Upload
others
View
7
Download
0
Embed Size (px)
Citation preview
Towards a Cultural Critique of the Digital Humanities1
Domenico FiormonteDipartimento di Italianistica, Università Roma Tre ([email protected])
«The English texts of nonnative writers cannot be assumed to reflect their vernacular discourses.»
A. Suresh Canagarajah, Geopolitics of Academic Writing
«[Nisargadatta] Maharaj said quite often that books get written; they are never written by authors. Only a little thought is necessary to see the truth of what he meant. He was NOT referring only to books on spiritual matters; he was referring to all books. In the overall functioning of the manifested universe, whatever was necessary as written or spoken words appeared spontaneously (…). No credit or blame could attach to any individual writer for the simple reason that the individual is a mere illusion and has not autonomous existence.»
Ramesh S. Balsekar, Experience of Immortality
1. The Last Dinosaurs
Are there non Anglo- American DH, and if so, how are they charac t e r ized?
This is the ques tion that Manfred Taller asked me several months ago and
from which my attend an c e to this meeting origina t es . As a prelimina ry
remark, I must confess that from the very early exchanges between Manfred and I, a
difference seems to emerge in terms of approaches. As other eminent European scholars
(especially Dino Buzzetti and Tito Orlandi) Thaller identifies the methodological question as
the core of the differentiation of the several DH approaches (i.e. continental IU vs. Anglo
American DH). I think the methodological issue is very important, and I don’t see our two
opinions in stark contrast (i.e. methodological vs. cultural monopolization). Of course much
depends on what we mean by “culture” and “methodology”. There has always been an attempt
in AngloAmerican DH/HC to maintain a methodological dominion (and dominance) in terms
of applications, standards, and protocols. This is natural of any competing situation or
scenario. Besides, to assume that the root of this dominion is cultural, does not mean to deny
that a methodological monopolization exists. But where do the “monopolies” come from? In
my opinion, methodologies are successful sets of interconnected discourses on procedures and
rules that arise from dominant cultural visions. Any distinction or genealogic attempt reminds
me of the obstinate persistence of the Aristotelian form/content dichotomy. A dualistic
approach that is very far from reflecting the multilayered dimension of cultural objects. One
the core assumption of my approach to DH is that any humanborn knowledge (including
computer science models) is subject to the cultural law of the artifact (Vygotsky 1978, 1986).
1 Translated from the Italian by Federica Perazzini, revised by Desmond Schmidt.
1
This law affirms that both material and cognitive artifacts produced by humans are subject to
the influence of its environment, culture, and the social habits of the individual and groups
that devise and make use of them. The artifact influences and at the same time is influenced
by its context; in other words, technology is always a part of culture, not a cause or an effect
of it (Slack and Wise 2005, 4; 112).
In this perspective, it is clear that answering our opening question is something far less simple
than one could expect. From the historical point of view, it would be easy to answer “Yes” as,
for example, Italian “Informatica Umanistica” has a strong tradition and a long history. 2 But
for from the point of view of the scientific results, research projects, and institutional
presence, Informatica Umanistica, as most of the “other” DH practiced in the world, don’t
exist. The reasons of such partial or total invisibility (depending of course on the countries and
the observer) are not a mystery: the undisputable AngloAmerican hegemony in the academic
and research field. This phenomenon, certainly complex and debated, is perfectly summarized
by Suresh Canagarajah (2002) in the famous story of Chinese dinosaurs. In April 1997, the
New York Times published an article titled: “In China, a Spectacular Trove of Dinosaurs
Fossils is Found”. Although the finding was made around one year earlier, the American
newspaper reported the news in that moment because the discovery was publically announced
by Western scientists the day before, during a conference at the Academy of Natural Sciences
at Philadelphia
The discovery had been made by a Chinese farmer. The date he discovered the site is not given anywhere in the report. His name is also not given. The name of the international team and their university affiliations are, on the other hand, cited very prominently. (…) When the newspaper claims that “the spectacular trove was not announced until today” there are many questions that arise in our minds. Announced by whom? To whom? (…) The whole world is claimed to know about the fossils after the announcement at the Philadelphia conference. It is as if the finding is real only when the West gets to know about it. It is at that point that the discovery is recognized as a “fact” and constitutes legitimate knowledge. Whatever preceded that point is pushed into oblivion. (Canagarajah 2002, 12).
Having said that, the aim of this pape r is not to ques tion the pres tige of
Anglo- American colleague s , reversing the curren t hiera rchie s or
proposing new and more objective rankings . In fact, I came to realize that
pursuing this kind of investiga t ion would be a vain, though healthy,
exercise. On the other hand, periphe r a l cultures don’t need any revenge
or, worse, any seat at the winner s table and that is why the aim of this
paper is simply to acknowledge a situation, evalua ting it for itself and
2 There is not much information in English available on the history of Informatica Umanistica, but Geoffrey Rockwell has effectively outlined the Italian scenario on a recent post on Tito Orlandi festschrift: http://www.theoreti.ca/?p=4333.
2
perhaps sugges t ing that a differen t model is possible.
In the last ten years, the extended colonization, both mate ria l and
symbolical, of the digital technologies has complet ely overwhelme d the
resea rch and educa t ional world. Digitalization has become not only a
vogue or an impera tive, but normali ty. In this sort of digital “gold rush”,
DH perhaps have been losing their original openness and revolutiona ry
poten t ial . If we want to get them back and, at the same time, go furthe r it
is impor tan t to star t from the analysis of what I personally see as the most
relevant DH bottlenecks .
2. The Ways of the Crisis
The first, identifiable gap has to do the little inclination of DH to develop what French
sociologist Pierre Bourdieu called “a theoretical model for reflecting critically on the
instruments through which we think of reality” (Bourdieu and Chartier 2011, 47). This means
that, after constituting the tools, the instruments, one reflects on their use and their impact.
Only rarely, though, one takes time to reflect also on their cultural foundation. In other words,
it is as if DH have always started from the “results” without considering the whole process
that lead them there. A recent article by Alan Liu expresses some concerns about the «lack of
cultural criticism» (Liu 2012, 492) of DH, evoking the image of the foundation of an
«intellectual infrastructure» for the digital humanities; quite a proper image which appears to
be in contrast with the nowadays mainstream tendencies. Moreover, highlighting the political
limitations of the instrumental approach, Liu’s article is a real shot in the arm in the Anglo
American context (even though it still doesn’t enter in the geopolitical balance and
economical interests within the DH system).
On the other hand, the little inclination of DH in reflecting on the origins of its objects has
probably different roots. There is no doubt for example that the historical character of the
humanities disciplines has contributed to an excess of concentration on the conservation,
management and analytical procedures rather than the more revolutionary (in both its positive
and negative sense) computational components, that is to say the capacity to affect research
processes, even before the products.
Another, more concrete, limitation, regards the geopolitical and the culturallinguistic
composition of the discipline; something consequently connected with the tool issue
(Fiormonte 20012002). In fact, though deeply entangled, the problem with this kind of issue
relies in two different order of factors : a) the composition of the government organs,
institutions etc., inspiring and managing the processes, the strategies and ultimately the
research methodology (thus affecting also the visibility of the results); b) the cultural
linguistic nuances and features of the tools (Fiormonte 2008; 2009). In addition to that, within
this second category, it is possible to identify: b1) the cultural and political problem of
3
softwares and platforms (i.e. social networks) almost exclusively produced in the Anglo
American environment b2) the culturalsemiotic problem of the different tools of
representation: from the icons of the graphical interfaces to the Unicode standards, from the
Second Life proxemics to the universal concept of usability etc. In what follows, I will try to
focus especially on a) and b2) sacrificing, for space reasons, the important software issue b1).
But let’s proceed in order, and start with the institutional and organizational structures.
3. Geopo l i t i c s of DH (and beyon d)
A deepen e d view of the matte r reveals that these influences are genera lly
highly pervasive and this is because these are assum ed as an
unques t ionable norm. Each medium and its correspond e n t technical
artifact, as Harold Innis taugh t us (Innis 1951), implies a bias , and it is
subject to the ‘cultural law’ mentioned above. A banal example is the long
dominion of the 7 bit ASCII code (American Standa r d Code for
Information Interchan g e) which has been the only set of charac t e r
recognized by all computing platforms – Web included – for more than 40
years. The same technocultural bias affects most of the services and instruments of the
network, e.g. the domain name. In the last forty years it was not possible to use accented
vowels in the URL address, and in spite of recent IETF and ICANN efforts 3 the new
Internationalizing Domain Names in Applications (IDNA) system can be implemented only in
applications that are specifically designed for it, and it is scarcely used in Latin alphabetbased
URLs. Some of the initial toplevel domains can be only used by U.S. institutions. For
example, a European university cannot use the toplevel domain .edu, which was and is still
reserved only for U.S. academic institutions. The domain .eu could not be included in the top
level domains until 2006, and applications for toplevel domains using characters outside of
ISOLatin were recently invited (requests are open from 12 January to 12 April 2012). ICANN
(the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) finally allowed the opening up of
top level domains to Arabic or Chinese characters, included in Unicode, but every decision
rests in the hands of an organization under the clear control of western industries and
governments. The request procedure is very complicated, many of the rules are described only
in English, the cost of the application is $185,000, and the application does not guarantee that
the request will be accepted. The applying institution needs to show a clear technical and
financial capability that must be certified discretionally by ICANN itself. The problem is that
ICANN, although it has always taken decisions of global relevance, still lacks a clear
institutional and multistakeholder accountability. Up to 2009 the ICANN, self-
defined as a «not- for- profit public- benefit corpora t ion», was controlled by
3 http://www.icann.org/en/news/announcements/announcement30oct09en.htm.
4
the USA Depar tm e n t of Commerce 4 and even today, its curren t CEO, Mr
Rod Beckst rom, is past presiden t of the National Cybersecu r i ty Cente r
(NCSC) for the Depar tm e n t of Homeland Securi ty 5; an impeccable
pedigree for a cybercop but less impeccable for a manage r of a common
resource such as the Net 6 .
As for areas closes t to humanities interes t s , power struc tu re s don’t
appea r to be less discoura ging . The Unicode case is a perfect example of
this phenom eno n. By its own definition Unicode is, at least in theory, a no-
profit organiza tion «devoted to developing, maintaining, and promoting
software interna t ionalization standa r ds and data, particula rly the Unicode
Standa r d , which specifies the repres e n t a t ion of text in all modern
software produc t s and standa r ds » 7 . Its Board of Directors is curren t ly
made of two Google’s employees, two Microsofts’s, one from Apple, one
from JustSyste m s, one IBM’s and one from OCLC 8 . Not that differen t is
also the composi tion of the Executive Office: the presiden t has been a
Google engineer since 2006 and, a part a couple of exceptions coming
from the academic or the resea rch world, no public institu tion is
repre s en t e d . As a mat te r of fact, Unicode is an indust r ial standa r d
controlled by the indust ry. And claims about the neutr ali ty or impar t iali ty
of this organiza tion appea r at least ques tionable.
If this can be taken as a credible example of the global scene ry, it is clear
that the DH situation cannot be but affected. Compar ed to the survey I
carried out in 2001 (Fiormon te 2002), even though so much effort has
been put to make the DH existing associations and organiza tions more
interna t ion al, the impression stays the same: a solid Anglo- American base
on which several individualities of mostly European count r ies are
engraf ted . Table 1 shows how boards and commit tee s of the eight top DH
interna t ion al organiza tions (four associations , one network, one
consor t ium, and two journals 9) are composed. Data are organized by
count ry of institutional affiliation, i.e. what is shown is not the count ry of
origin of the membe r , but the place where the individual appear s to work.
4http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/commerce_department_loosens_grip_on_icann.php.5 http://www.icann.org/en/biog/beckstrom.htm.6 While Western governments and companies try to preserve their primacy on the Internet, data show a different scenario. In terms of access to the Internet, Western Countries (Europe and USA) represent only 35.7% out of the total of the users whereas Asia records 44%. (Source: http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm).7 http://www.unicode.org/consortium/consort.html.8 http://www.unicode.org/consortium/directors.html9 Association for Computers and the Humanities (ACH), Alliance of Digital Humanities Organizations (ADHO), Association for Literary and Linguistic Computing (ALLC), Centernet (International Networks of Digital Humanities Centers), Digital Humanities Quarterly, Literary and Linguistic Computing, Society for Digital Humanities/Société pour l'étude des médias interactifs (SDHSEMI), Text Encoding Initiative (TEI).
5
Table 2 aggrega t e s data from the same organiza t ions and shows the
multiple- appointm e n t s effect, i.e. how commit tee s and boards tend to
replicat e themselves, sometimes appointing the same people to up to five
differen t organiza tions. These roughly collected data may be are not
sufficien t for demons t r a t ing that curren t top DH organiza t ions suffer from
ethnocen t r i s m, but cer ta inly point out a problem.
Table 1. DH organizations: presence of individuals by country of institutional affiliation.
ACH ADHO ALLC CNet DHQ LLC SDHSEMI TEI
John Unsworth (5)
Melissa Terras (5)
Geoffrey Rockwell (4)
Michael EberleSinatra (4)
Ray Siemens (4)
Stéfan Sinclair (4)
Susan Brown (4)
Bethany
6
Nowviskie (3)
Daniel O'Donnell (3)
Jan Cristoph Meister (3)
Lisa Lena OpasHänninen (3)
Lorna Hughes (3)
Neil Fraistat (3)
Susan Hockey (3)
Willard McCarty (3)
Table 2. Multiple or crossappointments toplist. In red are showed people that appear in five organizations, in orange people that appears in four, in yellow people that appear in three.
Of course , initiatives such as Cente rn e t , ADHO (Alliance of Digital
Humani ties Organizat ions 10 ) and CHAIN (Coalition of Humani ties and
Arts Infras t ruc t u r e s and Networks) have the merit of gathe ring and
registe r ing the major reali ties of the Atlantic Axe (USA–Canada–UK) but
this is just a self- strengt h enin g opera tion of existing identi ties rathe r than
an actual knowledg e sharing or an explorat ion of other cultures ,
methodologies or practices. Let’s consider the monolinguis m of the above
sites and organiza tions. Their rhetorical struc tu re doesn’t leave space to
anything but the ‘inner’ Anglo- American rhetoric and academic nar ra t ive
(Canaga r a j ah 2002, 109- 127). Furthe r m o r e , the self- repor t of some
initiatives, such as Melissa Terras’ flatland, cont ribu ted to presen t Digital
Humani tes as an empire made of two macro- kingdoms, USA and UK, at
the cente r the orbits of some scanty satellites (Fig.1). These sort of
universalist ic repres e n t a t ions (or self- repres en t a t ions) seem but to reveal
the actual state of subordina t ion in which non- English speaking digital
humanis t s are; a situa tion that is trigger ed at the very moment we use the
label “digital humanities”.
One exception to this scenario are the THATCamp un- conference series
(http:// tha t ca m p .o rg /) which are becoming a good oppor tuni ty for
periphe r a l communi ties to share alterna t ive views of what DH are or
10 At the moment, ADHO’s Steering Committee is made of 7 members, of which only 2 are not from USA o rUK: http://digitalhumanities.org/administration/steering.
7
could be. 11 This seems the case of the recent initiative Humanis tica. eu , a
project launched at THATCamp Florence in 2011 12 for creating a
European Association of DH (a “new common space for nurturing and
practicing this discipline from a genuine multi- cultural and multi- lingual
perspec t ive”, as we can read on the websi te) .
Figure 1. M. Terras’ DH Graph13.
In this perspec tive, I could go on with further consider a t ions regarding
the cultural and epistemic bias implied in the markup languag es as well
as in the solutions proposed by TEI 14 . Howeve r, in the next parag r a p h I
would rathe r focus on relaunching the fundam en t al ques tion of the
impor tance , especially in the humanities and social sciences , of the
residual categories.
Any attempt to creat e an obligatory system of classification, rigid and universal, will result in residual categor ies (…) It is necessa ry to root the awarene s s of what happens every time one tries to standa r dize . In other words, that in this crea tion there is someone who wins and someone who loses. This not a simple ques tion, nor a mat te r easy to analyze. (Bowker and Leigh Star 2006, 13)
11 A quick look at the upcoming THATCamps shows that out of 35 THATCamps listed on the website 24 will take place in USA.12 See the relative Manifesto proposed in Paris: http://tcp.hypotheses.org/411.13 The complete graph is available on line: http://www.ucl.ac.uk/infostudies/melissaterras/DigitalHumanitiesInfographic.pdf.14 To deepen this issue, see Schmidt 2010; Fiormonte e Schmidt 2011; Fiormonte et al. 2010.
8
The crisis (of self- estee m too) of the humani ties 15 could be summarized in
this point: the constitu tive necessi ty – in order to keep on surviving – to
be always on the margins, to be a hybrid, a varian t of the system. This
repres e n t s the first obstacle and the poten tial friction betwee n the role of
the DH and the one of the humani ties. It is quite evident, in fact, that a
legitimat ion of the DH, or a revitalization which is not simply a defense of
the existen t to the end, can’t be realized without a critique of the
economical and geopolitical interes t s lying beyond the universe of the Net
and its applications . It appear s that DH are the victims of a continuous
paradox: showing of being able to keep up with technologies (and their
actual and virtual protagonis t s ) and, at the same time, not to becom e
subject ed to them.
4. Stan d ard s and Cultural Heg e m o n i e s
According to G. Bowker and S. Leight Star «classifications and standa rd s
are mate r ial , as well as symbolic», and their control «is a cent ral , often
underan a lyzed feature of economic life» (Bowker and Leigh Star 1999,
15; 39). In their studies the two sociologist s show how the classification
techniques (and the standa rd s genera t e d from them) have always played
a fundam en t a l economic and socio- cultural role. Curren t digital
technologies standa r d s appea r to be the result of a double bias: the
technical one and the cultural one (geopolitical). These two bias are
entangled and it is almost impossible to distinguish where the
technological choice begins and where the cultural prejudice ends.
As the lexicograph e r and blogger José Antonio Millán, noticed more than
10 years ago «while networks are the highways of digital goods and
service flows, technologies linked to the user’s language are their
compulsory tolls» (Millán 2001, 140). Thus, at the roots of economic,
social, political primacy we do not find “just” technology, but rathe r the
mix of copyrighted algorithms and protocols that manipulat e and control
languag es . In this perspec t ive, standa r ds are but the results of a balance
of powers 16 . Presiding over linguis tic technologies has thus become both a
profitable business and a geopolitical mat te r . As Millán states, for many
count r ies , not investing in this sector presen t ly means being forced to pay
15 The link between the crisis of the Humanities and the role of the DH is the central theme of the advocacy initiative carried out by a group of universities, associations as well as British, American, Canadian and Australian research center: http://humanistica.ualberta.ca.16 «On the other hand, our new global information structure, is based on classification schemes elaborated within developed countries in order to solve problems particularly connected with the educated élite.» (Bowker e Star 2006, 15).
9
to be able to use one’s own languag e .
«Localization still mat te r s» , and the resea rch e r s of the Language
Observa to ry Project (http://www.lang u a g e- observa to ry.org/) noted that
although Unicode is recognized as a step forward for multilingualism,
«many problems in languag e processing remain»:
The Mongolian languag e , for example, is writ ten either in Cyrillic script or in its own historical and tradi tional script, for which at least eight differen t codes and fonts have been identified. No standa r dis a t ion of typed font exists, causing inconsistency, even textual mistrans la t ion, from one compute r to anothe r . As a resul t, some Mongolian web pages are made up of image files, which take much longer to load. Indian web pages face the same challenge . On Indian newspape r sites proprie t a ry fonts for Hindi scripts are often used and some sites provide their news with image files. These technological limita tions prevent information from being intercha n g e a b le , and lead to a digital languag e divide. (Yoshiki and Kodama 2012, 122-123)
The Italian linguis t and anthropologis t Antonio Perri has offered
convincing examples of the cultural bias of the Unicode charac t e r s
repres e n t a t ional system, showing the concre t e risks of oversimplifying
and drying up the “phenom en ological richness of human writing
practices” (Perri 2009, 747). Perri analyzed a numbe r of encoding
solutions proposed by the Unicode consor tium for differen t problems
related to Indian sub- continen tal scripts , to Chinese, Arabic and Hangul
(Korean writing). In all these cases, in addition to being excessively
depend e n t on visualization software , which raises problems of portabili ty,
he showed that the Unicode solutions were based on a
“hyper typogr a p hic” concep t of writing, i.e. weste r n writing embodied in
its print form and logical sequencing, By neglecting the visual featur es of
many writing systems this view overlooks their impor tan t functional
aspect s , Perri gives a striking example of this bias when discussing
Unicode trea tm e n t of ligatur es and the position of vowel charac t e r s in the
Devanaga r i Indic script. Often in Indian systems aspects of a graphic
nature prevail over the reading order of the graphe m e s . As showed in
Figure 2.2, in the second glyph the order pronuncia t ion/gr a p hic sequenc e
is revers ed . Unicode exper t s , however, argue that Indic scripts are
repres e n t e d in its system according to a “logical schem e” that ignores
“typograp hic” details. Perri concludes:
But why on ear th should the order of charac t e r s corresponding to the phonet ic segmen t be consider ed logical by an Indian litera t e? Who says that the lineari ty of Saussu r e’s alphabe t ic signifier should play a role in his
10
writing practices? (…) It is therefore all too evident that the alphabe t ic filter, the rende ring software and the automa tic process of normalization of Indic scripts are the result of a choice that reflects the need for structu r a l uniformity as opposed to the emic cultural practices of the real user . (Perri 2009, 736; our transl.).
Figure 2. Two graphe m e s of Devanaga ri Indic script as shown in Perri 2009, 735.
Unfortuna t e ly, the problem of cultural primacy overflows linguistic
bounda r ies . The pervasivenes s of cultural repres en t a t ions and metaphors
belonging to the Anglo- American context in all technological appliances
and computing tools is a well- known tendency since at least the 1960s.
Many familiar elemen t s borrowed from everyday U.S. life were expor ted
to the compute r world. We are not speaking here of progra m min g
languag es or algori thms , where the deep semiotic bias is intrinsically
evident (Andersen 1997), but of the ‘superficial’ (and not less subtle)
world of icons and graphic interfaces (GUI). One example is the manila
folder, an ubiquitous object used in all American offices that owes its
name to a fiber (manila hemp) commonly used in the Philippines for
making ropes, paper produc ts and coarse fabrics. An object coming from
a removed colonial past suddenly, thanks to the Xerox Star desktop 17 ,
becam e later the metaphor for any computing conten t : a symbol that
17 «By far its most striking feature was its graphical user interface, ... The arrangement of folders and icons built around what the Star engineers called the ‘desktop metaphor’ is so familiar today that it seems to have been part of computing forever.» (Hilzik 1999, 364).
11
conceals the bureauc r a t ic origins of the desktop compute r and its unique
ties to the cultural imagina ry of the averag e U.S. customer . Examples of
symbolic cyber- colonization are Second Life facial expressions and user-
playable animations, where we can find body languag e gestur e s which
can be only deciphe re d by exper t American native speaker s 18 . Take for
example the famous «kiss my butt» animation (see Figure 2), where both
the verbal expression and the body postur e would sugges t (at best)
deceptive or vaguely alluring meanings to most of Latino or
Medite r r a n e a n culture s.
Figure 3. the «kiss my butt» gestur e in Second Life
5. Langu a g e Differe n c e s and Global Ineq u a l i t i e s
Our last example isn’t a real example, but a compara t ive experim en t
18 A complete list of such animations can be found in: http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Internal_Animations#Userplayable_animations.
12
based on two graphic repres en t a t ions . The first image (Figure 4) is a map
of world income inequali ties from the Universi ty of California Atlas of
Global Inequali ty databas e. The second world map (Figure 5), a Wikipedia
image based on Ethnologue.com sources, represe n t s linguistic diversi ty in
the world: in red are shown the 8 megadivers e countr ies that togethe r
repres e n t more than 50% of the world’s languages , and in blue, areas of
grea t diversity.
Figure 4. World Gross Domestic Product in 2004. Source:
http://uca t las .ucsc .edu/
Figure 5. Linguis tic diversi ty in the world. Source: http://en.wikipedia.org /wiki/Linguis tic_diversi ty # Ling uis tic_diversi ty
If we overlap these two maps, we can notice that – excluding Australia,
13
where linguistic diversity is due to the enormous number of immigran t s
from all continen t s 19 – the lower income count r ies of the first map in many
cases fit the areas of grea t e r linguis tic diversi ty. In other words: cultural
richness does not necess a rily match mate rial wealth.
The comparison betwee n the two maps we have proposed does not seek
to sugges t superficial and easy conclusions; however, it is legitimate to
believe that in some of the poores t areas of the world, in deser t s , jungles,
and mountains at the margins of our globalized socie ty, a handful of
communities continue to cultivate the last resource still entirely in their
own hands: language .
Finally, it is not surprising, that the world income map perfectly overlaps
also with the “Quantifying Digital Humani ties” one produced by the UCL
Centre for Digital Humanities . 20 This seems to confirm Millán’s hypothes is
on the strict relation between economic hegemony, technological
concent r a t ion and linguis tic impoverishm e n t , raising the un- approache d
question of the internal and external digital humani ties divide in Weste rn
Count r ies.
6. Beyon d the Alphab et i c Machin e ?
What is the role and the position of DH in the geopolitical scene ry
presen te d so far? Notwiths t an ding the unques t ionable expansion of the
discipline (Gold 2012), I have the impression that DH haven’t taken
cognizance of what is happening in the world, yet. Maybe this has to do
with the inevitable repre ssion of a too bitte r truth, that is to say that so
far, DH haven’t succeede d in either streng th e ning the field of humanities
nor putting some balance into the power relationships between
humanities and compute r sciences .
If, on one hand, the perspec t ive of the “formal methods” 21 didn’t manag e
to establish an equal dialogue between humani ties and compute r
sciences , on the other hand it made compute r sciences too short- sighted
and even hostile to the so- called digital cultures relega ting these latte r to
a mere “sociological” ques tion. As already pointed out by the ACO*HUM 22
(De Smedt et al. 1999) resea rch in the nineties, a compute r is a “univers al
19 According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, the European invasion during the XIX and XX centuries eradicated both languages and cultures from the aboriginal populations: “Today, there are approximately 22 million Australians, speaking almost 400 languages, including Indigenous languages”. (http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/[email protected]/Latestproducts/1301.0Feature%20Article32009%E2%80%9310?opendocument&tabname=Summary&prodno=1301.0&issue=2009%9610&num=&view=)20
21 For a discussion on the formalization of humanities disciplines cfr. Van Zundert et al. 2012.22 The website is still active and available on online: http://www.hd.uib.no.
14
machine” and the application of formal methods is the lowest common
denomina to r of the DH. However, all form of oral or writ ten discours es
are not reducible or ascribable to a logical struc tu r e (the ‘model’, cf.
Buzzet ti 2002), but reflect and imply a dynamic interac tion between
produce r s , codes, mate r ial suppor ts , and audiences . The meaning doesn’t
simply emerge from the two processe s of analysis and modeling but from
coopera t ion (Halliday 1977). In other words, a discourse is a cultural
artifact made of syntax, seman tics and, above all, pragm a tics and that is
why all the data of human culture are so hard to formalize.
On the other hand, the depende nc e between the machine and the
alphabe t goes beyond the mere difficulty or impossibility to be
independ e n t from the print model. In fact, such depend en ce seems to be
inscribed in the very DNA of the machine:
So I would like to readdr e s s the fact that the roots of this machine are veryold and can be found in the alphabe t . First of all, 5000-6000 years ago, thealphabe t was, for differen t reasons , an invention compar a ble to the compute r- media ted discret izat ion of knowledge we have now perform ed. Think of the originality of these first social groups from Mesopota mia who fractioned the linguistic flux, a continuous spoken song, marking certain pitches as first consonan t s [Herrens ch mid t C. et al. 1996]. It was the onset of a developm en t and of a culture which were quite differen t to those inheren t to the hieroglyphic writing of ideogra m s which proposed concept s or evoked whole images, situations , or feelings, by means of drawings . Conversely, the alphabe t discret izes , subdivides continuous language into insignificant atoms, into the bits which are lette rs . (Longo 2009, 58- 58) 23 .
Howeve r, as Longo reminds us, the presen t computa t ion al dimension is
not the manifes t destiny of humankind . Humanis t s can join other
pionee ring scientis ts around the globe who are star t thinking “of the next
machine: history is not over, with digital computabili ty” (Longo 2009, 60).
In conclusion, the implicit flattening of the technological, commer ci al and
indust ria l policies as well as the essentially mono- cultural origins of the
logical and symbolical repre s en t a t ions are but obstacles to the expansion
of DH beyond the simply instrum e n t a l function. I agree with Alan Liu
(2012) who says that in order to extend their range of action and be
legitimate d as an actual discipline , DH need to infect with other close
23 It is important to notice that the author of this J’accuse is a computer scientist and mathematician currently engaged into biology researching. A specular historicaltechnical support to Longo’s thesis is to be found in the studies on the numerical origins of the cuneiform writing (see also Denise SchmandtBesserat 1996).
15
disciplines 24 such as social sciences (from the Science and Technology
Studies to Mediology 25 ) and cultural anthropology (especially the varian t
dealing with the cultural artifacts form André Leroi- Gourhan to Jack
Goody, from the ethnogr ap hy of James Clifford and George E. Marcus to
the digital ethnography of Michael Wesch 26 ).
But maybe, the most urging issue would be stopping considering the
methodological question and the socio- cultural one as separa t e entities.
In other words, stop thinking, paraph r a s ing Harold Innis, DH were born
in a vacuu m :
Innis happily accepted as a star ting point the inevitably ethnocen t r ic bias of social science. (…) He recognized that scholars hip was not produced in a historical and cultural vacuum but reflected the hopes, aspira tions, and heresies of national culture s . American and British scholar ship was based, he thought , on a concei t: it pre tend ed to discover Universal Truth, to proclaim Universal Laws, and to describe a Universal Man. Upon inspec tion it appea re d , however, that its Universal Man resem bled a type found around Cambridge , Massachu s e t t s , or Cambridge , England: its Universal Laws resembled those felt to be useful by Congres s and Parliame n t ; and its Universal Truth bore English and American accents . Imperial powers, so it seems, seek to create not only economic and political clients but intellectual clients as well. (Carey 1992, 149).
So, are we digital humanis t intellectual clients , dinosau r s or “the next big
thing” 27 ? Personally, I would rathe r prefer not to choose among these
options. Instead , I like to think of DH as a cultural and political project .
We could star t it from three basic steps: a) stop being obsess ed with
large- scale digitization projects and «archiving fever» (Derrida 1996)
which unique result is to increase our depende ncy from private indust ry
standa r ds , produc ts and of course funding; b) improve and cultivate the
margins , i.e. give more atten tion our variega t ed cultural and linguistic
local diversi ty; c) help to elabora t e a new concep t of knowledge as
com mon s. As for c), Hess and Ostrom (2011) provide a set of design
principles for common- pool resource institu tions:
• Clearly defined bounda ri es should be in place.• Rules in use are well matched to local needs and
24 I pointed out a list of possible intersections in Numerico et al. 2010, 102103.25 Loan from the French médiologie (http://www.mediologie.org/), this term spread also in Italy (http://www.mediologia.com/). According to Régis Debray, mediology «deals with the analysis of the ‘superior social funcion’ (religion, ideology, art, politics) in their relationships with the transmission means and environments» (Debray 1999). 26http://mediatedcultures.net.27 This expression, referred to DH, became immediately famous after it was used by W. Pannapacker upon commenting the 2009 MLA Convention: http://chronicle.com/blogPost/TheMLAtheDigital/19468/.
16
conditions.• Individuals affected by these rules can participa te in modifying the rules.• The right of community members to devise their own rules is respec t ed by external authori t ies.• A system for self- monitoring member’s behavior has been established.• A gradua t ed system of sanctions is available.• Communi ty member s have access to low- cost conflict resolution mechanis ms .• Nested enterp r i se s – that is, appropri a t ion, provision, monitoring, and sanctioning, conflict resolution, and other governanc e activities – are organized in a nested struc tu r e with multiple layers of activities. (Hess and Ostrom 2011, 7)
If the DH community would star t to discuss the possibility of applying
some of these design principles to its own organiza tions , a complet ely
new way of thinking and resear ching would emerge – more respec tful of
our mutual cultures , more democr a t ic, and more powerful.
Bibliography
Andersen, P.B. A Theory of Computer Semiotics. Semiotic Approaches to Construction and Assessment of Computer Systems. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997.
Canagarajah, A. S. A Geopolitics of Academic Writing. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2002.
Carey, J. W. Communication as Culture. Essays on Media and Society. New YorkLondon: Routledge, 1992.
Bourdieu, P. and Chartier, R. Le sociologue et l’historien. Paris: Editions Agone et Raison D’Agir, 2010. (Trad. it. Il sociologo e lo storico. Dialogo sull’uomo e la società. Bari: Dedalo, 2011.)
Bowker, G., Leigh Star, S. Sorting Things Out. Classification and its Consequences. CambridgeLondon: The MIT Press, 1999.
Bowker, G., Leigh Star, S. “Intervista su società dell'informazione e disuguaglianze”. Ed. G. Pellegrino. Daedalus, 19 (2006). 1320. Web. http://epl.scu.edu/~gbowker/interview.pdf.
Buzzetti, D. “Digital Representation and the Text Model”. New Literary History 33 (2002). 6188.
Debray, R. “Qu’estce que la médiologie?”. Le Monde Diplomatique. August (1999). Web. http://www.mondediplomatique.fr/1999/08/DEBRAY/12314.
Derrida, J. Archive Fever. A Freudian Impression. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996.
De Smedt, K., Gardiner, H., Ore, E., Orlandi, T., Souillot, J. and Vaughan, W. (Eds.). Computing in Humanities Education: A European Perspective. Bergen: University of Bergen,
17
HIT centre, 1999. Web. http://www.hd.uib.no/AcoHum/book/
Fiormonte, D. “Chi l’ha visto? Testo digitale, semiotica, rappresentazione. In margine a un trittico di Dino Buzzetti”. Informatica Umanistica 2 (2009). 2146.
Fiormonte, D. “Il testo digitale: traduzione, codifica, modelli culturali”. Italianisti in Spagna, ispanisti in Italia: la traduzione. Atti del Convegno Internazionale (Roma, 3031 ottobre 2007). Ed. P. R. Piras, A. Alessandro and D. Fiormonte. Roma: Edizioni Q, 2008. 271284.
Fiormonte, D. “Il dibattito internazionale sull'informatica umanistica: formazione, tecnologia e primato delle lingua. Testo e Senso 45 (20012002): 145156. http://testoesensoold.uniroma2.it/article/show/34/ildibattitointernazionalesullinformaticaumanisticaformazionetecnologiaeprimatodellelingue).
Fiormonte, D. and Schmidt, D. “La rappresentazione digitale della varianza testuale”. Canoni liquidi. Ed. D. Fiormonte. Napoli: ScriptaWeb, 2011. 161180.
Fiormonte, D., Martiradonna, V., and Schmidt, D. ”Digital Encoding as a Hermeneutic and Semiotic Act: The Case of Valerio Magrelli”. Digital Humanities Quarterly 4.1. (2010). Web. http://digitalhumanities.org/dhq/vol/4/1/000082/000082.html).
Gold, M. K. “The Digital Humanities Moment”. Debates in The Digital Humanities. Ed. M. K. Gold. MinneapolisLondon: University of Minnesota Press, 2012. IXXVI.
Halliday, M.A.K. “Text as semantic choice in social contexts”. Grammars and Descriptions. Eds. Teun A. Van Dijk, János S. Petöfi. Berlin: Walter De Gruyter, 1977. 176226. Reprinted in M.A.K. Halliday. Linguistic Studies of Text and Discourse. The Collected Works of M.A.K. Halliday. Vol. 2, London & New York, Continuum, 2001. 2381.
Hess, C., Ostrom, E. Understanding Knowledge as a Commons: From Theory to Practice. Cambrige: MIT Press, 2011
Hilzik, M.A. Dealers of Lightning. New York: HarperCollins, 1999.
Innis, H. A. The Bias of Communication. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1951.
Liu, A. “Where Is Cultural Criticism in the Digital Humanities?”. Debates in The Digital Humanities. Ed. M. K. Gold. MinneapolisLondon: University of Minnesota Press, 2012. 490509.
Longo, G. “Critique of Computational Reason in the Natural Sciences”. Fundamental Concepts in Computer Science. Eds. E. Gelenbe and J.P. Kahane. Imperial College Press/World Scientific, 2009. 4369. Text originally written in Italian as Lezione Galileana, Pisa, 25 ottobre 2006. ftp://ftp.di.ens.fr/pub/users/longo/PhilosophyAndCognition/CritiqCompReasonengl.pdf.
Millán, J.A. Internet y el español. Madrid: Retevision, 2001.
Numerico, T., Fiormonte, D. and Tomasi, F. L’umanista digitale. Bologna: Il Mulino, 2010.
Perri, A. “Al di là della tecnologia, la scrittura. Il caso Unicode”. Annali dell’Università degli Studi Suor Orsola Benincasa, II (2009): 725748.
SchmandtBesserat, D. How writing came about. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1996.
Schmidt, D. “The Inadequacy of Embedded Markup for Cultural Heritage Texts”. Literary
18
and Linguistic Computing, 25.3 (2010): 337356.
Slack, J.D., Wise, J. M. Culture and technology. A primer. New York: Peter Lang, 2005.
Van Zundert, J., Antonijevic, S., Beaulieu, A., Van DalenOskam, K., Zeldenrust, D. and Andrews, T.L. “Cultures of Formalisation: Towards an Encounter between Humanities and Computing”. Understanding Digital Humanities. Ed. D.M. Berry. Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire; New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012.
Vygotsky, L. S. Mind in Society: Development of Higher Psychological Processes. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1978.
Vygotsky, L. S. Thought and Language. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1986.
Yoshiki, M., Kodama, S. “Measuring Linguistic Diversity on the Web”. Net.Lang. Towards the Multilingual Cyberspace. Eds. Vannini L., Le Crosnier, H. Caen: C&F Éditions, 2012. 121139.
19