Diagrams

"3 Conjugations," Paul Klee's Pedagogical Sketchbook

The “diagram” conjures the notion of a system overview, an abstract stand-in for a fixed set of relations. In brief, a brief. A plan, an essence. Upon closer scrutiny, however, a diagram opens onto any number of problems and potentials. The diagram says too little and too much. It gets out ahead of things, and it is this aspect that asks for study.

"The diagram is an infinity machine, forever mediating between oceanic abstractions and legible figures."

––Matthew Ritchie

As Ritchie—via Frederik Stjernfelt— notes, to explore this diagrammatic space requires a body of some sort. “Of some sort,” because such a body is at the same time produced by the diagram itself. What kinds of bodies, then? What kinds of diagrams? And what is to be done? These are some of the questions that emerge from any scrutiny of the diagrammatic space we find ourselves in.

The Diagram study group reads across the disciplinary grain, following the diagrammatic lines where they take us. We also take up diagramming itself as a practice of reading, thought, and production.

Sample texts

Châtelet, Gilles. Figuring Space: Philosophy, Mathematics and Physics. Springer Netherlands, 2010.

Eisenman, Peter. “Diagram: An Original Scene of Writing.”

Ritchie, Matthew. The Temptation of the Diagram. CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2018.

Stjernfelt, Frederik. Diagrammatology: An Investigation On The Borderlines Of Phenomenology, Ontology, And Semiotics. Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands, 2007.

La Mantia, Francesco, Charles Alunni, Fernando Zalamea, eds. Diagrams and Gestures: Mathematics, Philosophy, and Linguistics. Springer, 2023.

Who: Open

When: Tuesdays, 5:30-6:30pm Eastern

Where: Hybrid, Zoom & In-Person

The diagram never goes out of fashion: it is a project that aims to apply exclusively to what it sketches; this demand for autonomy makes it the natural accomplice of thought experiments.

Gilles Châtelet

Figuring Space