Am I a Silicon Sith Lord?
¶ 1 Leave a comment on paragraph 1 2 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 need to be extremely cautious in accepting their defense of DH. I read Kirschenbaum’s response again, this time watching out for signs that he really is a “neoliberal tool” of the university system – but his response assures me that this is not the case.
¶ 2 Leave a comment on paragraph 2 2 Kirschenbaum structures his response as a story of his academic career and how he got involved in DH. Near the end of the article, he discusses his current involvement with his university’s coordinating and personnel committees. He states that his role in these committees would be a fine way for him to participate in the “neoliberal takeover” that the LARB article suggests, but then he proves that he is not taking advantage of his role to do this. “If I were a Silicon Sith Lord (or even just the tool of one) I would seek to use these occasions to revise our mission statement to something more to my cryptofascist taste; I would seek to ensure we hired only those whom I could coerce into adherence with my corporatist agenda … You’d have to ask them I guess, but there’s really no aura of hostile takeover as I and my colleagues go about our business” (13-14). If Kirschenbaum and his fellow DHers truly were contributing to the neoliberal takeover, I think they would try to cover it up, but Kirschenbaum’s transparency here (especially when he tells us to question his committee members if we do not believe him) suggests that he has nothing to hide.
¶ 3 Leave a comment on paragraph 3 0 I understand the LARB authors’ reasons for being concerned, and I do think some of their claims are legitimate. In English departments, we have to be careful of allowing tech projects to take the place of literary scholarship – which could happen if tech projects continue to get more funding than literary ones. However, the fear of losing our ‘traditional’ scholarship should not mean that there is no room for improvements and new developments in the field, such as DH. A department with DH scholars, traditional scholars, and everyone in-between seems to be the healthiest type of department to me, and Kirschenbaum agrees: “working for what everyone genuinely believes, more or less, to be the greater good: … making the department a place that people want to inhabit to pursue the things that matter to them” (14).
If scholars really exist that are brainwashed by the administration in such a way, then yes, we should be cautious of accepting their defense of the DH. People like that will only work to pollute the current understanding of DH. You bring light to Kirschenbaum’s transparency in his response which shows that he probably isn’t brainwashed. Perhaps scholars of the like are at least influenced in some form by the administration. Other scholars have tried to use the excuse that if they throw the word digital on their work then it becomes scholarship, abusing the relaxed definition of the DH. Surely this is not the way that everyone approaches the DH, but this is among the types of people that digital humanists must watch out for, much like those who have a malicious agenda for the field.
Careful, here: “brainwashed” is a rather strong word, and I don’t think it accurately characterizes the arguments that Golumbia et al. are making here.
After all, the authors take pains to point out that what they are describing here (re: DH’s role in the corporatization of the modern university) is likely not “intentional.” That is to say, the authors do not believe that folks like Kirschenbaum would be intentionally selling themselves over to administrative priorities. But, all the same, the authors argue, that might be unintentionally happening all the same, even under the guise of good intentions.