A rock and a hard place
¶ 1 Leave a comment on paragraph 1 1 Much of what we’ve read this semester has lead to the conclusion that DH, when considered in the context of neoliberal practices in universities and the commoditization of scholarly work is one step closer to the devil than traditional humanities programs. This could be because it’s come up much more recently as a discipline, and traditional Humanities work is rooted in a tradition that carries with it expectations about scholarly work and it’s freedom from commercial interests. It could be because we’ve had such a difficult time determining what exactly DH is. Without a definition everyone agrees upon, it’s difficult to present a united front and stand by your convictions when encouraged to modify a proposal. There are a whole host of reasons why DH could be more easily co-opted by a neoliberal agenda than other disciplines, but I believe the biggest is that it’s the easiest to monetize from the viewpoint of someone outside the scholarly world looking in.
¶ 2 Leave a comment on paragraph 2 2 To answer the question of what could be done to guard against that influence, my proposal would be that DH needs to move more closely towards the traditional Humanities. We’ve discussed in class numerous times where the two should orient themselves, and how interesting it would be for DH to have it’s own departments, instead of small offshoots and modules that come and go with funding. But therein lies the great temptation that works against DH when it’s isolated from the greater H, the easier monetization. As Richard Grusin said about the changing climate in the Humanities world, “A comparatively prosperous IT funding climate created a set of issues and concerns for DH scholars very different from the economic crisis so palpable elsewhere”. I see this as the greatest seduction by the neoliberal agenda, and it’s not a surprise. By fitting models of scholarly work closer that are more easily commercialized, funding is made more readily available, but not to the benefit of real scholarly work. I think the solution is to move back in with the Humanities programs that DH was spawned from. Become enveloped by that shared tradition, and that strength of Institution that exists as a sort of defense mechanism. It also guards against that feeling from outside groups that it’s a “new thing”, and such is more malleable to change in what we would see as a negative way.
Why do you believe that this discipline is the easiest to monetize? Do you think possibly it is because there is no concrete definition of what the digital humanities consists of?