The digital humanities is an intersectional and constantly changing field that looks at the intersection between digital tools and its landscape and the humanities. because of this intersection, the field seems to be inherently political. It is also a field of constant communication and collaboration, differentiating it from many other academic disciplines. The peer review system in contrast to social media platforms such as substack or even the in-between of blogging is an interesting one as it brings out questions about legitimacy and authority within the field. It seems to attempt to be academically inclusive to differing technical levels with digital tools. It is a Humanistic study of digital practices, digitising materials and objects, objects that might not exist outside of a computer and also the methods used perform analysis. It is also to disseminate ideas and present them in conversation with computational methods applied to humanistic study. It might include data bases for intellectual problems. Data structuring is political- Johanna Drucker. It helps us question what is at stake- when we use the rigid boxes of computers to analyse the world, often built by engineers who might not always think of the epistemological structures of these tools. The subject of the digital humanities introduces itself imperatively and through audacity (in a good sense or possibly bad as well- a different word could be used to described what I mean) , but the subject holds an intriguing ethical imperative.
Your response is really interesting! I am grateful you included your identification that DH is a field of constant communication and collaboration, as previous to taking this course I wasn’t aware of how important this might be. I thought your choice to describe computers as ‘rigid boxes’ was also a useful way to reflect on what we covered in our first class. I was surprised by how some of the projects that we looked at, The Real Face of White Australia, The William Blake Archive, Shakespeare and Company, made use of physical artefacts to organise how a user might interact with each program. The illustrations, photographs and documents that each are concerned with, in some ways oppose the ‘rigid’ boxes on which they are now stored. Each is personal, touched with human creativity and originality (not to suggest that items made on computers cannot achieve this too). I think your description made me reflect on whether we can separate these kinds of items, seemingly existing in a literary or historical past, from the present machine on which they are stored and accessed.
What a wonderful reflection! I am particularly drawn to the political focus of your post; the overall tone seems balanced between a healthy skepticism and optimism for its potential, but I would be curious to hear your thoughts on the value or threat of its inherently political nature. I personally feel that such a deeply ingrained aspect of the field being observed from the outset could lead to some valuable developments in how politicisation should be treated, especially within our current environment. That being said, of course, the destructive power of data analysis when already placed in a politically driven field of study must not be underestimated.
Additionally, I appreciated your mention of the ethical difficulties present within a ‘peer-review’ system, and how this should be balanced with concerns of accessibility and democratising academia. To say that the field presents ‘an intriguing ethical imperative’ is a wonderful turn of phrase perfectly suited to describe both the challenges and benefits that this study can afford us.
I appreciate your discussion of digital humanities as both “inherently political” and as a field of “constant communication and collaboration”. It made me consider this as a point of connection, specifically the way that digital research can carry ethical weight whilst simultaneously relying on networks of dialogue and shared knowledge. I wanted to visualise this and so returned to the digital project ‘Mapping the Republic of Letters’ which used digital methods – such as computational network analysis – to visualise the communication between scholars. Here, the decisions about which letters to include, the categorisation of such letters and the visualisation of their connections are not neutral because they shape how we interpret historical networks by highlighting certain voices over others (this in turn reflects underlying assumptions about whose knowledge is valuable or not). Yet at the same time, the project heavily relies on collaboration between scholars of multiple fields, like historians, archivists and programmers (it’s publicly accessible outputs also allow for public discourse and critique).
This recontextualises the project for me as now – as you have outlined – simultaneously political and collaborative, as it shows how technical choices like data structuring and visualization carry social and interpretive consequences. It makes me consider the tension between ethical responsibility and innovative methodology in digital projects. The idea of the exchange of knowledge between scholars through letters in the project actually initially made me think of Patrik Svensson’s critique of the “big tent” metaphor, but I think his critique is actually still relevant to this current discussion. His concept of a “trading zone” emphasizes how the DH field can function as a structured space of exchange between scholars with different backgrounds and expertise, where collaboration is possible without erasing disciplinary perspectives or hierarchies of knowledge (which are, as you put it, “inherently political”).
I also particularly liked your reference to Johanna Drucker; her ideas connect closely to something I’ve been reflecting on in my own writing surrounding the dual nature of DH where one side uses digital tools to study humanistic questions, and the other side applies humanistic critique to the tools themselves. Your post reminded me that the second side, which critiques computational frameworks, can itself be a form of public engagement, not just a technical concern. For example, questioning the “rigid boxes of computers to analyse the world” (which I think is really well put), doesn’t just affect data analysis, but also challenges assumptions about whose knowledge is considered valid and how knowledge should be represented.