Patrik Svensson
It is appropriate to start a chapter on sorting the digital humanities out with questioning whether we really need to sort it out at all. This is a warranted question, given all the time and effort that has gone into defining, consolidating, expanding, questioning, and institutionalizing the field (Gold, 2012; Terras et al., 2013). In a workshop held at Umeå University in December 2013 about the future of the field, one of the participant groups suggested that the questions we will ask in five to seven years will be the same, but we will have different tools with which to answer them. There is a suggestion of circularity here, and looking at the history of humanities computing and the digital humanities, it is quite clear that many of the arguments resurface over time. It is almost comforting to read Martin Wynne’s Humanist list comment (2013) on the reorganization of digital humanities at Oxford, and relate it to Lou Burnard’s text (2002) on the reorganization of the same unit about 10 years earlier. They both relate to institutional placement and the perils and advantages of having a servile function within the university system. There are a number of issues like this one that can be traced over time, including reward systems, alternative careers, the value of the scholarship produced, and disciplinary boundary making. It may well be that some of these often inward-looking issues will never be sorted out, and that there are other issues that do not surface in the discussion about the field. In this chapter, I suggest that we need to revitalize the discussion.
Geoffrey Bowker and Susan Leigh Star (1999) demonstrate how classificatory systems have meaning in a very material sense and how categories can be invisible and be made visible. The digital humanities clearly does not consist of numerous discrete blocks that can be sorted out, and there is no way of solving the puzzle of digital humanities in any definite fashion. However, the notion of sorting out helps to frame the question of the future of the field in a way that indicates that a solution is possible. The main argument of this chapter is that this solution does exist, not a one-size-fits-all or a complete solution, but a way of thinking about the digital humanities that brings together the humanistic and the digital through embracing a non-territorial and liminal zone. Furthermore, the idea of sorting out the field draws our attention to its structures and classifications and forces us to think about the building blocks, categories, and issues that comprise the field.
This sorting out is intimately related to different epistemic traditions, disciplinary perspectives, and epistemologically situated technologies associated with the digital humanities as an intersectional field. There is a great deal of negotiating going on in such zones, and I argue that there has to be a willingness to understand other traditions without necessarily giving up disciplinary integrity (cf. Ratto, 2012). Furthermore, epistemic technologies can play a central role in challenging knowledge traditions and developing new knowledge, which requires us to be reflective of our own practices and assumptions and be willing to engage with other epistemic positions.
This chapter starts with a discussion of the status of the digital humanities and the common assumption that it is a field in disarray. I maintain that making the digital humanities into an institutionalized discipline can be counterproductive, in giving away some of the distinct advantages of a liminal position. This discussion is followed by a provisional analysis of the current situation that indicates that there is an opportunity for moving ahead productively, but that there are a number of issues and stances that need to be addressed. I argue that the territorial ambitions of some of the digital humanities organizations can be problematic at a time when the field is being negotiated and expanded. The second part of the chapter responds to a call for action by Melissa Terras from the perspective of the work going on in the Alliance of Digital Humanities Organizations (ADHO) and suggests possible actions and strategies required to move forward. These are embedded in a model of digital humanities that I will present. I posit that the institutional instability that has often been identified as a problem in the history of the digital humanities can be a key factor for developing the field. The chapter ends with a proposal for a code of conduct for the field and a list of actionable suggestions for the digital humanities.
It is often assumed that the digital humanities is in flux and not particularly stable as an institutional construct. While this might be true to some degree, there are obviously constants to the field. For instance, there is almost always a relationship to traditional humanities disciplines such as English and history, some sort of technological infrastructure, and a degree of perceived incompatibility with the system of higher education (whether it be reward systems, the view of the humanities, or allowances for alternative careers).
Furthermore, this instability has probably been influenced by there being an open, visible, and lively discussion about the field. While this is not a situation unique to the digital humanities, it seems more likely with interdisciplinary fields and fields undergoing change, such as art history in the 1980s and 1990s (Klein, 2005:113) and American studies in the late 1990s (Klein, 2005:168). However, the extent to which the debate has taken place online is likely to be unique to the digital humanities. Many of the best-known people in the field debate on Twitter together with others, including graduate students and officers at funding agencies such as the National Endowment for the Humanities. Online forums are often active, and when the Postcolonial Digital Humanities initiative hosted an open thread on “The digital humanities as a historical ‘refuge’ from race/class/gender/sexuality/disability?” (Koh and Risam, 2013), there were 165 comments, most of them quite substantial, over five days. As the history of the field shows, there has been a longstanding solid online engagement, with the Humanist list being one of the first academic email lists when it was started in 1987 by list curator Willard McCarty. This relative openness and outspokenness has undoubtedly contributed to the sense of the field as fractured and unstable, as polemic discussions have taken place live in public. Furthermore, the public and repeated preoccupation with the organization, history, and future of the field across media can come across as inward-looking and self-referential. The argument here is not necessarily that this is not true, but that we have to be sensitive to the ways in which the field is constructed, projected, and enacted across media and communication channels.
The stability of a given knowledge domain is among other things linked to how it is categorized in the academic system, its disciplinary heterogeneity, and the discourse about the area. The descriptor “discipline” is normally taken to denote a more static and less interdisciplinary area than “field” or “studies.” What gives disciplines a certain degree of stability is that they are associated with an epistemic tradition, objects of inquiry, assumptions, theories, methods, ways of sharing research, and career paths (Repko, 2008:4–5). There is a certain sense of unity associated with disciplines, although that does not mean that disciplines are static and unchanging (Klein, 2005:50). Disciplines and fields change over time, and while it might not be productive to suggest a developmental or evolutionary trajectory, there are patterns to disciplinary changes (Becher and Trowler, 2001:43). A common movement has been towards specialization, although this does not always lead to the formation of new disciplines (Weingart, 2010:11). There are also multiple possible trajectories of different kinds of interdisciplinary formations (Klein, 2010:22). Undergoing a formational stage or remaining in an interdisciplinary state is not unique to the digital humanities, but the field has certainly been trapped for a long time in an uncertain state without becoming a discipline or getting reasonably established as an interdiscipline or an academic area (such as American studies). I suggest that there are at least three reasons for this elongated status.
Firstly, there has been an incompatibility between the digital humanities and the institutional expectations of academia. When looking at the history of the field (as humanities computing), it is clear that in many cases the digital humanities could not secure an institutional position that easily accommodated a line of work that was different to most other areas in the humanities. Such work included operating between traditional university structures such as departments and disciplines, engaging with technological infrastructure, and needing to engage a variety of professional competencies for carrying out the work. That humanities computing partly was institutionalized as service centers (with varying degrees of autonomy) and institutes (maybe more akin to humanities centers than anything else) has probably added to the incompatibility. It should also be pointed out, however, that we are concerned with different types of incompatibilities, and that over the years a discourse of dissatisfaction has developed within the digital humanities about the humanities as a whole and the academy.
Secondly, having an institutional position outside the traditional structures of academia can be central for carrying out certain kinds of work. Traditionally, many digital humanities centers and platforms have operated fairly broadly across the humanities. It is easier to engage with other humanities disciplines without being seen as a competing discipline or as affiliated with a specific discipline such as English. There are thus benefits to this liminal position. Furthermore, the digital humanities has more recently become a platform for engaging with the future of the humanities more broadly. This is an activity that speaks to all of the humanities, not least junior scholars, and which can be easier to organize from a position outside of traditional departments or disciplines. If there is interest in renewing the humanities at large, it simply makes more sense working with the traditional disciplines from an in-between position, rather than from a distinct disciplinary position.
Thirdly, the digital humanities currently brings together a range of epistemic traditions, disciplines, and perspectives. The lively dialog in and about the field is partly a consequence of this multivocal situation, and the variety of positions makes institutionalizing efforts difficult. Bringing together different traditions requires a great deal of negotiation, and the formation of a new discipline normally leads to a decentering of particular disciplinary identities and eventually to the establishment of a distinct epistemic regime. There can actually be a considerable strength in an unresolved situation, as it is easier for different knowledge communities to gather around boundary objects such as the digital without having to become institutionalized as a discipline. Arguably, this will also produce stronger scholarship than if the digital humanities attempts to operate from a more closed-off position.
It is not surprising that there would be an interest in turning the digital humanities into a discipline, given the history of the field and the institutional template of academia. This is one way of sorting out the field, but not the only one, and while there is no single solution, I argue that the very reasons why the digital humanities may be seen as unstable are actually good reasons for not moving in the direction of becoming an institutionalized discipline.
A major development over the last couple of years has been a substantial expansion of the field, larger institutional support, many more actors, and a range of new expectations. This has led to a substantial pressure on the field as traditionally conceived, which is unsurprising given the history of the field as a fairly narrow (but important) enterprise and given the current visibility and attraction. This pressure comes from humanistic traditions with a digital engagement that have not been seen as a major part of digital humanities (such as new media studies and rhetoric and composition), from incoming scholars in fields such as gender studies and media studies, and from humanistic and institutional leadership. There are also alternative digital humanities platforms with different notions of what the field can be, such as the Postcolonial Digital Humanities movement and the Humanities, Arts, Science, and Technology Alliance and Collaboratory (HASTAC).
The part of the digital humanities community that identifies with a 40- or 50-year-long tradition sometimes makes the point that their past struggles, often related to being institutionally marginalized, are not acknowledged and that there is a risk of giving away what the field has achieved at a point when there is finally leverage and support for the digital humanities. In a provocative Humanist post, Craig Bellamy (2013) opines that:
Sure I am being a gadfly, but if anyone can use the term “digital humanities” for what ever purpose (and others will believe them), then the past 40 odd years of work in this field will be wasted.
While this is almost certainly not a representative standpoint of the community, it is important to acknowledge that a tension does exist here, and that this tension is not only about institutional prestige or resources, but also about epistemology and different epistemic traditions.
It would be wrong to assume, however, that this expanded variety of digital humanities is mainly a result of interested parties coming to the field at a time when it has considerable traction. Rather, the digital humanities organizations, mainly coming out of humanities computing, were part of taking on this new role for the digital humanities. In particular, a group of key members of the humanities computing community worked towards forming the Alliance of Digital Humanities Organizations in the early 2000s, publishing the Blackwell Companion to Digital Humanities (Schreibman et al., 2004), renaming the annual conference series (from the joint annual conference of the Association for Computers and the Humanities and the Association for Literary and Linguistic Computing to Digital Humanities Conference) and were also influential when the National Endowment for the Humanities created its Initiative for Digital Humanities in 2006. There was apparently a realization that humanities computing would not be the flavor of the 2000s and that another scope and packaging were needed. An intriguing question is to what extent humanities computing leadership realized that they were also staking out a pathway that would eventually decenter their own community. There was resistance inside and outside the leadership group and, at times, fairly heated discussions (Svensson, 2016). In any case, at least parts of the larger community did not embrace this reorientation, or more likely it was simply not clear that a shift in names would be more than exactly that. It would also seem that much of the institutional groundwork did not actually change, and that the grounding in the epistemic tradition of humanities computing prevailed.
The pressure described at the beginning of this section has stimulated, and even forced, some more considerable change. This is partly a result of the digital humanities now being a more diverse set of communities, but also because of discursive changes and actual reorientations. The uptake of the idea of big-tent digital humanities is an example of this shift, but arguably with minor impact. As I have argued elsewhere, the tent is still largely made of the same kind of epistemic fabric and is seen as exclusionary and territorial (Svensson, 2012). Indeed, some of the moves by the digital humanities organizations can be seen as aggressive at a time when it is more important to focus on discussing the core values and directions of the field. While the big tent is not overly aggressive as a discursive construction, the global territorialization of the field is more noteworthy in this regard. Again, this concerns a series of name changes and also new territories being added to the map. Examples include the renaming of the Association for Literary and Linguistic Computing to the European Association for Digital Humanities in 2011, and the recent addition of Australasian and Japanese associations.
I am not arguing that there is anything wrong with this territorial reconfiguration and expansion, but given the tension and pressure already indicated, these moves can be seen as challenging. An illumining example is centerNet, which describes itself as “an international network of digital humanities centers.” It assumes that the center is a key building block for the digital humanities. Furthermore, it is clearly embedded within the traditional digital humanities organizations, and thus cannot be said to represent the digital humanities outside these traditions, although it can be seen as attempting to spread this model throughout the world (essentially exporting a specific model of digital humanities). Additionally, centerNet strives to represent the digital humanities in a number of strategic contexts such as the Consortium of Humanities Centers and Institutes and several European-level initiatives. While each of these points is part of the seemingly successful and defendable institutional strategy of centerNet, a central question is whether this strategy is the best given the ongoing negotiation and reorientation of the field. However, it may be that centerNet is currently moving towards a less territorial stance. The composition of the newly appointed editorial board for DHCommons, a centerNet publication, is diverse and fairly inclusive.
The digital humanities is obviously much more than the tradition of humanities computing and the associations that descend from this tradition, but this particular tradition is institutionally significant. It is understandable that it did not automatically embrace large-scale changes that might not be compatible with what was seen as the core orientation of the field. One point of tension deals with the discourse associated with some of the other actors, including organizations such as HASTAC, which partly focus on the reformation of the university and the digital humanities as a transformative agent. Such discourses sometimes do not touch ground and can be a way of using the field as a tool in an institutional fight to leverage the humanities. These are important goals and sentiments, but there can be a real gap between on-the-ground computational work and far-away institutional visions. Similarly, initiatives such as Postcolonial Digital Humanities take for granted a critical (and important) vocabulary of power, postcolonialism, genealogy, discourse, gender, and globalization. This vocabulary may not feel familiar to a community not normally engaged with this kind of discourse. This is not just a matter of the actual issues at stake, but the penetrability or impenetrability of discourse and practices surrounding different epistemic traditions. Interestingly, the working definition of digital humanities employed by the Postcolonial Digital Humanities website is “a set of methodologies engaged by humanists to use, produce, teach, and analyze culture and technology” (Risam and Koh, undated). This definition could be said to be imposing a methodology reading on the digital humanities as a field that is more akin to the humanities computing of the past than present-day digital humanities, and hence locking digital humanities in a form that is arguably by definition less susceptible to their reformational agenda.
I argue that all the perspectives discussed up to this point are important to the digital humanities, and that the coming together of these and other epistemic traditions is critical to the further development of the field. This does not mean that the integrity of such traditions should necessarily be challenged, but rather that everyone will have to adapt to some degree and there have to be sites and affordances for this exchange to actually take place. Such processes will be looked at in more detail in a later section, but for now it is worth pointing out that such adaptive work requires a common purpose, willingness to engage, and some degree of humbleness.
Critiquing, historicizing, and contextualizing the digital humanities is important, and there is a growing literature contributing to this understanding. There is a risk, however, that this work does not actually impact the field in that it does not necessarily go from critique to any suggestions on how to move forward in any comprehensive and sophisticated way. There is also a risk of getting caught up in binaries and specific epistemic positions, not least when debates are quick and heated.
This is not to suggest that the community (to the extent that there is a single community) is incapable of handling the situation, or that there is an easy solution (to the extent that there is anything to solve), but that the digital humanities composes a complex and intriguing construct with considerable potential and leverage. Needless to say, the digital humanities is not the only complex institutional formation. Another example is the development of American studies from the 1920s onwards, which has been characterized by a series of debates and institutional strategies (Klein, 2005: Chapter 7). Lucy Maddox argues that because of the uncertain status of American studies over time, there has been a critical examination not least from within about “its methods of inquiry, its aims, its intellectual coherence, its relationship to other disciplines and fields of study” (1999:viii). This description resonates with the situation of digital humanities. There are certain factors, however, that contribute to the potential for the field not to get as fully mobilized as other fields, including institutional incompatibility, a large epistemic range, epistemic technologies, the epistemologically aggressive stance of some individuals and some institutional actors, and substantial internal and external pressure.
Melissa Terras poses an interesting challenge in a text on critiques of the digital humanities and how to be constructive about solutions (from the point of view of her work in ADHO):
Most people “within” Digital Humanities … are people who want Digital Humanities to be as open and as great as possible. This whole field has been built on the hard work of many academics who have given up their free time to try and entrench the use of computing in humanistic study into an academic field of enquiry, and it wouldn’t exist without them, even if the form it exists in is currently imperfect. I would say, from where I sit on various committees, that people want to keep DH growing, and growing healthily. So if there are things wrong with DH, then do give concrete examples, or propose concrete solutions, so they can be taken forward. They’re listening – we’re listening.
(Terras, 2013)
While this is a laudable attitude, the argument is also embedded in the institutional frame of digital humanities and its history. It is not as simple as everyone wanting the field to be “as open and as great as possible,” since “open” and “great” are keyed to one’s epistemological position. This is why the big tent of digital humanities is not as open as it may seem at first glance. Regardless, Terras’s challenge is a worthy one, and the rest of this chapter will be an attempt to respond to this challenge. One point of departure is that the best and most effective way to develop and renew the field is to work with the ADHO. While it would have been possible to propose a wholly new organization or framework, the ADHO seems like the best possible platform (at least at this point). Also, it would make little sense and show little respect to respond to Terras’s challenge through choosing not to engage with the ADHO.
The response will be on different levels of concretion. An initial discussion of epistemology will lead to a contoured model of the digital humanities. This model will then be used to discuss specific issues, and whenever possible, solutions will be suggested. Again, as I have argued, there has to be an awareness that there is not one solution, and that some of the problems may not actually be problematic. The solutions suggested, or any attempt at comprehensively renewing the digital humanities, will need be embedded in a set of strategies to actually make such renewal possible. A number of such strategies are proposed in the code of conduct and list of action points that end the chapter.
In a study of archaeological research with a strong technological component, Matt Ratto (2012) investigated situations where multiple epistemic traditions come together, and when technology plays a significant role. The research carried out by the archaeologist in the study was refuted by three communities for three different reasons, and Ratto uses the term “epistemic double-binds” to describe this situation. The concept of epistemic double-binds describes the inability to fulfill the simultaneous requirements of several knowledge communities (2012:579). Ratto’s case study concerned the technology-rich reconstruction of pre-Roman temples with a particular focus on the terra cotta roofs, where a key concern was to challenge the standard explanation of images on the façades of such temples. They had been seen as propaganda for cultural elites, but this view was challenged through a virtual-reality construction, which seemed to demonstrate that the elite could not actually see the images. The traditional classical and terra cotta archaeologists were hesitant to see the reconstruction as a legitimate statement about the past, while more technologically oriented archaeologists argued that the reconstructions were not realistic enough. A third community, computer programmers and scientists, did not find the reconstruction innovative on a technological level. However, it could be argued that the refutations are also in fact an indication of success in the sense that the investigated project apparently challenged three traditions at the same time. While this is not necessarily a guarantee of the quality of the work, the response demonstrates engagement across epistemic traditions (including the “home” discipline).
Ratto usefully points to the difficulty of bridging between technically inflected and humanities-inflected epistemological conditions. Modeling, visualization, and simulation technologies can be said to be epistemic technologies. Through their epistemological embeddedness, such technologies can point to fractures between and within humanities disciplines, and they can also reinforce and develop positions within scholarly domains (2012:568). Since the digital humanities is a technologically embedded field, epistemic technologies are bound to play a significant role. For instance, markup and encoding technologies impose certain ways of seeing and interpreting the world, resulting in clashes between the computational expertise associated with making such structures and some disciplinary scholars who find incompatibility between their work and standardized encoding schemas. And digital humanists coming from gender or postcolonial studies may oppose the computational paradigm and the encoding structures because they see little recognition of the structures of power and oppression built into encoding schemas. Similarly, computationally driven enterprises such as cultural analytics and maker labs are deeply embedded in terms of their epistemology. A traditional art historian encountering a video wall visualization of a subset of artwork may not accept the argument that the visualization will allow open-ended critical explorations of art. Activities such as maker labs, hackathons, and that-camps embed ideas about technologies and the world that do not often seem to be steeped in the real world. As Mattern (2013) points out:
not only does the hackathon reify the dataset, but the whole form of such events – which emphasize efficiency and presume that the end result, regardless of the challenge at hand, will be an app or another software product – upholds the algorithmic ethos.
A fair degree of work produced in the digital humanities does not get to the point of double-binds, as there is too little in-depth critique across knowledge communities. There may therefore not be a constructive way of preventing or resolving such binds if they were to occur. There is often critical and epistemic engagement coming from only one position, and often this is not the “home” discipline or area (outside the digital humanities). By and large, the humanities as a whole has had little interest in engaging deeply on a critical level with the work produced within the digital humanities. Overall, the critique tends to be shallow as a result of being caught up in binary oppositions, structural issues, and institutional parameters. Also, it would seem that there are other factors restricting in-depth critique. The communal sensibility and sometimes defensive stance of digital humanities (in particular as humanities computing) can restrict a more nuanced critique from that group, and a lack of engagement with the materiality of the digital in traditional disciplines may preclude a knowledgeable engagement with such work (or elicit a blanket negative response), even if it is based in the discipline. If a project or argument based in a humanities discipline gets a blanket rejection from both the discipline and the digital humanities (as humanities computing), we are concerned with an epistemic double-bind, but one that probably does not show the depth of the critique presented in Ratto’s case study. It is also possible that the digital humanities more broadly (not humanities computing) would reject the project or argument as too disciplinary or too technological, and then there would be a three-part refutation. An interesting question is whether resolving the double-bind is always the most productive strategy. Not ending up with epistemic double-binds may be an advantageous goal, but if the critique is too bland and unitary, there might be a lack of interpretative and conceptual depth. Ultimately, however, going through a process of establishing epistemic double-binds and then resolving them would seem most transformative.
Where does this lead us? For one thing, the field always seems to fail to deliver on at least some level, whether it be intellectual robustness and citations in top journals; degree of openness; technological, theoretical, or material engagement; disciplinary recognition; institutional status; public engagement; or possibly quality of the work produced. While there will never be – nor should there be – a full solution, the response could be to dig deeper epistemologically and cherish the differences, rather than to institutionalize the field as a more unitary discipline. In many ways, the digital humanities is already a place for this kind of work, but the lockups described earlier seem to block some of the potential of this position. Becoming a discipline might result in an avoidance of double-binds and epistemic challenges, but such a development appears unrealistic and is not the best way to develop the field. It seems that the different traditions are just too dissimilar and institutionally unlikely to come together in a tight disciplinary formation. I argue that the coming together of different disciplines, traditions, and modes of engagement in a looser configuration can be quite productive. Furthermore, a liminal position is also useful for being able to challenge different actors and to be engaged in a renewal of the humanities.
I advocate an epistemologically open field that has an institutional core with integrity and an ideational foundation, and works with the whole of the humanities and outside actors. It accommodates several overlapping modes of engagement between the humanities and the digital (study object, tool, medium of expression). Many members of the community are affiliated with both the digital humanities and a field, whereas others are based mainly in the digital humanities. Importantly, this institutional core incorporates members coming from the tradition of humanities computing as well as humanities disciplines and other traditions and specialties. While much work is placed between different traditions, there is acceptance for both specialized humanities computing work and monograph writing as well as many other practices, and these ideally engage with each other through a shared platform and identity.
The field is thus simultaneously a place for disciplinary engagement and for intersectional epistemic work. As noted previously, many of the tensions and institutional challenges associated with the digital humanities can be related to this intermediate position. I have argued that instead of abandoning such a position, we need to embrace and develop it. The epistemic tension demonstrated by Ratto’s work can indeed be useful or even necessary to carry out some work between the humanities and the digital.
There are some frameworks that can be useful when exploring this intermediate position. Work on trading zones can illuminate how epistemological boundary work is carried out (Galison, 1999). According to Galison’s work on physicists from different paradigms, knowledge communities can be coordinated around objects of study, even if they disagree as to their understanding of the objects under study and the exchange process. One important point here is that agreement is not always possible or necessary. However, the transactional metaphor at play here can seem to underplay the dynamic, critical, and emergent qualities of such operations. The concept of temporary autonomous zones is very different in this sense (Bey, 1991), as it stresses zones of free culture at the fault lines of controlled systems (often political). Emergent creativity and work on the boundary lines are key parameters, and the work on temporary autonomous zones can inform the digital humanities about the importance of agility and not being institutionally too stable. However, the digital humanities will always be more institutionalized than such zones. Indeed, it would seem advantageous for the digital humanities to embody both systematic epistemic work around shared objects and some of the dynamic and creative qualities associated with temporary autonomous zones. The work done by language and power structures in intersectional work is further explicated by research carried out on contact zones (Pratt, 1991). There is a sensitivity required to facilitate such zones and, in particular, the framework stresses the importance of being sensitive to cultural, social, and linguistic identity and context. There is also a realization in Pratt’s work that there is a need for social and intellectual spaces for sub-communities. She says that such spaces can be used to “construct shared understandings, knowledges, claims on the world that they can then bring into the contact zone” (1991:40). This finds echoes in Ratto’s argument that we need to overcome differences without removing them fully (2012:582).
Overcoming differences without removing them takes work and sensitivity. All of the frameworks for intersectional work described in the previous section draw on the notion of a community with shared values and sentiments. This does not imply that all issues are resolved, but that there are guidelines for how to work together. One way of formalizing such guidelines is through having a code of conduct for the digital humanities. Such codes can be powerful in that they ideally capture and define modes of engagement, common sentiment, and rules that are accepted by a community and are necessary for being a member of that community. It is not a matter of single statements so much as a number of statements that together constitute the code of conduct. At times, individual statements can seem to be simple, taken for granted, or just naïve, but the job of a code of conduct is exactly to make transparent what is expected. Sometimes the things about ourselves that we take for granted may not actually carry over into action or personal and institutional awareness, and a code of conduct can remind us of shared values even when we overstep. I suggest that the following list can be the beginning of a code of conduct for ADHO and for the digital humanities more generally:
While the code of conduct provides an important foundation, it does not address Terras’s challenge sufficiently. In the following, I aim to provide conceptually grounded and actionable suggestions as a response. While these are a response to the challenge, they are also a more general attempt at outlining a path forward for the digital humanities in an intermediate time perspective.
Most of these points relate to the necessity of having a real awareness of differences in perspectives and epistemic traditions. We tend to take certain aspects of our own traditions for granted, and taking a step back is not necessarily easy. Language and discourse play a vital role here in assigning frames to our epistemic traditions. Let me illustrate this with two examples.
The digital humanities is often described as inherently collaborative, not just the field, but also its technologies, projects, and people. Collaboration is an active and visible parameter in the narrative and framing of digital humanities. Not working collaboratively is often construed as an exception. Lisa Spiro states that the digital humanities community sees collaboration as an ethos necessary for its mission and work, and adds parenthetically, “even as it recognizes that some work is better done in solitude” (2012:25). Similarly, Bethany Nowviskie classifies situations “in which digital humanities practitioners work without explicit assistance or collaborative action” as “edge cases” (2011:170). Also, the kind of collaboration seen as central to the digital humanities is epistemologically flavored. It is not any collaboration, but one compatible with the project-based and technology-rich work processes associated with the tradition of digital humanities. It is unlikely that a standard seminar situation would be seen as highly collaborative in the same fashion. Furthermore, the focus on collaboration in the digital humanities also means that much individual work within the field is made invisible. This is reinforced by an often oppositional scheme between the digital humanities and the traditional humanities, by which the digital humanities is seen as collaborative, while the humanities is seen as being anchored in a highly individualistic model.
Another example is the inclusion or non-inclusion of gender, power, postcolonial, and environmental perspectives in digital humanities work. Adeline Koh and Roopika Risam (2013) argue that such categories tend to be blanketed out in computationally driven work in the digital humanities. According to their analysis, these categories have been largely invisible. This claim can be problematized, but it is certainly true that the field has not been heavily inflected along these axes. This situation is changing, however, which is partly a result of intersectional work and a broader scope for the digital humanities. An interesting example is the connection between environmental humanities and digital humanities, where there are many potential synergies. For instance, the digital humanities interest in “making” and intellectual middleware aligns well with the exploration of offering alternative narratives of “nature” in the environmental humanities (cf. Galison, 2014). And through the influx of scholars from areas such as gender studies, and the consequential epistemic negotiation, it is likely that there will be a stronger engagement for such perspectives within the community of digital humanities. At the same time, such traditions – when in contact with the digital humanities – will likely have to negotiate their relation to matters such as technological infrastructure, language, materiality, and making.
It seems likely that the next five years will be critical for the shaping of the digital humanities. There are multiple possible pathways ahead, and while there is no definite way of sorting the digital humanities out, I have suggested in this chapter that we need to embrace and develop the liminal position of the field rather than move away from being in between. The big tent will never be big enough, and we need to give up some of the old binaries and move forward as an epistemologically open, intellectually curious, and technologically engaged enterprise. We need to be aware of our own epistemic commitments and be generous enough to try to understand others’ before critiquing them on epistemological grounds. This does not mean giving up one’s own disciplinary anchorage or sense of sharpness, but rather being willing to learn and negotiate. Having a code of conduct can help us identify and foster shared community values.
We need to take time to constitute the field before we attempt to use one particular model of digital humanities as a template to develop the digital humanities internationally. However, it may well be that what we find out is that it will never be appropriate to simply advocate one model. Furthermore, as a humanities-wide enterprise, the digital humanities can represent the humanities in certain contexts and be an experimental platform for enacting and imagining the future of the humanities. The digital humanities can never be strong enough without working with the rest of the humanities. This does not mean, though, that the field should not have integrity or that digital humanities always has to reach out to the rest of the humanities.
A point about humility too. As a young graduate student in English linguistics, I had learned that the archaeologist Sir Colin Renfrew was coming to my university to receive a scholarly prize. One of my primary interests at the time was the history of languages, and I was quite interested in Professor Renfrew’s work and him approaching linguistics from the point of view of archaeology. I contacted him and asked him whether he would be willing to give me an interview during his visit. I was happy he accepted, and I had a wonderful conversation with him. He must have been about 60 years old at the time and was generous with his time. He told me how his interest in historical linguistics and archaeology had made him realize that he needed to have a better grasp of molecular biology. He started to go to molecular biology conferences, and for a long time he would sit at the very back, listening and learning. He said that he had to devote time to getting a sense of the field and current research. After a year or two, he told me, he was actually invited to sit up front and be an active part of the dialog. This taught me about the importance of intellectual humility. Renfew showed respect through taking the time to learn the “language” and more about the field, although he could probably have imposed himself in a much more direct way. There is a lot to be said for such generosity and humility in the context of the digital humanities. And even if we cannot sort the digital humanities out, let’s at least try!