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 
I am occupying or rather being occupied by a stack of old fashion books on Kurdish history right now.
http://jpohl.blogspot.com/2017/01/a-partial-english-language-bibliography.html
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In my university, obtaining grants is a requirement for tenure.
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In the Humanities? I’m sorry but it’s a shit university then.
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Even in the Humanities (although in a lesser importance, and there are Ph D. students here).
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Even in the Humanities (although in a lesser importance, and there are Ph D. students here).
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“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.”
LOL! I am of the same mind about Digital Humanities — it is mostly useless and expensive. Unfortunately, I think people will continue to build on to this nonsense, though, as it is a shiny new way to attract English majors and give them a possibility to enter into the tech industry. At least, I’m pretty sure that’s the way my department will go. Hmph. Whatever…
And your work is VERY well researched! So I don’t think you need any more BS on top of the good work you already do. 🙂
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Thank you! That was all my best friend Google because our university databases suck ass.
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There is however one digital humanities project or type of project that I like and it has to do with editions, corpuses, early versions of texts, etc., being able to compare them and also being able to see books and texts that are not commonly available. I’d like a digital archive of Vallejo versions, for instance, because there isn’t really agreement on a definitive text and the interesting thing is to be able to look at all.
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Don’t get me wrong, there are great projects. But what I object to is the idea that everybody needs to explain how they have “gone digital” or attracted funding. If a university wants a digital archive, it shouldn’t force professors to do this work for free let them hire specialists, people who actually went to school to learn how to do this stuff.
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