Abstract
“We have never been modern” wrote Bruno Latour, proposing that the dualism between nature and society has represented a convenient fiction. If humans have never genuinely stood apart, what happens to one of its most anthropocentric fabrications, citizenship? Conventionally a marker of political agency, citizenship determines who can speak, act, and belong. This conceptualisation excludes the multiple more-than-human agents shaping collective experiences. Building upon Plessner’s concept of positionality, the paper introduces “Positional Citizenship” to transcend the Cartesian divide between humans and more-than-humans, reshaping the political as a relational space of co-presence. Building on this shift, design becomes a practice of relational reconfiguration, making these distributed agencies visible and actionable. This paper outlines mechanisms facilitating this transformation: unlearning Western ontologies of mastery; integrating indigenous epistemologies of interdependence; recognising non-human entities as agents; cultivating material ethics and care; translating institutional and infrastructural assemblages; and working within interstitial ecologies where hybrid forms emerge.
Keywords
Positional Citizenship, Relational Ontologies, Post-Anthropocentric Politics, Design Philosophy
DOI
https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2026.2605
Citation
Monna, V., Singh, A., and Romero Herrera, N. (2026) Towards Positional Citizenship: designing for the More-than-Human Political, in Simeone, L., Gray, C. M., Verhoeven, A., de Götzen, A., Bakırlıoğlu, Y., Zohar, H., Stead, M., and Buwert, P. (eds.), DRS2026: Edinburgh, 8–12 June, Edinburgh, United Kingdom. https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2026.2605
Creative Commons License
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Included in
Towards Positional Citizenship: designing for the More-than-Human Political
“We have never been modern” wrote Bruno Latour, proposing that the dualism between nature and society has represented a convenient fiction. If humans have never genuinely stood apart, what happens to one of its most anthropocentric fabrications, citizenship? Conventionally a marker of political agency, citizenship determines who can speak, act, and belong. This conceptualisation excludes the multiple more-than-human agents shaping collective experiences. Building upon Plessner’s concept of positionality, the paper introduces “Positional Citizenship” to transcend the Cartesian divide between humans and more-than-humans, reshaping the political as a relational space of co-presence. Building on this shift, design becomes a practice of relational reconfiguration, making these distributed agencies visible and actionable. This paper outlines mechanisms facilitating this transformation: unlearning Western ontologies of mastery; integrating indigenous epistemologies of interdependence; recognising non-human entities as agents; cultivating material ethics and care; translating institutional and infrastructural assemblages; and working within interstitial ecologies where hybrid forms emerge.