Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 40, No. 85.
        Department of Digital Humanities, University of Cologne
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        Date: 2026-07-05 00:59:56+00:00
        From: Yann Audin <yann.audin@umontreal.ca>
        Subject: what's wrong

Dear McCarty, dear all,

(I cannot answer your original question ("For digital humanities as a field of
research, what is the most serious intellectual limitation?") at large, but I
think I might be able to give elements of answer in the particular case of
Computational Literary Studies.)

In 2021, Fabio Ciotti called Distant Reading "a methodology in quest of theory".
He's not the only one to have called into question the lack of theory in the
context of quantitative, empirical, statistical and computational approaches to
literary texts: in 1987 Rolf A. Zwaan lists the four following issues:

1. Current work deals with problems of no (or little) interest to literary
critics and theorists;
2. Lack of theory or, at best, unsophisticated theory;
3. Mostly, computers are used in the limited context of New Criticism;
4. Lack of theoretical reflection on the role of the computer in the study of
literature.

Although some of his critics were addressed in time, 2 and 4 somewhat still
haunt us.

In answering "What's wrong", my instinct is to say that there is more work to be
done in theorizing Computational Literary Studies. However, this work requires a
great deal of finesse and interdisciplinarity: this is not only a question of
understanding how models relate to literary theory, but also how they relate to
the material objects in which we implement algorithms and store data. The
question of "What's wrong" cannot be answered by humanists nor by computer
scientists: we need hybrid theorists.

This might lead us to engage with computer science as a theoretical field rather
than as a mean to an end, and to reject shiny toys for old rusted (pun intended)
tools. However, I might be ignoring the reality of DH beyond the comfort of my
simple PhD student-life (see Bill Pascoe's comment on the real limitations of
DH!)!

Cheers,

Yann Audin
PhD Candidate
Literature and Digital Humanities
University of Montreal
https://yann-audin.github.io/Cybermeneutics/

P.S. @Manfred Thaller, I really appreciated your comments on the question of
applying "computation on an abstract level to 'the Humanities'"; I am working on
this very question for my thesis and I am glad to see that it is still of some
importance, even if only for a self-proclaimed "grumpy septuagenarian"!


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