Instrumentalising the imagination: science fiction prototyping as posthumanist methodology

Imagination and narrative are of vital importance in understanding how we conceive of our potential (disability) futures, and the role technology has in shaping our realities. The concept of ‘science fiction prototyping’ (SFP) is not only useful for articulating how narrative can be used to foster imaginations about potential future worlds, but also for creating a methodology through which we can understand how the imagination can work as a tool for co-designing better futures. Johnson’s conception of SFP (2011) serves as a useful starting place, but we need to more critically examine this (and related) conceptions. As Johnson himself admits, his is more of a ‘how-to book’ than a scholarly framework for research, and the key ideas that underpin his concept of SFP (eg, imagination, narrative) are underdeveloped. Most importantly, for all the claims as SFP being part of an exercise in ‘future casting’, the assumptions that are the foundations of Johnson’s book are resolutely and obsoletely humanist, despite co-design methodologies inherently reaching for something beyond the old humanist categories. By closely recontextualising SFP and examining its ideological origins, we will find important new directions to exploit and use in our work. Specifically, we explore how a more thoroughly conceived and developed SFP methodology is a posthumanist approach to co-design that better builds on a self-reflexive understanding of how cultural imaginations and our futures both shape and are shaped by our interactions with technology. This allows us to create a better methodology for a co-design practice that is more explicitly aware of how we use narratives and talk about our futures, and helps us to bridge co-design practice with more critical ways of thinking about how posthuman imaginations (personal, social, cultural, political) are constructed and instrumentalised.