Truth Is a Thing of This World: A Foucaultian Analysis of the Discoursive Construction and Constitution of Cooperative Design

How does the expert domain ‘Cooperative Design’ construct and constitute itself discoursively as a discipline in the field of Scandinavian System Design? In relation to this question this paper will explore some central themes within the discipline and show how it constructs its topic and domain in a discourse based on the concept of the computer as a tool. It will further examine how the discipline establishes a régime of truth by using a specific terminology when referring to the relationship between designers and users. The discourse and the phenomena, objects and problems which lie in it will be seen in relation to its historical, societal and institutional terms of possibilities. Through the means of a diachronic analysis it will be shown that the cooperative discourse has changed in certain ways, without reflecting upon its own initial terms. Thus the analysis locates some contrasts in the discourse, especially between an explicit avoidance of the rationalistic Cartesian way of thinking and at the same time a lack of acknowledgement that its own discoursive practice is still marked by it. This will partly be discussed in the light of Foucault and partly by sociological and anthropological insights concerning scientific practice.