SOCIOPLASTICS - 4000 — Diagonal Reading - How to Enter a Field Without Mastering It - Core VIII · Pentagon II · Tome IV · LAPIEZA-LAB, Madrid 2026

This paper defines Diagonal Reading as the practice of traversing large, distributed and transdisciplinary fields without pretending to master them from a single entrance. It argues that contemporary knowledge must be crossed through routes linking concepts, archives, images, laws, datasets, cities, bodies, platforms and future possibilities. Diagonal Reading reframes the reader as navigator rather than consumer: someone who constructs orientation through movement, recurrence, scale awareness and return. The paper treats law as a hidden interface of space, speculation as a practice requiring governance, and machine reading as a form of diagonal traversal that humans must learn to use critically. A field becomes mature when every entrance can become a route.