Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 38, No. 206.
Department of Digital Humanities, University of Cologne
Hosted by DH-Cologne
www.dhhumanist.org
Submit to: humanist@dhhumanist.org
[1] From: Karadkar, Unmil (unmil.karadkar@uni-graz.at) <unmil.karadkar@uni-graz.at>
Subject: RE: [Humanist] 38.202: a (disputable?) thesis (212)
[2] From: Mcgann, Jerome (jjm2f) <jjm2f@virginia.edu>
Subject: Re: [Humanist] 38.202: a (disputable?) thesis (19)
[3] From: <mail@gabrielegan.com>
Subject: Re: [Humanist] 38.202: a (disputable?) thesis (48)
--[1]------------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: 2024-10-24 06:48:06+00:00
From: Karadkar, Unmil (unmil.karadkar@uni-graz.at) <unmil.karadkar@uni-graz.at>
Subject: RE: [Humanist] 38.202: a (disputable?) thesis
Dear Willard and everyone who has so thoughtfully responded to thread,
Like Manfred, I waited a bit with my response to see if another view was
presented.
My concern with Willard's observation/thesis is that the word "dominant"
(coupled with a request for evidence) makes it essentially unprovable without
undertaking an analysis of the state of DH in universities in whatever
geographic region is of interest. Individual data points would not constitute
evidence of a "dominant" tendency.
If the emphasis is intended to be on "existing agendas", or "dominant" with
"existing agendas", those would require different analyses š
What I would like to hear more about is... if not this, then what? Reading the
thesis as a lament (which may not be the intent) what is the future that you
wish DH had?
In the absence of what I would consider evidence for or against dominant
tendencies, I will fall back on a few exemplars for discussing the thesis.
Relationship to existing disciplines:
-----------------------------------------------
I have seen two typical models--universities that setup a DH center/group/unit
and those that don't. In universities that setup such centers, the people who
digital techniques tend to cluster around these groups and the rest of the units
tend to continue going about their business of humanities largely ignoring the
DH groups.
In contrast, universities that either don't or resist creating such centers, the
DH people form informal communities but remain scattered across various
humanities department. I don't know that either model is better than the other.
Relationship to existing disciplines:
-----------------------------------------------
Regardless of which model is followed, I think the point you make about
"existing agendas" is an interesting one. Most humanities programs train
students to "think" humanities well before they teach students to think
"digital". Few, if any, humanities programs have incorporated the notion of
thinking differently and, at least from my anecdotal experience, tend to think
of the digital as a threat to the humanities. Thinking digitally (and hence,
asking different kinds of questions) is perceived as belittling the humanities
and an act of aggression from the sciences (especially computer science), thus
resulting in active resistance, if not a passive disregard for new ways of
asking and answering questions of significance.
My sense is that the structural issue is secondary to the intellectual one and
were we to think of the digital as enabling a different kind of inquiry and
teach those methods to humanities students in their formative years, that would
go a long way toward enabling students to investigate diverse scholarly
questions than merely using DH as a set of methods. Get 'em young š
As always, my thanks to everyone on this list for stimulating higher-level
thinking.
-unmil.
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Humanist <humanist@dhhumanist.org>
> Sent: Wednesday, October 23, 2024 10:19 AM
> To: Karadkar, Unmil (unmil.karadkar@uni-graz.at) <unmil.karadkar@uni-graz.at>
> Subject: [Humanist] 38.202: a (disputable?) thesis
>
>
> Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 38, No. 202.
> Department of Digital Humanities, University of Cologne
> Hosted by DH-Cologne
> www.dhhumanist.org
> Submit to: humanist@dhhumanist.org
>
>
> [1] From: Manfred Thaller <manfred.thaller@uni-koeln.de>
> Subject: Re: [Humanist] 38.195: a (disputable?) thesis (95)
>
> [2] From: Willard McCarty <willard.mccarty@mccarty.org.uk>
> Subject: Fwd: [Humanist] 38.196: a (disputable?) thesis (32)
>
>
> --[1]------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Date: 2024-10-22 07:57:39+00:00
> From: Manfred Thaller <manfred.thaller@uni-koeln.de>
> Subject: Re: [Humanist] 38.195: a (disputable?) thesis
>
> Dear Willard,
>
> I waited a bit with my answer, as I sincerely hoped, that somebody would
> contradict you. Unsurprisingly nobody did, as your diagnosis is extremely
> convincing.
>
> What should be discussed, in my opinion, is not so much the diagnosis - DH has
> been absorbed by the traditional disciplines - but the consequences. Just a few
> fleeting remarks from me, which might help to start a discussion.
>
> (1) Some time ago, the idea has been, that computation had two roles to play
> within the humanities: As a content agnostic tool, which could enable routine
> tasks. But also as a methodological enabler, which could allow epistemological
> approaches which would not be possible without such tools.
>
> Of cause, the two interact. Nevertheless, I find it very difficult to understand
> what additional epistemological venues are opened, if you just find it easier to
> do what you always did.
>
> (2) How dangerous is it to apply tools you do not understand? How many network
> visualizers are completely aware, that the distance between two nodes in a
> hairball is completely without meaning and a result of the algorithmic aim to
> use the display space as completely as possible?
> (Which would require a training in the conceptual background of such analyses,
> which I see not in many curricula and have not seen reflected in the last papers
> / presentations I saw using or praising such visualization tools.)
>
> ----------------------------------------
>
> I draw a line here, as the two previous items have, I think at least, the
> potential to be majority concerns. My own agenda - and I have explicitly stopped
> considering me part of DH - is probably weirder.
>
> (3) Computer science is solidly linked to requirements derived from hard science
> concerns. The WWW was derived from considerations about the requirements of
> physics. Is it healthy for the Humanities, if computational approaches are
> developed and contributed to the infosphere by hard science and the Humanities
> may consume what others produced as outsiders? (That business applications as
> well have opened up much more information technologies with conceptual
> consequences than anything coming from the Humanities is in my opinion no
> improvement against the first two sentences.)
>
> (4) Are the underlying assumptions about "information" used by computer science
> today really appropriate for the Humanities?
>
> (1 - 4) Is somebody who wants to keep a publishing deadline for a paper the
> value of which is derived by 100 % from the content-defined discipline it should
> serve able to answer (1) or (2), leave alone (3) and (4)?
>
> Kind regards,
> Manfred
>
>
>
> Am 21.10.24 um 09:58 schrieb Humanist:
>> Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 38, No. 195.
>> Department of Digital Humanities, University of Cologne
>> Hosted by DH-Cologne
>> www.dhhumanist.org
>> Submit to: humanist@dhhumanist.org
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> Date: 2024-10-21 06:56:36+00:00
>> From: Willard McCarty <willard.mccarty@mccarty.org.uk>
>> Subject: a thesis
>>
>> I want to put before you a thesis you may wish strongly to dispute. In
>> fact that's what I am hoping for, that someone here will provide
>> evidence that my thesis does not survive close inspection. It is this:
>> that the dominant tendency in digital humanities is its absorption
>> into older disciplines and departments as a set of tools and
>> techniques to pursue existing agendas.
>>
>> Go to it, please. But evidence (if any) to the contrary is essential.
>>
>> Yours,
>> WM
>> --
>> Willard McCarty,
>> Professor emeritus, King's College London; Editor, Interdisciplinary
>> Science Reviews; Humanist www.mccarty.org.uk
>
>
> --
> Prof.em.Dr. Manfred Thaller
> formerly University at Cologne /
> zuletzt UniversitƤt zu Kƶln
>
> --[2]------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Date: 2024-10-22 07:42:41+00:00
> From: Willard McCarty <willard.mccarty@mccarty.org.uk>
> Subject: Fwd: [Humanist] 38.196: a (disputable?) thesis
>
> In Humanist 38.195, I asked for evidence that "the dominant
> tendency in digital humanities is its absorption into older
> disciplines and departments as a set of tools and techniques
> to pursue existing agendas." Catharine Mason has asked
> whether I was querying the effect of digital humanities on
> older disciplines. Actually my question was the obverse:
> whether these disciplines have had appreciable theoretical
> influence on digital humanities.
>
> In 1997 Philip Agre argued in Computation and Human Experience for "a
> critical technical practice - a technical practice for which critical
> reflection upon the practice is part of the practice itself." (xii) He
> saw that there was "no formal community of critical technical
> practitioners" within AI and looked to philosophers and social
> scientists to reform his discipline. Among a few others, Lucy Suchman
> paid attention in Human-Machine Reconfigurations (2007), and more
> recently, Alan Blackwell in his latest, Moral Codes (2024).
>
> My favourite example of a bad example is one I participated in because
> it was all the rage at the time, namely that kind of "text-analysis"
> which simply operationalised New Criticism but didn't have the standing
> or interdisciplinary breadth to talk back effectively and move on. Am I
> being unfair? Please say so if so.
>
> I suppose I could rephrase: is digital humanities learning from
> genuinely interdisciplinary interactions with other disciplines? As a
> subspecialism, is it looking beyond its container--without getting
> swallowed by another one? Is it developing a critical technical practice
> which goes beyond its local envelope?
>
> Yours,
> WM
--[2]------------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: 2024-10-23 10:43:01+00:00
From: Mcgann, Jerome (jjm2f) <jjm2f@virginia.edu>
Subject: Re: [Humanist] 38.202: a (disputable?) thesis
Iād like to add two glosses to Manfredās shrewd posting.
(2) How dangerous is it to apply tools you do not understand?
The comment āappliesā to those who apply themselves to making
these tools as well as to those who apply them to specific tasks, What we donāt
understand about the tools we make is a direct function of what we donāt
understand about ourselves. Ī³Ī½įæ¶ĪøĪ¹ ĻĪµĪ±Ļ
ĻĻĪ½: I leave it in āwhatās Greek toā most
now to signal the wise provocation in that Delphic aphorism, which is wise
because, like ourselves and each one of us, itās hard to understand (thatās to
say, hard to act on wisely).
(4) Are the underlying assumptions about "information" used by computer science
today really appropriate for the Humanities?
We surely all get what Manfred is provoking. I want only to say
āyes, they can beā, IFF one keeps a sharp eye on the warning Manfred makes in
(2).
Jerry
--[3]------------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: 2024-10-23 08:48:14+00:00
From: <mail@gabrielegan.com>
Subject: Re: [Humanist] 38.202: a (disputable?) thesis
Dear Willard
Manfred Thaller asks what I consider
a very important question:
> How dangerous is it to apply tools
> you do not understand? How many
> network visualizers are completely
> aware, that the distance between
> two nodes in a hairball is completely
> without meaning and a result of the
> algorithmic aim to use the display
> space as completely as possible?
I think the answer is 'very dangerous'.
In my field, the availability of tools for the computational analysis of writing
styles, tools such as "Stylometry with R" (or "R Stylo"), makes it easy to
undertake computationally complex tasks and get impressive visualizations.
But these results mean nothing if the investigator does not understand
what the "R Stylo" software is actually doing and how important some of
the defaults built into the software are for the meaningfulness of its output.
I'm not criticizing the creators of "R Stylo", of course, but rather some of its
naive users.
But is this a problem confined to the Digital Humanities? I don't think so.
I too frequently sit in university management meetings where someone
displays a diagram containing boxes with words inside them and
connected by lines with arrow heads on them.
The concepts denoted by the words in the boxes generally are related
to one another in some way (say, all belonging to the same class of
concepts such as 'theories of learning') but it's not clear what the
arrowheaded lines mean about the relationships between the boxes
containing the words. It is remarkable how often the person presenting
such a diagram will be stumped by the simple question "What do the
arrowheaded lines represent?".
Regards
Gabriel
________________________________________________________________________
Professor Gabriel Egan, De Montfort University. www.gabrielegan.com
Director of the Centre for Textual Studies http://cts.dmu.ac.uk
Teaching award: https://www.advance-he.ac.uk/ntfs/professor-gabriel-egan
New Oxford Shakespeare https://www.oxfordscholarlyeditions.com/nos
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