practice characterise it as “privileged and Eurocentric” and criticise its complacency and detachment from the real world, as well as its escape into dystopian scenarios (Thackara, 2013) p85