Overview

This book explores the epistemic status and potential of humanities laboratories. It investigates the history of such laboratories, while contributing to debates on designing contemporary forms of labs. The book traces the trend for laboratories in the humanities since the mid-nineteenth century, outlining a multitude of projects across diverse times and spaces. We are interested in what makes humanities laboratories different from their scientific relatives. Can a humanities lab and those investigating natural sciences even be considered as related? Or should the relationship between them be seen transversally, outside of the opposition between the humanities and the natural and formal sciences? We argue that the humanities laboratory should not be based on the idea of mimesis and imitate a scientific lab, but rather operate according to the principle of mimicry. Only in this way can the humanities fulfil their self-critical function.

Full Product Details

Author:   Jacek Małczyński ,  Aleksandra Kil-Matlak ,  Wolska Dorota ,  Wolska Dorota
Publisher:   Peter Lang AG
Imprint:   Peter Lang AG
Edition:   New edition
Volume:   10
Weight:   0.566kg
ISBN:  

9783631921074

ISBN 10:   3631921071
Pages:   386
Publication Date:   15 September 2025
Audience:   Professional and scholarly ,  Professional & Vocational
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   In Print  
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Table of Contents

Contents Introduction Aleksandra Kil-Matlak, Jacek Ma³czyñski, Dorota Wolska What Goes on in Humanities Laboratories? Part 1: Humanities Laboratories Chapter 1 Aleksandra Kil-Matlak, Jacek Ma³czyñski, Dorota Wolska The Tricky Case of Claude Lévi-Strauss’s Laboratoire d’anthropologie sociale Chapter 2 Jacek Ma³czyñski The Laboratory as a “Soap Bubble”: Juri Lotman, the Tartu-Moscow school and the Laboratory of History and Semiotics Chapter 3 Miros³aw Kocur Jerzy Grotowski’s Laboratory Theatre: A Laboratory in Search of the Truth Chapter 4 Aleksandra Kil-Matlak An Archaeology of the Humanities Infrastructure: Paul Otlet and Laboratorium Mundaneum Chapter 5 Karolina Charewicz-Jakubowska The Private Banker of Academia: The case of Aby Warburg’s Laboratory of Cultural-Scientific Picture-History Part 2: Laboratorisation of the Humanities Chapter 6 Krzysztof £ukasiewicz The Laboratory Effect: Laboratories in Leipzig at the Turn of the Twentieth Century Chapter 7 Adam Pisarek The Laboratorisation of the Field: The Formation of the Anthropological Mode of Knowledge Chapter 8 Rafa³ Nahirny Jeremy Bentham and the Formation of the Laboratory of Power-Knowledge Part 3: The Post-humanist laboratory Chapter 9 Magdalena Zamorska The Humanities Laboratory and Neoliberal Academia: The case of SenseLab Chapter 10 Joanna Sieracka Swarm in the Post-humanities Laboratory: On Collective Research Practices from a Post-humanist Perspective

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Author Information

Aleksandra Kil-Matlak holds a PhD in Cultural Studies from the University of Wrocław, where she co-founded the Laboratory of Contemporary Humanities. She has contributed to Digital Humanities Quarterly and co-authored Issue Mapping for an Ageing Europe (2018). Her recent book, published in Polish, explores index cards and the analogue humanities. Jacek Małczyński is an Assistant Professor at the Institute of Cultural Studies, University of Wrocław. He co-edited “The Environmental History of the Holocaust”, a special issue of the Journal of Genocide Research (2020), and Knowledge in the Shadow of Catastrophe (2024). Dorota Wolska was a Professor at the Institute of Cultural Studies at the University of Wrocław. Her areas of interest included cultural theory, the philosophy of the humanities, and aesthetics. As editor-in-chief of the Polish journal Prace Kulturoznawcze, she edited volumes on non-human culture, axiotic spaces of culture, and postsecularity.

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