Descartes Centre Colloquium with Iris van der Tuin and Simon Dirks

Integration in and of Susanne K. Langer’s Card-Index System: Theory and Practice

Although logician, philosopher of art and interdisciplinarian Susanne K. Langer (1895-1985) published Harvard University Press’s most-sold monograph to date, she spent most of her career in temporary jobs in philosophy departments all over the USA and her work was never really canonized. Just as much of a conundrum is the fact that Langer’s card-index system, a system of 32.000 two-sided cards kept from 1916 until the 1980s, has never been researched.

This talk presents Langer’s card-index system as an integrative device for Langer's own scholarship and for integration in current-day Langer scholarship and beyond. In order to understand the system as an integrative device, immanently, we present those cards that reflect on either integration/synthesis or on the system itself in the context of reflection on computerization that can also be found on cards. In order to work towards a scholarly future in which the card-index system and its contents—both individual cards and the lines of connection that run through the cards (Van der Tuin 2024)—can be used in research on Langer, adjacent topics, and philosophical and thematic debates per se, we end by presenting a digitized version of the card-index system, complemented with lessons learned for digital humanities projects.

Iris van der Tuin is professor of Theory of Cultural Inquiry in the department of Philosophy and Religious Studies at Utrecht University.

Simon Dirks has a background in Artificial Intelligence and teaches at the Freudenthal Institute of Utrecht University.