#digital_humanities

Augmented Editions and Fluid Textuality

As I mentioned in discussion last week, one of the concepts in the Digital_Humanities reading from p. 29-42 already somewhat familiar to me from other literary research methods is the idea of the fluid text, which resembles some of the theory behind “genetic criticism,” an approach to manuscripts and other “avant textes” (“before-texts”) developed in France. One of the central tenets of genetic criticism is that the study of genesis, evolution, and revision through primary documents should not treat published works as the culmination of a teleological process that contains the meaning of all previous versions, but rather another instance in a series of independently meaningful versions. On p. 35-6, the authors of Digital_Humanities make a strong case for the usefulness of DH techniques and platforms for genetic projects that track versioning, and they also theorize an equivalent genetic practice for scholarship, in which evolving digital research-results would retain version-history: “what appears at first to be a single page of a text or object extends through a multiplicity of embedded layers, each displaying a different facet of an argument or history of a work’s production” (36). But whereas genetic criticism almost invariably takes an interest in the work of a central author, DH fluid textuality allows for the arrival or disappearance of many authors.

Locative Investigation and Thick Mapping

This section contributes to my sense that one of DH’s particular pedagogical uses is its projects’ ability to serve students both as a repository of humanities knowledge and as a ground for practical applications of humanities skills. Of course, it has always been possible to apply, say, the skills of literary close-reading to a critical article (to my mind, this seems more useful, in fact, than applying the same skills to “Code, Software, and Platform Studies,” p. 53-4), but the interactivity of DH projects makes this kind of engagement more automatic and familiar. In the case of “Thick Mapping” projects, the lessons of fields like Anthropology, History, or Literature about subjectivity and contingency will have an immediate effect on students who become aware of their own individual navigations inside digital maps and data. Because DH projects are generally based on curated worlds of data, larger and more versatile than the narrowly selected examples used for a rigid argument, students (as well as other researchers and members of the public) can work out what to select and focus on for themselves.

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