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The readings this week were a lot of fun. Murray’s Charting the Literary Sphere introduced ideas of the twittersphere, hypertext and distant reading. I was especially interested in the author’s concern over interdisciplinary competitiveness in the digital literary sphere – under that umbrella term was the clash of print culture studies versus digital media studies versus digital literature studies… but why is everyone fighting?
I keep coming back to Bourdieu’s formulation of fields which, for me, reads as quite an aggressive culture battleground where social actors are competing for different positions. The whole concept of cultural prestige and intellectual property links back to my original thoughts on public scholarship, which you can find in my first post.
Watch out though, hyperlinks are cognitively loaded. Hayles talks about the information consumption that interacts with how we read, and argues that there should be a disciplinary shift to a broader sense of reading strategies and interpretations. Hypertext reading does not support an enriched reading, as scholars thought it might.
These readings were all really interesting in the way they consider and focus on the commercial and marketing aspect of the subjects of critical reading. Murray highlights the audience and author relationship that needs be fostered into the creation of novels and works in today’s overly consumerist western world. This makes me wonder the extent to which authors tied to publishing full length novels and books that end up physically printed and sold in bookstores, are Would this shift mean that traditional publishing houses and means will become more redundant? What can publishing houses do to move away from this road to pure commercial redundancy? (I liked the mention in class of the minimalist book cover with the text from the book written on the cover discussed in class as this specific marketing decision ties into the shift that commercial publishing practices are doing to cater to these changes) This discussion also made me consider how more ‘authentic’ pieces of writing have shifted to digital platforms such as substack, Goodreads reviews (including ‘para-text’), platforms that are ‘open-access’ and that allow for writings that look to generate peer-read opinions and discussions rather than commercially motivated writings. (what I mean by the term ‘authentic’ is that the writing might not have a commercial motivation behind it)
neuroscience cognitive aspect of reading, the connections we make. In particular, Hayes reading made me think of the scholarly concept of ‘chrononormativity’ how society is arranged in a way to direct us towards maximum productivity. I think this idea links quite well with the concept of ‘hyperreading’ as hyperlinks and endless streams of information brought by digital media in our reading practices of these include a sense of urgency in the process. And I agree with the article in the way it argues that we no longer read ‘deeply’ in the digital media landscape, but rather inside the endless array of information (whether it is info that contradicts or links with one another).
Having limited knowledge on the Digital Humanities as a discipline, this week’s reading traced the key debates on the expanding field of the digital humanities, and the major forces it faces within this development. Gold and Klein’s writing in ‘moment to moment’ traced how the field must recalibrate to the ‘uncertainty brought by ruptures’ which exceed ‘any prior reference points’. In a rapidly changing field, which outpaces the rate of traditional academic literary development, which is largely collaborative in nature, the issues surrounding the digital humanities (the lack of specificity within the discipline ‘the big tent’, the lack of involvement from marginalised groups etc) have become more pronounced. The ‘public’ nature of these projects, and collaborative peer-to-peer publishing is particularly unique academically, but allows for this rapid, accountable development.
Moving DH from the academic field to the wider world, by ‘enabling communication across communities and networks’, by creating platforms that amplify the voices of those most in need of being heard’, realised in ‘mapping events in the wake of Hurricanes Irma and Maria’, and aiding aid efforts in Puerto Rico, the humanitarian potential of the digital humanities can be realised. Special issues in the ‘American Quaterly, the Black Scholar’ etc, mark this expansion and innovation within the field. The ‘Moment to Moment’ introduction trace the ‘fusing go the personal and the historical’, detailing a ‘past characterised by unequal access and the pains of slavery’ which continue to affect academic institutions. Digital Humanities, seems to be a technological attempt to bring attention to these fissures, beyond the capabilities of traditional academia (without the restrictions of a singular field of study, encapsulating a broad variety of disciplines).
The changing attitudes towards DH from the first edition (2012) to the 2019 edition was equally interesting. In the 2019 introduction, the original over-arching optimism, while still there, was less prominent, and instead focused discussions on the major issues facing DH. Gold and Klein describe the field as remaining ‘very much Anglocentric’, expressing a desire to ‘ensure that the field can match the vitality and breadth of those who place themselves in it’. Looking at the digital in projects in class showed a snippet of this breadth, across disciplines, regions etc. Comparing the digitised Blake archive to the Geographical name-mapping website showed the ‘wide range of methods and practices’, as well as purposes, the field can capture. ‘Visualisations of large image sets, 3D modelling of historical artefacts’ encourage a re-interpretation of existing data sets, and the creation of new ones.
