You have probably seen, here or there, a camp creature torn between the silence of the individual who cannot express him/herself and the chitchat of the prolific marionette: it is the ventriloquist’s dummy. Beyond this obvious and classic metaphor, Alexandra Midal claims in this lecture, presented by maat in the context of The Daily Post-Truth project by the Faculty of Fine Arts, University of Lisbon, that fictional speech conveyed by inanimate design, objects, furniture, dummy or MacGuffin, is essential. More precisely, Midal declares that fiction gives voice to the critics of design, especially because it is a necessary and opaque lure.