Feminist Care in the Anthropocene: Packing and Unpacking Tensions in Posthumanist HCI

Abstract

As posthumanist or post-anthropocentric research in HCI and design proliferates and further commits to working with more-than-humans, design research practitioners are left with many open questions and uncertainties with how to productively engage with more-than-humans in their thinking and working. This paper present results from a workshop with 17 researchers working at the intersection of care ethics and posthumanism to highlight tensions in posthumanist engagement aimed at unpacking some of the challenges, obstacles, and questions encountered by researchers interested in more-than-human centered design. In foregrounding tensions with representation, legitimization, unseen labor, and material narratives we contribute to a design research agenda which seeks to explicate and challenge dominant anthropocentric forces from design. We conclude by discussing epistemological care and urge practitioners to take up new ways of imagining through truly messy methods which contribute to a feminist unsettling of HCI's methodological commitments, practices, and praxis.