Evasion and Digital Humanities
The
2015 Institute for Digital Research in the Humanities forum "Peripheries,
barriers, hierarchies: rethinking access, inclusivity, and infrastructure in
global DH practice," September 24-26, generated productive, open-ended
questions about the future of DH. It
also broadcast warnings we ought not ignore.
As a field, DH has expanded beyond easy definition; the only consensus is that scholars and other
cultural workers are using new technologies and methodologies to do academic
and non-academic work. It should be
noted, however, that some fear of the "political"
seems to be widespread within the field, although I'd point out that DH is an
integral part of polis or the body
politic. It generates its own version of "politics" by accident and
design. In this sense, the word
"inclusivity" in the thematic description of the forum embodies a
crucial code. People who are making
inquiries about African American literature and culture ought to deal with the
code as a fair warning. It is a good
reason to step back, slow down, and rethink what is progressive and regressive
(i.e., neo-colonial) in an operative sense, a reason highlighted by the
University of Kansas.
Amy Earhart's presentation "Take Back the Narrative:
Rethinking the History of Diverse Digital Humanities" was directly
relevant to the mission and vision of the Project on the History of Black
Writing. and her reference to the
developing Charles Chesnutt Archive directed us
to a model of what should be done at various institutions for individual
writers. From a different angle,
Amardeep Singh's discussion "The Archive Gap: the Digital Humanities and
the Western Canon" mapped another path to be taken. His blog
on race, the canon, and digital humanities provides quite useful commentary on
how barriers and hierarchies must be navigated in serious examination of black
writing texts and contexts. These two presentations highlighted why
performative frames do matter.
Jacqueline Wernimont's "Performing archives: sensitive
data, social justice, and the performative frame. " was an excellent
example of how caution must be exercised in using digital means to document
"histories" that require us to face the horrors and shame of the past. Her use of digital technology to give us
sonic and haptic representations of data suggested that good intentions can
slip into forms of evasion. Decontextualized
sound and touch can preclude
confronting what horrors were attached
to eugenics and the forced modification of a person's reproductive organs. Had
she not provided ample context about her project on documenting sterilization
in California, we would have thought her use of sound and a string one could
touch was an effort to create postmodern art rather than an effort to show
maximum respect for the victims of sterilization. Consider how
counter-productive it would be to allow digital paintings based on photographs
of lynching to replace the photographic evidence of how a 1919 Ellisville, Mississippi lynching was
advertised . We should not condone
evasions in DH that wear the mask of respect for victims or that aestheticize
our visceral and rational analyses of what happened.
Jerry W. Ward,
Jr. September 29, 2015
PHBW BLOG
