{"id":952,"date":"2016-11-15T03:49:26","date_gmt":"2016-11-15T03:49:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sheilaliming.com\/428DH\/?p=952"},"modified":"2016-11-15T03:49:26","modified_gmt":"2016-11-15T03:49:26","slug":"am-i-a-silicon-sith-lord","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sheilaliming.com\/428DH\/uncategorized\/am-i-a-silicon-sith-lord\/","title":{"rendered":"Am I a Silicon Sith Lord?"},"content":{"rendered":"

After reading both the LARB essay and the Kirschenbaum response, I am more inclined to believe that the authors of the LARB essay are being too paranoid in their claims – but I wonder if scholars like Kirschenbaum and Spiro are truly brainwashed by the administration, as the LARB article suggests? If they are, we need to be extremely cautious in accepting their defense of DH. I read Kirschenbaum’s response again, this time watching out for signs that he really is<\/em> a “neoliberal tool” of the university system – but his response assures me that this is not the case.<\/p>\n

Kirschenbaum structures his response as a story of his academic career and how he got involved in DH. Near the end of the article, he discusses his current involvement with his university’s coordinating and personnel committees. He states that his role in these committees would be a fine way for him to participate in the “neoliberal takeover” that the LARB article suggests, but then he proves that\u00a0he is not taking advantage of his role to do this. “If I were a Silicon Sith Lord (or even just the tool of one) I would seek to use these occasions to revise our mission statement to something more to my cryptofascist taste; I would seek to ensure we hired only those whom I could coerce into adherence with my corporatist agenda … You\u2019d have to ask them I guess, but there\u2019s really no aura of hostile takeover as I and my colleagues go about our business” (13-14). If Kirschenbaum and his fellow DHers\u00a0truly were contributing to the neoliberal takeover, I think they would try to cover it up, but Kirschenbaum’s transparency here (especially when he tells us to\u00a0question his committee members if we do not believe\u00a0him) suggests\u00a0that he has nothing to hide.<\/p>\n

I understand\u00a0the LARB authors’ reasons for being concerned, and I\u00a0do think some of their claims are legitimate. In English departments, we have to be careful of allowing tech projects to take the place of literary scholarship – which could happen if tech projects continue to get more funding than literary ones. However, the fear of losing our ‘traditional’ scholarship should not mean that there is no room for improvements and new developments in the field, such as DH. A department with DH scholars, traditional scholars, and everyone in-between seems to be the healthiest type of department to me, and Kirschenbaum agrees: \u00a0“working for what everyone genuinely believes, more or less, to be the greater good: … \u00a0making the department a place that people want to inhabit to pursue the things that matter to them” (14).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

After reading both the LARB essay and the Kirschenbaum response, I am more inclined to believe that the authors of the LARB essay are being too paranoid in their claims – but I wonder if scholars like Kirschenbaum and Spiro are truly brainwashed by the administration, as the LARB article suggests? If they are, we […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-952","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sheilaliming.com\/428DH\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/952","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\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sheilaliming.com\/428DH\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=952"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/sheilaliming.com\/428DH\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/952\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":979,"href":"https:\/\/sheilaliming.com\/428DH\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/952\/revisions\/979"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sheilaliming.com\/428DH\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=952"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sheilaliming.com\/428DH\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=952"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sheilaliming.com\/428DH\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=952"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}