Neoliberal Tools- 11/14 Response
¶ 1 Leave a comment on paragraph 1 1 The authors of “Neoliberal Tools” made compelling arguments about the digital humanities field, and I can certainly understand and sympathize with their argument. Their point about the tendencies of DH as “signs that the Digital Humanities as social and institutional movement is a reactionary force in literary studies, pushing the discipline toward post-interpretative, non-suspicious, technocratic, conservative, managerial, lab-based practice” brings to light some valid criticisms of DH as a whole.
¶ 2 Leave a comment on paragraph 2 1 Academic fields in general are always looking for the hot new thing that will bring the money to them, and DH is the new thing that humanities are using as a way to receive increased funding. Funding means you get to continue your work, and humanities is especially looking for ways to gravitate people and money towards them because of the perception that humanities aren’t as useful as STEM. So part of the reason these authors are reacting to DH in this manner is because they don’t want humanities to be forced to transition to a form of work they don’t believe is in the real spirit of humanities. As a field, DH could be seen as purely reactionary, started by those people who were did not want to do literary studies, were interested in other things, and were tired of being told their work wasn’t scholarship. Being “post-interpretative”, moving past the interpretation part of humanities, and also “project-based learning and lab-based research over reading and writing” do sound like practices DH employs.
¶ 3 Leave a comment on paragraph 3 1 Nonetheless, I don’t feel DH as a discipline is entirely guilty of the claims these authors are making. DH has not moved entirely away from literary studies. They are just finding different ways to do it, such as using computers. In my mind, a good way for DH to continue doing literary studies is to use the computers to give them data and then they do the writing and interpreting of that data. Perhaps the interpretation has been removed a step, but it is still there to some degree. I don’t believe the majority of workers in DH are just presenting the data they have been given. The authors focused mainly on the builders or makers and how they are different from traditional humanists but as we discussed earlier, there are different types of digital humanists. The digital humanists are not entirely focused on what these authors are claiming, but the elements are there.
This is a rather big “point” that you highlight from the text: I’d like to see you take some time to work through and interpret its various claims / details.