EPISTEMOLOGICAL DIMENSION OF DESIGN CULTURE WITHIN KJETIL FALLAN HISTORICAL STUDIES

Article discusses basic epistemological questions related to historical studies of design provided by the well-known design historian Kjetil Fallan. It is devoted to the analyses of the researcher’s investigation of ‘isms’ notion as a categorizing concept that can be described within cultural modes (first of all, Modern, modernity and modernism). This leads to another dimension of the "design culture" notion that provides dialectic relation between ideology and practice, constructed with ‘isms’. The latter are presented as dynamic discourses, reflected in the ‘episteme’ concept by Michel Foucault. Article analyzes Thomas Kuhn’s and Paul Feyerabend’s notion of paradigms as a structuring device in the history of science used by Fallan to contemplate the dynamics of changes in the history of design. The main idea of the theory is to outline a differential paradigmatic system in design history. That has to provide deeper investigation of design history terminology and its conceptualization principles reflection.

particular questions arising when modern design culture is articulated as modernism. … the history of design is approached as a history of ideas" [2, p. 105].
Actually, the one of the crucial philosophical responsibilities is to provide research on meta level -to analyze the instrument of analysis itself, the concepts used globally and locally. It is commonly accepted that terms need to be investigated, that would help to analyze the facts more deeply and thoughtfully. The general name of such crucial concepts is "ism", and Fallan tries to define it -"…how is it constructed, negotiated, mediated, consolidated and recomposed" [2, p. 107].
Ism is viewed as an effective instrument to investigate the most important theoretic questions within design domain, its history and cultural core. Design in its complexity is based on a special and meaningful terminology. That is why the epistemological dimension of design cultural studies must be based firstly on terminological analysis. The first issue concerning this is what is the main source of design terminology -aesthetical theory or social changes? The answer to this question provides the first opening definition by Fallan: "…an ism can be understood as a cultural mode defined by negotiations between design ideology and design practice -a notion that will underpin the rest of this study" [2, p. 108]. This various interchange between theory and practice can be assessed as a specialty of design culture scientific domain. Starting here, Fallan goes on by investigating meaning of each key term, its history and semantic transition in modernity. The crucial characteristic of this concept is the qualitative change between the previous state and the new one, where something is not like before in a dramatic way.
The important person referred by Fallan in this context is Charles Baudelaire, the author of the new aesthetic program, which denied the values and principles of the previous poets and philosophers. The eccentric break-up with traditional ideas is the gate to the "modernity" concept understanding. This theoretical change is tightly connected with the material basis and social changes in European countries of that time. Without it there would be no theoretical changes at all, that why Fallan puts accent on the duality of modernity as it is, that totally involves the design issues. The ideas of beauty changes together with the real manners, way of behaving and surrounding oneself with certain objects. These complex changes are unescapable, that why the novelty and modernity is built in the culture essence.
В е р с і я н е д л я д р у к у The answer can be found in the meaning of design sphere itself, as long as it perfectly combines practical and aesthetical dimensions. That is why, as Fallan asserts, design provides the modernistic, completely new role of art within the culture on all its levels. And here he stars discussing the third term -'modernism', its history (the most recently found of three) and specific characteristics. The main is that modernism is a movement: "Modernism in design is, generally, can be seen as a constant quest for modernity, or the wish to establish an anti-traditional tradition. … a movement or a tendency which, it is often claimed, can be defined as an epoch in history and is thus not impaired by the constantly changing present" [2, p. 111]. Also, this is the concept with most variable meanings. And at last, it has an antagonistic concept which is "postmodernism" and which provides a new complexity within design studies. To get through this complexity, Fallan uses Foucauldian term "episteme" and a corresponding epistemological approach provided by the French philosopher.
Making a prolific effort to investigate the complex of concepts of a certain "formation", Michel Foucault comes to the specific term that would embrace it using a "archaeological" method: "…what I am attending to bring to light is the epistemological field, the episteme in which knowledge … manifests a history … of its conditions of possibility … Such an enterprise is not so much a history … as an 'archaeology'" [4, p. XXIII -XXIV].
According to Foucault, episteme not just corresponds an epoch, but rather forms its integrity and continuity with itself, create conditions of its being, intellectually and creatively.
Then, Fallan distinguishes to types of qualitative historical changes that divide epochs and periods: "the aestheticideological movement" or isms, and the epistemes -"the deep, fundamental sociological structures". The former change more frequently and the latter are deeper and last longer. The former are signified with the new art and design, new visual characteristics of society. The latter brings core values that form base for these visual characteristics. The change is made when there's an essential need of new values, and first of all new isms arise. And that how we get the meaning of modern and modernity: "Art history, intellectual history, design history and all other academic disciplines concerned with aesthetics and ideologies of form in one way and in another have no choice but to deal with the phenomenon of isms … They are more or less consistent sets of beliefs and arguments about what is correct, important and possible at the given time within the given episteme" [2, p. 115].
That's how Fallan shows the meaning of isms -to define the direction of thought of talented artists, architects and designers, who use isms as the basic "ideologies" to prove or to criticize and destroy. Though, isms are prescriptive character concerning art and design, which shows their instrumental essence. Answering to the question what are isms, the researcher deliberates between two positions: from one hand, they describe pieces of art and design objects, from another -they prescribe the creation of completely new and different ones. So, the best ism definition is in between.
In this context, Fallan brings up one of the methods he proposes within the design culture investigation -actor network system that can be described with isms and make them function in practice. An here he comes to the definition of the design culture concept meaning: "culture is most fruitfully conceptualized as a dialectic between system and practice and insisting on a necessary tension between the two as the key to understanding cultural transformation and development … culture of design -as experienced and articulated through isms -can be conceptualized as a dialectic between" [2, p. 117]. According to this, the design culture concept should resolve the problem theory (ideology) and practice dialectics in design sphere by analyzing the changes in design history and isms that serve as cultural codes within it, as they are "…formed as a response or the reaction to the existing praxis and governing ideas within the prevalent episteme" [Ibid., p. 118].
That's why, it is crucial to analyze the reasons and qualitative characteristics of the isms changes: what provokes them and how they are provided in practice and in ideology, how society changes within it. Actor network theory can be an answer: there is a certain need of multiple members of culture changing and ism-creating and verification process: "...art is created in the studio, while isms are created in the galleries … ...if galleries are interpreted in a broad sense to mean the network of the social institutions, actors, and mechanisms involved in the sociocultural reception, interpretation, and domestication of art, buildings, and products" [Ibid., p. 120]. One person, even the most talented can't do that -creative process has to be systematic, forming schools, generations, periods, epochs, etc. This entire concept include their temporality, in other words -every new period brings a necessary change and shift after it, transforming into old ("traditional" or classical) one. This transformation is unstoppable and is marked with the help of isms.
Fallan emphasizes on the need of analysis how this changes happen, how this shift is processed, how something new and innovative, crucial and scandalous becomes traditional, conventional, common and sometimes even kitsch -"from avant-garde to arriere-garde". Answering this he uses the method of domestication (next to the actor-network method mentioned above). Domestication is a process when an idea or an image get appropriated by mass, or vice versa -when the common place gets appropriated by an artist or a designer and gets a new, unexpected meaning depending on context. To understand the history of design on epistemological lever, we need to analyze in details all parts and their inter interactions within the networks and through the dialectical process of domestication.
Fallan makes it possible with the help of Thomas Kuhn's "paradigm" concept, articulated in his book "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions". This concept embraces the changes of epistemes and isms within science historical development. So, there is an interesting point in the possibility of using such an approach in design history analysis. And we can find it in Kuhn's work: "To the extent that the book portrays scientific development as a succession of tradition-bound periods punctuated by non-cumulative breaks, its thesis are undoubtedly of wide applicability. But they should be, for they are borrowed from other fields. Historians of literature, of music, of the arts, of political development, and many other human activities have long described their subjects in the same way. Periodization in terms of revolutionary breaks in style, taste, and institutional structure have been among their standard tools" [8, p. 208]. Here we can see ground for such a transition, as long as paradigm involve "ideas, values, models, techniques, metaphysical assumptions, symbolic generalizations and so on shared by a research community" [2, p. 130]. Also, it is important to emphasize that paradigm is always dynamic, it has its own period of lasting, though it can be long-lasting.
The second famous science philosopher, to whom Fallan appeals, and who continues Kuhn's ideas, is Paul Feyerabend and his book "Against Method". The reason for it is that Feyerabend brings new wave to the paradigm discourse: "opens up for a modified interpretation of Kuhnian paradigms by suggesting the existence of several, coexisting paradigms" [Ibid., p. 133].
В е р с і я н е д л я д р у к у In social, art, design and even science development process there is always more than one holistic vector, this process includes certain synchrony, that's why paradigm concept has to deal with it. Different paradigms involve corresponding isms, as well as corresponding values, institutions and actors. The same picture can be seen within art or especially design sphere: multiple schools, traditions, styles, approaches coexist and interact gradually. Fallan gives examples of paradigms in design history of the XX century: "art deco, streamlining and deconstructivism". In this context he addresses researcher John Heskett and his idea of 'layering society of design history' explicating the rules of design dynamic history: nothing changes completely, but layers one on another producing not totally new, and renewed: "...Design is therefore simultaneously about change, continuity and adaption" [6, p. 13].
We can see that for Fallan design and its dynamic totally corresponds the principle by Feyerabend: "Knowledge so conceived is not a series of self-consistent theories that converges towards an ideal view; it is not gradual approach to the truth. It is rather an even increasing ocean of mutually incompatible (and perhaps even incommensurable) alternatives…" [5, p. 30]. Such a vision of any knowledge sphere as multi-paradigmatic helps to grasp the specific state of design history and isms circulation within it.
Remembering this, Fallan gets to the final question of his design history epistemological analysis -how we can grasp in mind and investigate to correspondence between to general and main paradigms in design -modernism and postmodernism? And how multi-paradigmatic system approach can answer that? Is modernism an episteme ("metaphysical paradigm, world view") or an ism ("(sociological paradigm, design ideology")? From one hand, Jurgen Habermas says that modernity is still crucial and is not finished yet. From another, Charles Jencks buried modernism in his famous work "The Language of Post-Modern Architecture": "Modern Architecture died in St Louis, Missouri in July 15, 1972 at 3.32 p.m. (or thereabouts) when the infamous Pruitt-Igoe scheme, or rather several of its slab blocks were given the final coup-de-grâce by dynamite … Boom, boom, boom" [7, p. 9]. Both these positions were criticized a lot, and various opinions have been given on the topic of modernity and postmodernism interaction. All these discourse may be enlightened with paradigmatic approach in design. The question "is modernism as metaphysical paradigm finished" might get a negative answer, because this paradigm is still influential within contemporary context ("in social, political, economic, technological spheres", not only on artistic and aesthetic level).
For sure, there is a need to quote Jean Beaudrillard and his vision of postmodernism: "…it is the baroque, with its predilection for the allegorical, its new discursive individualism based on redundant forms and tricked-up materials, and its demiurgic formalism, that is the true inaugurating moment of the modern age" [1, p. 113]. Concerning this, Fallan is not ready to describe postmodernism as a metaphysical (aesthetical) paradigm, that is completely new comparing to the modernism. It's rather an alternation, it exists in its negative status, though somehow it is completely autonomous in its intention, through the modernism constant transformation: "Modernism as a world view, a metaphysical paradigm or an episteme affords or restricts the isms as a -to paraphrase Feyerabend -whole set of partly overlapping, factually adequate, but mutually inconsistent movements" [2, p. 144].

Conclusion
As researcher Pigalskaya says, "The history of design is a rather young field of humanities. As K. Fallan notes, despite the existence of publications on the history of American and European design, until 1977 it is hardly pos-sible to talk about the history of design as an established academic discipline" [9]. We can agree that design history and cultural analysis is in the beginning of its development. Though, the first important spteps have been already made by K. Fallan, who actualized this subject by reintroducing the complex and systematic structure of design development: "…everyday processes that can become the key to understanding design, primarily oriented to everyday and customary actions" [Ibid].
After historical and methodological levels, Fallan proposed an epistemological one, which appeared to be the most consistent and complicated: different philosophical, aesthetical and sociological theories have been combined here. The central issue consists in the ism definition (as long as design historians and theorists operate with isms) as cultural codes that form the specific interaction between design theory and practice: "Isms belong on this paradigmatic level when they are primarily considered as styles or formal expressions. These isms are normally made up of a series of prefigurative exemplars or models functioning prototypes, as a repertoire or as a reservoir of possibilities" [2, p. 136].
The main isms within design history are modernism and postmodernism (and other key works are modern and modernity). The most appropriate way to analyze them, for Fallan, is turning to Foucauldian "episteme", Kuhn's "paradigm" and Feyerabend's "multi-paradigmatic" concepts and theories around them.
The results of this analysis give us new possibilities of design sphere, its ideologies, terms and concepts investigation: what is a real renovation and what is just "layering". Design thus is corresponding to science and art as the subject of philosophical and cultural studies, which gives broad perspectives in this field within an epistemological dimension.