Responding to Golumbia
¶ 1 Leave a comment on paragraph 1 1 When Golumbia states, “We should reflect on the fact that of the tools and methods DH trumpets so prominently, few are part of the digital toolkit of most literary scholars today” (172), I think he misses the point of what the Digital Humanities is setting out to do. The reason “most literary scholars today” do not use the DH tools and methods is because DH is about pioneering new technology for the field, so many scholars do not know how to use these new technologies yet; however, I do believe DH wants to share their new developments with the field of humanities as a whole and not keep it to their own elite group (even if DHers might not have done a great job at this yet).
¶ 2 Leave a comment on paragraph 2 1 Golumbia’s critique of the tools that DH scholars use is also absurd; he says that most of DH’s influence comes from “books, articles, blog posts, and position statements” (172), a type of influence he believes is no different from traditional scholarship. Of course Digital Humanists will use books, articles, etc. for their scholarship – they are humanists! Golumbia suggests that DH should identify with a different academic field because they are not relevant enough to the humanities, but then he critiques DHers for the activities they do that align them with the humanities and allow them to contribute to the field. He also implies that DHers do not effectively make use of standard tools such as JSTOR, Google, and Microsoft Word because they are too busy with their blog posts and articles. Again, he is missing the point that DHers want to explore new tools for the field and not just sit on preexisting technologies.
¶ 3 Leave a comment on paragraph 3 1 With all of this in mind, I would define the difference between ‘traditional’ scholarship and the scholarship of the Digital Humanities as follows: Digital Humanities scholarship is about exploring, discussing, theorizing, creating, building, and testing new technologies and methods that will enhance the field of the humanities, whereas traditional scholarship is content with using existing technologies to carry out humanities research. Surely both types of scholarship are more complex than this definition, but this is one place for us to start in the ongoing battle about the Digital Humanities.
I think you’re skipping over the basis of Golumbia’s critique, though, in choosing to focus on his complaints about scholarly “toolkits.” Golumbia’s point in this essay is that DH has replaced politically-engaged critique with political-neutral (and thus, perhaps, complicit) forms of critique that do not actively champion the traditional values of the humanities. “Toolkits” and methodologies certainly come into play in that argument, but I want you to focus a bit more on interpreting the larger issues that Golumbia believes are at stake here.