Prepostfigurations of the Humanities Infrastructure: Paul Otlet's Laboratorium Mundaneum

Joining the debate on the archeology of the humanities infrastructure, Kil presents the case of Belgian documentalist and bibliographer Paul Otlet (1868-1944), the founder of the Mundaneum, as an example of the analogue humanities and a prepostfiguration of the humanities laboratory. Kil analyses the hitherto unexplored concept of the laboratory in Otlet's work and reinterprets his oeuvre using the concepts developed by critical infrastructure studies, arguing that the humanities have never lacked an infrastructure. The perspective of infrastructuralism, which highlights questions of sustainability and care in maintaining tools and resources, can become the reverse of innovation in the humanities laboratories. Infrastructural thinking in the humanities need not signify imitating other disciplines but leads to the identification of the situated and technologically mediated nature of knowing.