When a tree says no: Towards a More-Than-Human consent approach for design

Abstract

A growing body of more-than-human approaches in design reconsider and re-articulate design’s relationship to the natural world through relational frameworks. However, such endeavours do not come without difficulties and may even reproduce the very logics they seek to overcome. Despite the prolific efforts within the design community, overcoming the modern/colonial legacies of design and its anthropocentric paradigm remains a formidable challenge. Departing from the Quebracho Colorado tree as a guiding example, this paper delves into a gender and decolonial analysis of the notion of consent that underscores design’s role in reproducing extractive approaches to nature. It then goes on to propose the concept of more-than-human consent as an approach for design capable of articulating sustainable, less prescriptive, and more just ways of relating to and with nature that attend to the historical and ongoing power dynamics at play within these relations.