The argument made by Allington,\u00a0Brouillette, and Golumbia does not seem, in my opinion, to be a total misreading of the history of DH, but nor is it entirely accurate. It seems, rather, to be looking at the rise of DH from a different perspective than what we’ve seen from other authors actually working in the field like Ganon, Ramsay, or Liu.. In reading this piece, especially in the context of Matt Kirschenbaum’s response, it feels like an issue of perspective and focus. The last sentence of the first paragraph of “Neoliberal Tools” is a helpful way in:<\/p>\n
“…the unparalleled level of material support that Digital Humanities has received suggests that its most significant contribution to academic politics may lie in its (perhaps unintentional) facilitation of the neoliberal takeover of the university.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
That parenthetical addition–perhaps unintentional–is the key to this phrase, and I think reveals much about who’s to blame (or not) for the apparent threat that DH poses to traditional humanities scholarship. Reading Allington et al.’s argument against Kirschenbaum’s piece, it seems unlikely that there is a grand conspiracy to disrupt the traditional humanities with digital tools. There aren’t any backroom deals where DHers tear up copies of\u00a0The Canterbury Tales\u00a0<\/em>and laugh maniacally. If we take Kirschenbaum’s personal experience as relatively common, it’s far more likely that the development of DH in the humanities is a natural outgrowth brought on by a variety of factors: deconstruction and other poststructuralist theory, advances in technology, interest in new media, etc. The people who pioneered DH and those who dove into the field soon after are invested in their work and see themselves contributing something meaningful to the discipline. That’s why we see DHers like Lisa Spiro talk about the importance of collaboration and openness as moving toward a “public good,” something that is useful and important:<\/p>\n
These values point to an overarching ethos that promotes innovative scholarship as a public good and believes that it should be practiced openly and collaboratively.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Still, to return to “Neoliberal Tools,” the evidence of DH being taken up by administrators for non-academic reasons is hard to ignore. It makes complete sense that if organizations are doling out massive amounts of cash for digital projects that administrators and college deans would want their share of that money, especially when we’re talking about humanities departments that have tightened their belts so many times it\u00a0feels normal. Colleges are pursuing their own interest, looking after their longevity, and trying to be forward-thinking. We can’t necessarily fault them for that, but the question that arises, and it’s one that Allington et al. point to implicitly through much of their article, is what the ultimate end of that pursuit is–whether it’s in the best interest of students, faculty, and academia in general, or whether it’s moving academia further toward a corporate money-driven model.<\/p>\n
To get at the prompt question more directly, now–I think Allington et al.’s take on the rise of DH is supportable\u00a0as one take on it<\/em>, as one perspective. From one point of view, it’s easy to see the mysterious machinations of higher ed turning toward DH and teetering toward a subtle corporatism. And it’s easy to imagine that someone–the DHers doing all this digital stuff–are to blame. But from another perspective, if we can learn from Kirschenbaum’s story, it’s harder to point the finger in any one direction. Both provide accurate and supportable accounts of the discipline from their particular perspective. DH feels more like an unsurprising outgrowth from the development of technology and an always-inquisitive and critical scholarship eager to use new tools paired with colleges and administrators whose job it is to fund their schools.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The argument made by Allington,\u00a0Brouillette, and Golumbia does not seem, in my opinion, to be a total misreading of the history of DH, but nor is it entirely accurate. It seems, rather, to be looking at the rise of DH from a different perspective than what we’ve seen from other authors actually working in the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-945","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sheilaliming.com\/428DH\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/945","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\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sheilaliming.com\/428DH\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=945"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/sheilaliming.com\/428DH\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/945\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":967,"href":"https:\/\/sheilaliming.com\/428DH\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/945\/revisions\/967"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sheilaliming.com\/428DH\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=945"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sheilaliming.com\/428DH\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=945"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sheilaliming.com\/428DH\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=945"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}