Neoliberalism in Literary Study
¶ 1 Leave a comment on paragraph 1 2 Alan Liu, a supporter of the digital humanities wrote, “not even the cliched forms of such issues – for example, ‘the digital divide,’ ‘surveillance,’ ‘privacy,’ ‘copyright,’ and so on – get much play.” Those are all tools of the digital humanities and they aren’t being talked about. They are barely even mentioned. The digital humanities creates tools, but more often then not, those tools never get used. They are set aside in a box somewhere and get covered with dust. And the tools that do get used aren’t frequently mentioned in a professional setting. Conferences and journals don’t mention the tools they use, only about what the digital humanities are.
¶ 2 Leave a comment on paragraph 2 2 We get essay after essay explaining to us just what the digital humanities is and how it is a part of the humanities discipline. Of how it is the next big thing. In the essay it is “corrective to the ‘traditional’ and outmoded approaches to literary study.” In a lot of ways, yes, the digital humanities is trying to take a new stance on how the humanities is run and presented to the world. It has to be beneficial to the industry. That in itself is a bit of a conundrum. If the digital humanities and university administrators want it to be useful to the industry, why then, are the tools that they created not mentioned more in public? Why are we focusing more on what the digital humanities is defined as and not what they have created for people to use in the industry?
¶ 3 Leave a comment on paragraph 3 1 Nobody can seem to agree on how to define the digital humanities, so why do they keep talking about it. Can’t they agree to disagree? The humanities is about analyzing and studying literature. There will never be a solid answer to people’s questions. So why do people only talk about the same thing just using different words time and time again? Why aren’t the tools that have been created to help expand the discipline mentioned in those arguments? Where is the expansion that will further open our minds to the possibilities that are out there for us?
The tools being “covered with dust” as you say has been an ongoing issue we have noticed in our discussion, and it seems weird to me. It is strange that these tools are falling by the wayside in a field so supposedly committed to technical ideas. Are people in DH too focused on defining it and heralding it as a new era that they are not actively using the scholarship that DH is producing?
Good connection to Liu here. How do Liu’s ideas help to illuminate the claims that Allington, Brouillete, and Golumbia are making in this essay?