Judith Schlanger: Explorer of Lettered Space

Over the last 30 years, Judith Schlanger has devoted a dozen books to the exploration and description of the intellectual world as it consists of invention, of works–a dynamic space that moves and reconfigures itself. Intellectual invention, which is Judith Schlanger’s object, is a far-flung reflection: the mathematician, philosopher, historian, sociologist and literary theorist, however different their objects and methods, have in common the same professional obligation: they are required to invent ideas, or at the very least to displace old ideas, to present them and array them in an original fashion. Consequently, Judith Schlanger’s oeuvre does not fall into any one domain, field or discipline; she is “transdisciplinary.” Nevertheless, if one considers her work, from the 1971 Métaphores de l’organisme to the 1997 La Vocation, ¹ one has the impression that the same space is deployed from one book to another, although here one meets Henri Poincaré, there Popper or Bachelard, elsewhere T.S. Eliot. If one comes to Judith Schlanger via literary theory (as I did) and if one is unfamiliar with epistemology (as I was), one is surprised, in moving through her oeuvre from one book to the next, to always feel at home. This feeling is not the result of an exceptional talent for popularization, nor of a mixing of intellectual fields (Judith Schlanger does not confuse literature and philosophy), but is the result of a point of view, of a perspective taken that reveals the existence of a common space, which could be called “lettered space,” in keeping with the old usage of the term, which includes arts and sciences.