Golumbia\u2019s argument swayed me the most when he moved to his discussion of linguistics. He points out that many linguistic scholars use computers to aid their work, but they don\u2019t define themselves as \u201cdigital linguists\u201d as if they were doing something dinstinct. Golumbia notes that \u201cattending linguistics conferences, one does not notice dramatic changes in tone and affect (see Grusin) between \u201cdigital\u201d and \u201cnon-digital\u201d talks\u201d (163). This is a methodology argument. \u201cTraditional\u201d humanists may or may not use digital tools to do their work (though now most do), but the work produced largely looks the same. This means that defining \u201cdigital humanities\u201d by the tools used to do traditional literary scholarship makes as much sense as drawing a distinction between digital and non-digital linguistics when the product is the same.<\/p>\n
Perhaps this is why Ramsay argues that you\u2019re not doing DH unless you\u2019re building something, and Golumbia notes this as well. And in light of Golumbia\u2019s argument, I\u2019m even more swayed by Ramsay\u2019s. However, Golumbia doesn\u2019t seem to see the potential for DH to create new tools or build scholarship that\u2019s worth-while. (Nor does he seem to think that the tools necessary for building said scholarship are worth-while per his argument against code counting as a \u201clanguage\u201d for DH scholars). Instead, he points out that \u201cmany widely used digital tools in our scholarly toolkit (JSTOR, EEBO, Google, Microsoft Word, the OED) do not emerge from DH\u201d (172).<\/p>\n
Coming around to the catachresis of the word \u201cdigital\u201d in DH, I would argue that yes there\u2019s a conflation of identity that\u2019s problematic for both DH and \u201ctraditional literary scholars\u201d that needs to be corrected. Literary scholars who use the aforementioned digital tools to do literary scholarship are no more digital humanists than computational linguists are digital linguists. However, I don\u2019t get the sense that Golumbia would support DH activity even if it did get off his \u201cturf\u201d and define itself more clearly. He argues that it hasn\u2019t earned its stripes in the way that theory did and that because it hasn\u2019t been as quickly and as completely embraced as theory was, that it doesn\u2019t have use. He argues, “…works by Derrida, de Man, Spivak, and many others began to show up in the bibliographies of scholars working in every period and genre. The same simply cannot be said of DH…” (162). It seems as though he’s comparing apples and oranges here, but maybe that’s part of the problem. When we conflate the activities and values of two very different branches of scholarship, this kind of confusion ensues. In other words, digital humanities needs to be understood and judged on its own merits and that may mean that it needs to define itself more clearly in contrast with “traditional LITERARY scholarship” which is what Golumbia keeps coming back to.<\/p>\n
So, yes, digital scholarship needs to be more tightly defined but it also needs to people like Golumbia to get off its back. How can DH reach its full potential when it has to spend so much time justifying and explaining its existence? How can DH-ers create worth-while projects when they have to acquire the skills to do so on their own time because their committees or peers don\u2019t believe that digital scholarship has a place in the department? It seems a little unfair to complain that DH hasn’t produced any tools used by literary scholars when they’re not giving space in the University to produce that kind of work. Golumbia makes some fair points about why we need to clearer distinction for DH, but he\u2019s kind of being a Stanley Fish about it. And that’s not useful to anybody.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Golumbia\u2019s argument swayed me the most when he moved to his discussion of linguistics. He points out that many linguistic scholars use computers to aid their work, but they don\u2019t define themselves as \u201cdigital linguists\u201d as if they were doing something dinstinct. Golumbia notes that \u201cattending linguistics conferences, one does not notice dramatic changes in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":20,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-866","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sheilaliming.com\/428DH\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/866","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sheilaliming.com\/428DH\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sheilaliming.com\/428DH\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sheilaliming.com\/428DH\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/20"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sheilaliming.com\/428DH\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=866"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/sheilaliming.com\/428DH\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/866\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":915,"href":"https:\/\/sheilaliming.com\/428DH\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/866\/revisions\/915"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sheilaliming.com\/428DH\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=866"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sheilaliming.com\/428DH\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=866"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sheilaliming.com\/428DH\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=866"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}