What mosses can teach us about design fabulations and feminist more-than-human care

Abstract

Feminist theory is core to posthumanist HCI and can support more-than-human designers and researchers in questioning what human is being decentered and what marginalized voices are foregrounded. In this article, I interweave feminist and posthumanist design scholarship that affirms natureculture relations through the practice and concept of fabulation. I present a research-through-design practice of producing a short film “I Moss You” that is recorded through a microscope and tells a story about mosses and menses, space travel and earthly survival. I contribute by positioning fabulation as a feminist posthumanist design approach that challenges dominant sociotechnical imaginaries of progress, involves non-humans in speculative storytelling and fosters joy in taking care of and enlivening relations with earth. I discuss how fabulation aligns with feminist values in HCI and design, including critiquing power hierarchies and dominant norms of technology, emphasizing situated knowledges in design practice, and attuning to relational becoming with ecology.