From Objects to Subjects: Design History and Oral History
“The paper will address questions about the value of personal life story recordings by examining the fate of the role of individual agency and authorship in design historiography. Taking as its starting point that subjectivity is socially constructed and that language is the medium in which that construction is articulated, it will show how life histories are inevitably evidence of broader cultural discourses. With the resurgence of historiographic concerns with experience and memory, The paper will demonstrate the ways in which interviews with designers create a multi-layered document/recording that reflects the complex interactions with constitute a designer’s identity formation as well as his/her historical consciousness.” (Linda Sandino at Show/Tell Papers)