Diagrammatica offers a collection of graphic images that present theoretical arguments via their visual and spatial structure. Each diagram is presented along with its concept (name tag), the name of its designer, the year and title of its original publication, and a brief selection of written text in order to aid its navigation. Where available, diagrammatic relations of parent and child are also presented. Parent diagrams are typically more abstract, whereas their children are more specific expressions built upon the diagrammatic structure of their parents. The collection does not include flowcharts, visualizations of data sets, classificatory and taxonomic structures, or illustrative images.

A brief introduction to diagrams and suggestions for reading them is presented below, followed by a list of pertinent quotations, and a bibliography of relevant sources. The bibliography focuses upon texts that explore and explain the theoretical foundation of Diagrammatica, rather than manuals and texts addresssing diagrammatic design or works which contain diagrams themselves. The contents of Diagrammatica can be explored from either a visual diagram index, arranged chronologically, or an alphabetic index of diagram designers. All pages are standardized to a width of 800 pixels. Please email mercury at factoryschool.org with suggestions of diagrams to include or comments on the project.

Reading Diagrams

Diagrams offer theoretical models built upon spatial typology rather than the formal rules of mathematics or linguistic grammar. Mathematically, they isolate variables, but they fail to precisely define or explain either these variables or the relations among them. Diagrams also contain language, but they break the grammar of language. They replace relations of words and concepts with lines, arrows, shapes, and spatial arrangements. Critical choices determine what language to include and what language to replace, and the critical positioning of terms, the spatial topology of the diagram, suggests a sense of coherence and meaning in its composition. Thus, diagrams form part of a larger grammatology, exploring what is possible to express in writing once writing has been divorced from spoken language.

A diagram guides a narrative, a story of what moving across the image entails. Lines and arrows display a functional relation between terms: this path can be followed in this way. And the overall structure offers a series of choices and constraints. Like geographic maps, however, diagrams provide a possible outline or itinerary, but they do not determine the specifics of how a journey will unfold. Reading a diagram, the viewer asks: What does this line mean in terms of the larger structure? What part of the argument does this shape represent? Why is this term included and why is it positioned here? By answering these questions, readers think through a diagram to build theoretical expressions.

The strength of the diagram rests with the numerous ways its connections and composition can be explained. Diagrammatic thought may take problems or concepts without specific spatial relations and represent them as a spatial argument. Interacting with the diagrammatic representation will provoke new insight and suggest alternative solutions as the reader elaborates the meaning of its structure and relations. This method of discovery entails thinking through the diagram as an abstract machine for elaborating thought and expression. Reading a diagram produces new discoveries, and formalizes a specific expression of the abstract machine. Thus, diagrams both provide a means of discovery and formalize expression. Indeed, the thinking through of a diagram is precisely what formalizes the discovery.

Selected Quotations on Reading Diagrams

“Diagrams are simple drawings or figures that we think with or through.”– Kenneth Knoespel

“The diagrammatic or abstract machine does not function to represent even something real, but rather constructs a real that is yet to come, a new type of reality.” – Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari

"A diagram has a function analogous to constructing a plot for a narrative argument. Once a diagram has completed its prephilosophical task of mapping a conceptual space, the diagrammatic nodes must be animated with figures who speak in coherent and consistent dialogue." – Kenneth Knoespel

"Although theory pictures [diagrams] are neither naturalistic nor mathematical representations, they evoke an impression on mathematicity . . . . In an important way, these usages are metaphorical, not mathematical" – Michael Lynch

"The meaning potential of diagrammatic vectors is broad, abstract, and difficult to put into words"– Gunther Kress and Theo vanLeeuwen

"A diagram is really just a snapshot of an imaginative and complicated process that can involve deactivating previous connections, reframing previous spaces, and other actions."– Gilles Fauconnier and Mark Turner

Bibliography: Theoretical Foundations

Anthony, Gardner C. 1922. An Introduction to the Graphic Language: The Vocabulary, Grammatical Construction, Idiomatic Use, and Historical Development With Special Reference to the Reading of Drawings. Boston: D.C. Heath and Co. Publishers.

Bertin, Jacques. 1983. Semiology of Graphics: Diagrams, Networks, Maps. Translated by W. J. Berg. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.

Deleuze, Gilles. 1988. Foucault. Translated by S. Hand. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

---. 1993. The Fold: Leibniz and The Baroque. Translated by T. Conley. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Deleuze, Gilles and Felix Guattari. 1987. A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Translated by B. Massumi. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Derrida, Jacques. 1976. Of Grammatology. Translated by G. C. Spivak. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press.

Knoespel, Kenneth J. 2001. "Diagrams as Piloting Devices in the Philosophy of Gilles Deleuze." Theorie –Litterature – Enseignement: Deleuze-chantier 19(automne 2001):145-165.

Kress, Gunther and Theo van Leeuwen. 1996. Reading Images: The Grammar of Visual Images. New York: Routledge.

Larkin, Jill H. and Herbert A. Simon. 1987. "Why a Diagram is (Sometimes) Worth Ten Thousand Words." Cognitive Science 11(1):65-99.

Latour, Bruno. 1986. "Visualization and Cognition: Thinking With Eyes and Hands." Knowledge and Society: Studies in the Sociology of Culture Past and Present 6:1-40.

Lynch, Michael. 1991. "Pictures of Nothing? Visual Construals in Social Theory." Sociological Theory 9(1, Spring 1991):1-21.