McGann and the inevitable evolution of the humanities
¶ 1 Leave a comment on paragraph 1 2 McGann views the movement into the digital humanities as an inevitability—a part of our social evolution predicted by the human drive to learn and master new things. He argues that “Men (and women) are indeed called to the mastery of things” (62), meaning that part of what makes us human is our desire for learning and mastering new tools. This drive leads us to efficiency and complex technologies. Some academics working in the humanities reject digital scholarship (McGann uses the MLA’s refusal to cite online works as an example p.56) likely because evolution means leaving comfortable stasis behind and transitioning into an unknown state. Yet, humanists, like McGann, who are interested in how humans interact with and come to master their tools, understand that there is no resisting this evolution.
¶ 2 Leave a comment on paragraph 2 1 McGann reveals an interesting ambivalence in his argument, but that ambivalence ultimately strengthens his argument for embracing the digital humanities. His self-proclaimed position as a traditional “book scholar” puts him in a position to resist–he is part of and still embraces the “old way.” But he argues that “We can no more ‘refuse’ the digital environment than we can ‘refuse’ the empire the US, for better and for worse, has become” (50). His stating “for better and for worse” in this quotation reveals that he may have misgivings about how digital scholarship has shaped the humanities. However, he also understands our human drive toward mastery means that we will continue seeking new ways of doing things. Those who refuse will not be swept along but left behind.
¶ 3 Leave a comment on paragraph 3 1 Those who develop “digital literacy” as McGann discusses (53) will be in a better position to utilize the tools that others have created and mastered; scholars who continue to pursue emerging technologies and develop new literacies (digital or otherwise) will have an advantage in their field. The “marvels” that young people take for granted (52) like online data bases and search engines are a far cry from the dusty stacks older professors had to dig through during their graduate work. These taken for granted digital advantages put young people in a position to master whatever field of humanities they wish to pursue. I think McGann would argue that young scholars, in turn, will have to keep driving forward, mastering the next emerging technology or evolution in the humanities. Perhaps more importantly, they will want to master these new tools because curiosity and the desire to master new tools is part of what makes us human.
You point out in this paragraph that it is human to both want to learn new things and also be unwilling to leave the comfort zone. We want change and resist it at the same time. This conundrum brings to mind the question of human nature; is human nature actually not universal and instead simply common patterns of behavior? Are there two kinds of people in the world, those who advance change and those who resist it or is each individual capable of both behaviors? If we as individual can do both, what factors specifically influence our reaction to a specific change? Previous knowledge and upbringing are obvious factors but those general factors are not enough to predict or explain behavior.
Yes. Hal picked up on this issue of “evolution” in her blog post, too. Yet I think it’s important that we not rush into viewing these evolutionary changes as inevitable or natural: we’re not talking about developing opposable thumbs for the sake of the species, we’re talking about making the transition to doing what we’ve always done via slightly updated methods (computational analysis, text processing, etc.). And I’m not sure that McGann gives us a satisfactory answer in this essay as to why those methods might be preferable when the humanities are, as he says, still in crisis either way.