I listened to a Stanford professor of French literature go on and on about the amazingness of digital Humanities and I wondered at how oblivious he can afford to be to what this ridiculous concept really is about.
The goal of digital Humanities is to rob scholars of literature of any residual independence from capital that we still enjoy. To do my research, all I need is a book, a pen, and a notepad. Google is helpful, too. But I don’t need grants, I don’t need to compete for funding, I don’t need any institutional support, I don’t need to beg capital to fund my existence. It’s good to have grants, funding and support but they are not necessary.
Once we allow ourselves to be trapped in the belief that we are nothing without databases, JSTOR, NEH, Project Muse, and all these expensive devices of exclusion, we lose our freedom from chasing money. We are letting ourselves be convinced that a scholar who works without all this – and I repeat, expensive – shit is somehow deficient. My university can’t even afford Project Muse anymore, so I guess that excludes all of us who work there from creating great research accessible to rich folks from Stanford.
And do you know what profound conclusions the Stanford fellow managed to draw on the basis of his tables, graphs and the rest of the digital crap? That the concept of human rights was invented in the 18th century. Gosh, at this pace, he will soon discover the shocking news that in 1492 Columbus sailed the ocean blue.
Right now, I can shut up any administrator who points out that I don’t “bring in any external funding” with a dismissive “I don’t need any funding.” It’s true and it feels damn good to be able to do that. But once we are forced to defend ourselves as digital humanists, that’s it for this kind of freedom. We’ll enter the dumb rat race for the funding that we don’t even need.
Reject the tyranny of capital! Reject digital Humanities! Occupy literature.
Clarissa's Blog 
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