Relocations - The Idiot as a Figure of Miscommunication - Issue 3

Aug 27, 2026

Uploaded by Finn

Investigates how miscommunications emerge through relocations and how productive repetition can be traced via Isabelle Stengers’ conceptual framework of the idiot. The analysis contrasts communication design practices that pursue “faithfully communicate” with artistic work by Dina Danish, showing how miscommunication introduces performative and material disturbances. It further examines a participatory relocation process in Alentejo, Portugal, revealing unaccounted connections, indeterminacy, and a political eco-political repositioning of communication design toward new publics.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages14

Reading Time35 min

AccessFree to download

Relocations: The Idiot as a Figure of Miscommunication

Miscommunication and “faithful communication”

Re-translating Molloy and material repetition

Relocating a village in Alentejo, Portugal

85 Relocations: The Idiot as a Figure of Miscommunication ABSTRACT I investigate a productive sense of repetition by looking at miscommunications emerging through relocations. Departing from the field of communication design, I engage with Isabelle Stengers’ conceptual framework ofthe idiot to explore how miscommunication produces modes of indeterminacy that generate new readings ofthe designer, contexts and publics of communication. In the first part of the text, I note how communication design is largely shaped by practices aiming to “faithfully communicate”. In observing work by artist Dina Danish I explore how miscommunication raises performative and material dimensions, which disturb the idea of faithfulness in communication. In deepening the political potential of miscommunication, I propose to explore through the conceptual character of the idiot how modes of indeterminacy may impact communication design. In the second part, I analyse the participatory process of relocating a village in Alentejo, Portugal, due to the construction of a dam. I explore a sense of repetition around equivalents between the old and new village during the process of relocation. Relocating sets out unaccounted connections that produce modes of indeterminacy. These allow modes of encounter surrounding the miscommunications emerging between the early projection phase to be traced, and the reality of relocation and its impact on the local community and its ecosystem. This political dimension to miscommunication calls on an eco-political positioning of communication design that may allow new publics to emerge. BARBARA NEVES ALVES Barbara Neves Alves is an Amsterdam-based communication designer and researcher, currently in her final year as PhD candidate at Goldsmiths, University of London. Her research investigates communication design and publics, exploring possibilities to design “political scenes”. Miscommunication is proposed as a key concept to explore politically and socially engaged design practices. Beyond her research, Barbara has maintained regular activity as a lecturer in higher education and works as a communication designer, specialising in type and media. More recently she has been engaged in developing practice-based research into community-based, participatory processes that explore performative and material dimensions of communication design. 86 PARSE JOURNAL And it happens in the mode of indeterminacy, that is, of the event from which nothing follows, no “and so…” but that confronts everyone with the question of how they will inherit from it. Isabelle Stengers1 Introduction: Exploring Miscommunication In Introductory Notes on an Ecology of Practices,2 Belgian philosopher Isabelle Stengers presents the term “faithful communication” as a counter to “affirming misunderstanding”.3 Affirming misunderstandings within a practice questions the value of “good communication” in creating a “good definition” of a common world.4 In this sense, it challenges modalities of the political, construed upon establishing a common ground and based on an agreement around an equality of terms. In political terms, faithful communication implies communication design is working upon consensual5 framings ofthe public, and reinforcing and reproducing these consensual understandings ofthe public, by, predominantly, framing communication as a space of rational, discursive, dialogical interchange. This communicational space of exchange resting upon common terms, is the foundation of models of communication accounting for our democratic lives.6 What I am looking to explore in this paper are practical possibilities for the design ofcommunication to remain not solely a practice shaping consensus, but rather entertain the possibility of assuming modes of being public and political that are not known in advance, where communication moves from a normative exercise aiming at consensus, to trouble assumptions regarding faithful communica

FAQs

How does the concept of “faithful communication” relate to miscommunication in this text?

The text frames “faithful communication” as a practice aiming to establish good common ground, while miscommunication is used to question that consensual foundation and to disrupt expected modes of political agreement.

What role does Dina Danish’s work play in the argument?

By examining Danish’s re-translation practices, the text highlights performative and material dimensions of communication that suspend stable meanings and produce miscommunication beyond the language layer.

How does the relocation of a village in Alentejo inform the political dimension of miscommunication?

The relocation process is analyzed as creating unaccounted connections and modes of indeterminacy from early planning through lived reality, shaping how the local community and ecosystem encounter communication’s consequences.

Aug 27, 2026

Uploaded by Finn

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