Prepostfiguracje humanistycznej infrastruktury: Laboratorium Mundaneum Paula Otleta
Prepostfigurations of the Humanities Infrastructure: Paul Otlet’s Laboratorium Mundaneum

Summary/Abstract: Joining the debate on the archeology of the humanities infrastructure, Kil presents thecase of Belgian documentalist and bibliographer Paul Otlet (1868-1944), the founder ofthe Mundaneum, as an example of the analogue humanities and a prepostfigurationof the humanities laboratory. Kil analyses the hitherto unexplored concept of thelaboratory in Otlet’s work and reinterprets his oeuvre using the concepts developedby critical infrastructure studies, arguing that the humanities have never lacked aninfrastructure. The perspective of infrastructuralism, which highlights questions ofsustainability and care in maintaining tools and resources, can become the reverse ofinnovation in the humanities laboratories. Infrastructural thinking in the humanitiesneed not signify imitating other disciplines but leads to the identification of the situatedand technologically mediated nature of knowing.

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