From perspective to narrative, database and beyond, symbolic forms organize experience and shape epistemic horizons. If Lev Manovich’s key insight was to recognize the entanglement of symbolic and technical form, we may now ask how (post)digital culture and seemingly limitless data flows generate a new desire for form in critical theory and cultural production. Situated at the intersection of literary theory, media theory, and the poetics of knowledge, this reading group will explore a wide range of symbolic and literary forms and their epistemic and ideological affordances. We will ask how various new formalisms understand terms such as structure, organization/disorganization, and order/disorder, and how these concepts travel across discourses and scales.

In our fourth session on 8 May (15:00-17:00, PCH 6.31) we will discuss Ernst Cassirer’s concept of symbolic form, based on Cassirer’s  essay “The Concept of Symbolic Form in the Construction of the Human Sciences” (1923) and Stefan Niklas’ article “Concrete Negation: The Dialectic of Culture’s Self Destruction in Cassirer and Adorno” (2023). Stefan is an Assistant Professor in Philosophy at the UvA and specializes in aesthetics and the philosophy of culture, as well as social and political philosophy.  He will be joining us in person to talk about his work on Cassirer and the concept of symbolic forms more broadly. 

Please direct any questions to Michael Miller (m.f.miller@uva.nl).