Archive for November, 2016
Neoliberal Tools
In “Neoliberal Tools (and Archives): A Political History of Digital humanities” Daniel Allington, Sarah Brouillette, and David Golumbia begin their essay by summerizing a complete description of how DH is promoted as “a corrective to the “traditional” and outmoded approaches to literary study that supposedly plague English departments” and the role it plays in facilitating “the neoliberal takeover of the […]
Neoliberal Tools Response
“Advocates position Digital Humanities as a corrective to the “traditional” and outmoded approaches to literary study that supposedly plague English departments,” (page 1). This opening quote not only headlines a well-argued point on DH’s role in the world of English study, but it also facilitates a jumping off point into one of the main conflicts […]
Who’s the real tool?
Golumbia’s essay almost feels like a conspiracy theory. This becomes apparent when he starts talking about Hirsch’s writing and the influence it has had, “conservative commentators nonetheless have converged on the view that readers shouldn’t interpret and evaluate texts for themselves, especially with regard to politics” (Golumbia 6). Golumbia uses Hirsch’s constraining of the focus […]
Am I a Silicon Sith Lord?
After reading both the LARB essay and the Kirschenbaum response, I am more inclined to believe that the authors of the LARB essay are being too paranoid in their claims – but I wonder if scholars like Kirschenbaum and Spiro are truly brainwashed by the administration, as the LARB article suggests? If they are, we […]
Golumbia isn’t letting us go that easy.
I read my article printed out from the LARB website directly, not from your PDF, so I apologize if our pagination is off. Toward the end of the essay the authors note an aspect of the kind of backlash they expect to receive. “We know we will be read as outsiders” [18]. They say this […]
11/14 Response
Allington, Brouillette, and Golumbia do appear to be reflecting and describing DH accurately, although perhaps not entirely, offering only one perspective of the narrative belonging to DH. Focusing specifically on the push-back and hesitation regarding DH in an academic setting, Golumbia et al outlines this issue quite clearly, saying, “But the unparalleled level of material support […]
Compromise – 11/14 Response
Given everything we’ve read this semester, it’s difficult to evaluate the truthfulness of the Golumbia et al post. It would appear that this field is dramatically split into two sides and without more (outside) perspectives, it’s difficult to make an accurate judgement. For example, I would like to hear from college administration staff about the […]
Neoliberal
I think that the narrative on Digital Humanities and their stance on the topic, specifically in neoliberalism, is quite interesting. Golumbia et al, Neoliberal Tools, raises an interesting issue that I never thought about. They state, on page 2 “What Digital Humanities is not about, despite its explicit claims, is the use of digital or […]
Paranoid Tools–Response to 11/14 Prompt
The argument made by Allington, Brouillette, and Golumbia does not seem, in my opinion, to be a total misreading of the history of DH, but nor is it entirely accurate. It seems, rather, to be looking at the rise of DH from a different perspective than what we’ve seen from other authors actually working in the […]
Neoliberalism in Literary Study
Alan Liu, a supporter of the digital humanities wrote, “not even the cliched forms of such issues – for example, ‘the digital divide,’ ‘surveillance,’ ‘privacy,’ ‘copyright,’ and so on – get much play.” Those are all tools of the digital humanities and they aren’t being talked about. They are barely even mentioned. The digital humanities […]
