Golumbia Response
¶ 1 Leave a comment on paragraph 1 0 Within many of the works we have read and discussed during class, the concept of what is “digital” within DH, has become a catachresis because typically the digital components aren’t as widely involved within many of the discussions. There are discussions about the technological platforms many scholars use to varying degrees within their work, examples would include twitter with Stommel and online forums such as The Guardian, and Gannon’s response to it. But above this, the only consistent mention of what it means to be ‘digital’, revolves around a change in formatting and structuring for literary and scholarly conversation and the corresponding trade of information and opinion that comes with that. Going off of this point, I do not find the use of ‘digital’ within DH to be inappropriate, but rather, temporarily and semi-awkwardly out of place. There are many instances where the topic of making work and methods of approaching and expanding scholarship within the humanities more technologically savvy, has lead to strife. But the majority of these scholars and the field itself have not gone into excruciating detail on what the humanities being digital truly means. Often I’ve found myself greeted with another misdirected question or rant steering me away from their answer.
¶ 2 Leave a comment on paragraph 2 0
¶ 3 Leave a comment on paragraph 3 1 Golumbia mentions in an earlier part of his work, that the DH is an “attack” on traditional literary scholars ability to determine what is scholarship and what defines scholarship as ‘excellent’ or ‘good’ and their justification to act one such notions. While I am not a ‘DHer’ or a literary scholar, I find it implausible to define DH as an attack when there is still no concrete and uniform definition that everyone can decide on. How can something that is still continuously evolving and taking shape be a threat without any true peacefully agreed upon definition be capable of an attack? And what part of the Digital Humanities is attacking traditional scholars and their views on scholarship? Is it the increasing advancement of technological and digital (web based) format of work and sharing and distributing that work? Or is it that the ‘traditional’ ways are being questioned? Golumbia offers that a possible answer to this question is the idea that DH is not content with the boundries Literary Scholorship origionally and still have. The standards, regulations and propositions made currently by Literary Scholars do not always leave a lot of availability for change. And the DH is a continiously changing component to the field of humanities and how our society approaches the evolution of technology in correlation to that as well.
I need to see you interacting more clearly with Golumbia’s text; you do not quote or cite specifically from Golumbia’s essay, which is what I asked you to do when I gave you more time to edit your blog response this week.
For instance, you say that you “Golumbia offers …” Where does he make / “offer” that point? And how? And using what words? And what do those words mean? I’m not entirely convinced that you have read his essay or arguments correctly, and interpreting his words is the only way that you may convince me. Which is why I need to see more direct engagement here.