Recently, scholars as varied as Georges Didi-Huberman, W.J.T. Mitchell, Andreas Huyssen, and Jacques Rancière have turned their attention once again to the study of literary or artistic techniques developed in the beginning of the twentieth century, such as the picture atlas, the 'modernist miniature', the alternative archive or the working journal. In their new interpretations, they credit these techniques with the capacity to regain a new and better understanding of times in which rapidly changing historical circumstances or a persistent feeling of crisis has derailed the ability of people to make sense of the world. It is no coincidence that there is currently, in the context of the series of related crises we have seen the past years, a belated interest in these techniques and their capacity to restore ‘perceptibility’, as Walter Benjamin called it, or the ability to ‘read’, reorder and map the flow of information, images and opinions in times of confusion. In this project, a critical typology of these 'perceptibility techniques' is made and a comprehensive theory is developed for the study of these techniques and their capacities.

In collaboration with Anneleen Masschelein (University of Leuven).