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Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 17, No. 670.
Centre for Computing in the Humanities, King's College London
www.kcl.ac.uk/humanities/cch/humanist/
www.princeton.edu/humanist/
Submit to: humanist@princeton.edu
Date: Thu, 26 Feb 2004 07:18:00 +0000
From: Arianna Ciula <arianna.ciula@kcl.ac.uk>
Subject: Re: 17.667 provincialism e dintorni
I am Italian, but I'm afraid I don't agree with the main stream of this debate.
First of all, I think it's always risky to put one culture in front of the
other and to mention it as the best one. This is valid for the Italian
Humanism (of which I recognise all the greatness and value) as for
everything else. I recognise the predominance of lingua franca is irritable
sometimes. On the other hand, I believe the reply is not the forced
knowledge of another language.
A language is a way of thinking, is a trap and is a treasure. Fortunately,
we are human and not machines and our code is not written once for ever.
Secondly I think every linguistic and hence cultural approach is able to
contribute to the humanities computing field in different ways. It's this
variety that makes enjoyable and fruitful the exchange between scholars,
theories and experimentations. It may seem a demagogical declaration, but
it's not.
What, I think, it doesn't have to lack in a humanities computing community
is the desire and the effort to communicate one to each other the results
of his/her own research, the desire and the effort to explain and to listen
to, and, when possible, the consequent ability to refer to other works
(hopefully accomplished in different lingual environments) even when in
contradiction in his/her own works. I totally agree then that an important
task of our associations should be to encourage this process and to
facilitate it. It doesn't mean to cancel the differences, but to make them
talk, argue, fight and, in some cases, reconcile.
Yours,
Arianna Ciula
Universita' degli Studi di Siena
----------------------
Arianna Ciula
arianna.ciula@kcl.ac.uk
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