Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 37, No. 324.
        Department of Digital Humanities, University of Cologne
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        Date: 2023-11-21 07:14:52+00:00
        From: Willard McCarty <willard.mccarty@mccarty.org.uk>
        Subject: disciplines and perspectives

Something tossed out for you to consider, argue about, if you like:

A discipline (to echo the OED) is at root what a group of 'disciples' do.
By gathering together in whatever ways, they make their discipline
stronger, more coherent--and inward-looking. For a new field (referring
to Galison's 'trading zone' argument*) what matters is what they gather
around, what they have in common. It's been a problem for digital
humanities as such a field to lay claim to that common ground without
others claiming it for their own--to whom does 'the digital' belong?
Some respond by configuring themselves as amateur X's--literary critics,
sociologists &al. This gives us a clue. Would it be better not only to think 
of the digital humanities (as I just implied) pluralistically) but
then leap to the generalisation that digital humanities is a perspective
on everything else affected by whatever its practitioners  encounter?

This would be fatal if it led to panoptic arrogance. But would it not
mar wonderful opportunities to look now there, now here, and put the
pieces together, make epistemic patterns, follow them, see what can be
seen? 

Comments?

Yours,
WM

-----
*Peter Galison, "Trading with the enemy". In Michael E. Gorman, ed.
Trading Zones and Interactional Expertise: Creating New Kinds of
Collaboration. 25-52. Cambridge MA: MIT Press, 2010.


--
Willard McCarty,
Professor emeritus, King's College London;
Editor, Interdisciplinary Science Reviews;  Humanist
www.mccarty.org.uk


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