Design e macumba: cosmologias do axé por um design à contrapelo

Abstract

This work is the result of an autoethnography developed from the junction of two distinct routes, namely, a professional path in design and a religious path in Candomblé. Its fundamental scope is to create possibilities, starting from the cosmological perspectives of axé, for a thought in the design discipline that overcomes the hylemorphic imperative of its modern tradition. There are a total of three general sections. The first situates design as a characteristically modern poetics of objective realization, either because it relies on the rationalist principles of classical science, or because it operates under the metaphysical regime of separation between mind and matter. The second dives into religious experiences lived with stones in order to recognize relational aspects between person and matter that escape the typical material inertia of the hylemorphism and the modalities of material agency described by the studies in material culture. The third places an ebó and compares it to the modern object, breaking down some central aspects of design – such as project, matter, form and function – to reinterpret them from the cosmologies of Candomblé. Finally, this work puts in dispute the cross between design and macumba to claim a conceptual review that considers a thought in design that emerges from Candomblé cultures and not exclusively from the modern civilization paradigm.