The digital humanities as a humanities project

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Patrik SvenssonThe digital humanities as a humanities project

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[42]

The digital humanities as a humanitiesproject

patr ik svensson

Umea University, Sweden

abstract

This article argues that the digital humanities can be seen as a humanities project

in a time of significant change in the academy. The background is a number of

scholarly, educational and technical challenges, the multiple epistemic traditions

linked to the digital humanities, the potential reach of the field across and outside

the humanities, and the ‘digital’ as a boundary object. In the article, four case

studies are used to exemplify the digital humanities as a humanities project, and it

is suggested that the field can be seen as a trading zone and meeting place rather

than a strained ‘big tent’. In this way, the digital humanities can accept scholarly

and technological challenges in relation to the digital as well as being an important

place for thinking about, experimenting with and rethinking the humanities.

k eywords digital humanities, epistemic traditions, humanities, meeting place,

trading zone

i n t r o d u c t i o n

The digital humanities can be seen as a twenty-first-century humanities

project driven by frustration, dissatisfaction, epistemic tension, everyday prac-

tice, technological vision, disciplinary challenges, institutional traction, hope,

ideals and strong visions. This article explores the role of the digital humanities

in relation to the humanities at large in a time of significant change in the

academy.

The digital humanities are by no means a well-defined or clearly fenced-off

field. On the contrary, they are characterized by ongoing negotiation, differ-

ent epistemic traditions coming together, and radically different visions.

at St Petersburg State University on December 26, 2013ahh.sagepub.comDownloaded from



There is also a great deal of common ground, naturally, as well as common

interest and shared traction in terms of external interest, an expanded number

of programs and initiatives, increased funding, and a comparatively high

degree of visibility. At the same time, higher education is in a precarious

situation in countries such as the USA and England and, according to

many, threatened not only by lack of funding, but by lack of flexibility

(Taylor, 2010), adaptation of corporate culture (Nussbaum, 2010) and an

increased need to justify the humanities and arts (Fish, 2008; Parker, 2008).

There is also a growing sense that interdisciplinary work is critical, but not

supported by existing university structures (Nature, 2007), and related to a

growing appreciation at least in the sciences that science is not ‘pure’ anymore

(Galison, 2010: 49).

Looking at the humanities more specifically, there is a recurring discourse

of crises (see Bivens-Tatum (2010) for historical examples) – something that

interrelates with the digital humanities in different ways. On the one hand, the

current actual and presumed canalization of resources and interest in the digital

humanities can be seen as a threat taking away resources and visibility from

other parts of the humanities. Examples of leverage for the field include the

creation of the National Endowment Office of Digital Humanities, major

grants from large foundations such as the Mellon Foundation, a series of

articles in The New York Times and a multitude of new or planned univer-

sity-based initiatives with support from the university and institutional levels.

These are resources that presumably could be spent in other ways, even

though higher education does not necessarily have to be seen as a zero sum

game. Alternatively, the digital humanities can be seen as a necessary human-

ities project, engaged with the future of the humanities as large. This latter

view is not unproblematic from a field-internal point of view (not all members

of the field agree with this being the ‘job’ of the digital humanities), nor from

an outside point of view (what gives the digital humanities the right to rep-

resent and ‘envision’ the humanities?). One pertinent question is what, if

anything, makes the digital humanities a legitimate place for thinking about

and rethinking the humanities?

In any case, we need to acknowledge that the digital humanities are not

one, coherent entity, and that there are tensions and epistemic traditions in

play (Svensson, 2009). For instance, there is a sense that the tradition of digital

humanities does not privilege theoretical work integral to other parts of the

humanities (Liu, 2011) and that the field is anchored in certain disciplines such

as English (Kirschenbaum, 2010) rather than others. It would seem that there

are considerable power and possibilities to be gained from bridge building, and

truly inclusive and coordinated efforts.

Svensson: The digital humanities as a humanities project

[43]




This article consists of three parts. The first part discusses the digital human-

ities as a humanities project on the basis of four examples. The second part

looks at what makes digital humanities a potential humanities project. The

third part suggests that construing the digital humanities as a ‘trading zone’

(Galison, 1997) and meeting place can be instrumental in facilitating the digital

humanities as a humanities project.

o u t s e t : f o u r e x a m p l e s

Let us start with four statements or descriptions about the digital humanities to

illustrate different conceptualizations of the digital humanities as a project.

Firstly, a significant funding agency organization, the US National

Endowment of the Humanities Office of Digital Humanities, presents this

overview of the area:

As in the sciences, digital technology has changed the way scholars perform their work. It

allows new questions to be raised and has radically changed the ways in which materials

can be searched, mined, displayed, taught, and analyzed. Technology has also had an

enormous impact on how scholarly materials are preserved and accessed, which brings

with it many challenging issues related to sustainability, copyright, and authenticity.

(NEH, n.d.)

It is noteworthy that technology here is given considerable agency. There is

no clear indication of an integrated and iterative process between technology

and scholars (Drucker, 2009). Technology has significantly (‘radically’) chan-

ged the way scholars do their work, and it has had a large (‘enormous’) impact

on how we manage scholarly materials. There is a promise of substantial

impact, although it should be noted that this example is moderate in com-

parison to many other presentations of the digital humanities. The above

presentation largely draws on the notion of technology as a tool, although

the presumed ability of the tool to allow novel (‘new’) questions points to a

sensibility to tools being integrated into scholarly research and interpretative

processes. It is not uncommon for the discourse of digital humanities to draw

on science as a model, which is also evident in the initial framing in the above

quote (‘As in the sciences . . .’). The same pattern can be seen in discussions of

research infrastructure (Unsworth et al., 2006) and when collaborative, inter-

disciplinary research challenges are framed in terms of ‘big humanities’

(Davidson, 2008: 714; Weber, 2005).

While the NEH description suggests change, even radical change, it could

be argued that the scope of that change is largely intrinsic to the field and not

dramatic on an extrinsic or structural level. True, increased accessibility to

scholarly material (and cultural heritage) affects other societal sectors, and

Arts and Humanities in Higher Education 11(1-2)

[44]




some of the research carried out with new tools will influence and possibly

change the intellectual landscape, but we are not necessarily talking about

reconfiguring the humanities or the academy, and we are not clearly seeing

a major movement or agenda with pronounced scholarly and intellectual

direction, institutional traction and transformational sentiment.

The second example comes from a University of California at Los Angeles

White Paper associated with the UCLA Center for Digital Humanities:

Digital Humanities is an umbrella term for a wide array of practices for creating,

applying, and interpreting new digital and information technologies. These practices

are not limited to conventional humanities departments, but affect every humanistic

field at the university, including history, anthropology, arts and architecture, infor-

mation studies, film and media studies, archaeology, geography, and the social sci-

ences. At the same time, Digital Humanities is a natural outgrowth and expansion

of the traditional scope of the Humanities, not a replacement or rejection of

humanistic inquiry. In fact, the role of the humanist is critical at this historic

moment, as our cultural legacy migrates to digital formats and our relation to

knowledge, cultural material, technology, and society is radically re-conceptualized.

Already within the broad field of Digital Humanities, we are seeing a flowering of

interdisciplinary, collaborative, and technologically-sophisticated research and peda-

gogy that is producing new modes of knowledge formation, reaching new audi-

ences for digital scholarship, and setting new intellectual agendas and priorities for

the twenty-first century. (Presner and Johanson, 2009)

Just as in the first example, there is a strong sense of ongoing change expressed,

here signaled by expressions such as ‘flowering’, ‘historic moment’ and ‘society

is radically reconceptualized’, and further accentuated by three instances of

‘new’ in the final sentence. The presentation is grounded in the traditional

humanities (not clearly suggesting an overhaul of the humanities), while at the

same time suggesting a fairly radical development of the humanities. In com-

paring the two texts, it is clear that technology plays a much more instru-

mental role in the short NEH text. True, in the UCLA example, the field is

described as a set of practices for ‘creating, applying and interpreting’ digital

technologies and there is a reference to digital cultural heritage, but beyond

this there is a much stronger sense of extrinsic structural change and impact.

The critical role of the (digital) humanist at this point in time is emphasized,

and the digital humanities are linked to emerging modes of knowledge pro-

duction, as well as collaborative and interdisciplinary practice. The sense of the

digital humanities as an ambitious humanities project comes across clearly

through the description of the field as ‘setting new intellectual agendas and

priorities for the twenty-first century’. It is also quite clear that this is not about

the digital humanities as a separate discipline, but about the humanities as a

whole.


[45]




Moving from the funding agency and institutional level to the individual

level, the third example demonstrates epistemic tension and some of the path-

finding work done by junior scholars. Whitney Trettien (2010) tells us the

story of not finding a place in digital humanities for her PhD thesis:

So what was I doing? My born-digital thesis was not a scholarly resource: I wasn’t and

never intended to present or curate a collection of digital artifacts for others to browse.

My work was critical and individualistic, conscious of its methodology and historical

moment. It strove for self-awareness . . . On the one hand, the Digital Humanities com-

munity – the community formed around institutions and labs and grant cycles and

funding structures – has set itself up as a production house, a place where the infrastruc-

tural work of digitization, marking-up texts, and producing tools to facilitate research

gets done . . . On the other hand, though, is the promise of a more radical, and radically

individual, break with university structures: Parry’s social media-savvy digital humanist.

This is the twitter-blogger who follows her passions across interdisciplinary boundaries,

the Facebooker who makes the personal the political and in doing so humanizes the

humanities.

Trettien illustrates the ongoing negotiation within the digital humanities com-

munity, broadly conceived, between different epistemic traditions and outsets.

The distinction between the ‘production house’ model and a model based on

the ‘promise of a more radical, and radically individual, break with university

structures’ is tangible and directly linked to different framings of the digital

humanities. The latter model would seem more clearly associated with a

transformative sentiment and a sense of digital humanities as a large-scale

humanities project. In practice, however, the line between different models

and traditions is fuzzy and increasingly permeable. Trettien’s account is inter-

esting because it demonstrates individual junior scholar interest in the envi-

sioning work of digital humanities and a distinct sense of digital humanities as a

humanities project. Junior scholars often feature in discussions of the digital

humanities as agents of change as well as a group for which change is required,

and as a kind of visionary canalization. As I have shown elsewhere, this kind of

discourse tends to assign roles to junior scholars (Svensson, forthcoming). For

instance, junior scholars coming to the digital humanities through disciplinary

anchored research and a predominant interest in the digital as an object of

inquiry (such as Trettien), can sometimes be interpreted as coming to the field

through an interest in technology as a tool: thus being ‘read’ according to a

particular epistemic tradition (humanities computing; see Svensson, forthcom-

ing). These tensions, whether problematic to the development of the field or

not, are useful to the understanding the contemporary landscape of the digital

humanities.

The fourth and final example is taken from a panel on ‘The History and

Future of the Digital Humanities’ at the Modern Language Association


[46]




convention in Los Angeles, 7 January 2011. This panel received substantial

attention partly because it made different positions on the digital humanities

quite clear, in some ways similar to Trettien’s account above, and there was

some fairly drastic language used. Stephen Ramsay addressed the current

expansion of the field, the idea of big-tent digital humanities, and what

core epistemic committees are relevant. The following excerpt is taken

from Ramsey’s online version of his short position paper:

‘Digital Humanities’ sounds for all the world like a revolutionary attitude – digital

humanities, as opposed to old-school analogue humanities. As such, it has most recently

tended to welcome anyone and anything exemplifying a certain wired fervor.

Nowadays, the term can mean anything from media studies to electronic art, from

data mining to edutech, from scholarly editing to anarchic blogging, while inviting

code junkies, digital artists, standards wonks, transhumanists, game theorists, free culture

advocates, archivists, librarians, and edupunks under its capacious canvas . . . Do you have

to know how to code? I’m a tenured professor of digital humanities and I say ‘yes’ . . . But

if you are not making anything, you are not – in my less-than-three-minute opinion – a

digital humanist. (Ramsay, 2011a)

We can see how Ramsay both posits an external view on the digital

humanities as a ‘revolutionary attitude’, supposedly not supported by him-

self, and uses the slightly charged construction ‘wired fervor’ (as well as

‘edupunks’ and ‘transhumanists’) to describe many of the newcomers to

digital humanities. This may also be seen as a critique of ‘digital’ as a

denominator, which comes with a sensibility of ‘wired’. Interestingly, the

word ‘digital’ can either be seen as an explanation for the popularity of

digital humanities (as a media scholar suggested to me) or as a problem,

since digital is indeed part of everything, and why would there be a

digital humanities when other digital-specific fields have disappeared (as

was suggested to me at an information school discussion)? Unsurprisingly

Ramsay’s statement resulted in a strong reaction, and he elaborated his

position in a subsequent blog entry:

Building is, for us, a new kind of hermeneutic – one that is quite a bit more radical than

taking the traditional methods of humanistic inquiry and applying them to digital objects.

Media studies, game studies, critical code studies, and various other disciplines have

brought wonderful new things to humanistic study, but I will say (at my peril) that

none of these represent as radical a shift as the move from reading to making. (Ramsay,

2011b)

In specifying ‘making’ as an epistemic commitment and prerequisite for the

digital humanities and excluding areas such as media studies, Ramsay is sug-

gesting a particular privileged sense of making. The shift postulated – moving

‘from reading to making’ – is fairly dramatic. What about reading as part of

making and ‘new’ literacies? What about writing? The ‘for us’ functions as an


[47]




inclusive device – presumably addressing the traditional digital humanities

community while simultaneously excluding others. In a comment relevant

to Ramsay’s blog entry, Liu (2011) argues that we need to ‘recognize the

multiplicity of builder roles (including the importance of interpreters, critics,

and theorists in the enterprise, many of them the same people as the coders,

etc.)’. He continues:

Frankly, I think we are selling out the whole idea of collaboration so important to the

digital humanities (and to many other areas of today’s digital, networked knowledge

production) if we go back to an ‘individual essentialism’ according to which ‘one’ is

measured as in/out of the club of builders. (Liu, 2011)

Proposing that the digital humanities may not be all-inclusive, as Ramsay

does, is obviously not problematic in itself, but at a time when the field is

getting traction partly because of the sense of the digital humanities as a dif-

ferent kind of project, the strong reaction is unsurprising. This is a clear

example of disciplinary tension, and at the panel, Alan Liu’s position statement

illustrates a very different stance:

How the digital humanities advance, channel, or resist the great postindustrial, neoliberal,

corporatist, and globalist flows of information-cum-capital, for instance, is a question

rarely heard in the digital humanities associations, conferences, journals, and projects

with which I am familiar. Not even the cliched forms of such issues – e.g., ‘the digital

divide,’ ‘privacy,’ ‘copyright,’ and so on – get much play . . . To my digital humanities

colleagues in this room, let me say that, while we have the tools and the data, we will not

even be in the same league as Moretti, Casanova, and others unless we can move

seamlessly between text analysis and cultural analysis . . . But joining the mainstream,

I think, should not be the limit of our ambitions in the digital humanities. Truly to

contribute, I believe, the digital humanities will need to show that it can also take a

leadership role. The obvious leadership role at present is service for the cause of the

humanities. (Liu, 2011)

The contrast between Liu’s and Ramsay’s positions cannot be any clearer. Liu

sees the digital humanities as a potentially transformative humanities project, as

exemplified by the mission statement ‘to assist in advocacy for the humanities’

for the 4Humanities initiative (which Liu helped initiate). The digital human-

ities are seen as a platform for advancing and leading the humanities as well as a

place for bringing together text analysis and cultural analysis, which is obvi-

ously quite different from the more restrictive view presented by Ramsey. Liu

also points to the relative weakness of traditional digital humanities research in

terms of scholarly impact (cf. Juola, 2008: 83; Rockwell, 2003: 210). These

tensions and ‘cracks’ (cf. Klein, 1993), while sometimes leading to a polarized

discussion, are important to understanding the digital humanities as an endea-

vor and humanities project.


[48]




w h at m a k e s t h e d i g i ta l h u m a n i t i e s

a p o t e n t i a l h u m a n i t i e s p r o j e c t ?

It could be argued that, when Alan Liu links the digital humanities to the

cause of the humanities, he employs the digital humanities as a platform for

engaging with the future of the humanities. This section is concerned with

where this reach and visionary capacity of the digital humanities comes from,

and it is hoped that this will help in understanding the digital humanities as a

potential humanities project.

One important factor is that, at least potentially, the digital humanities seem

to operate across the humanities. One explanation for this is that there are

many possible interaction points between the various humanities disciplines

and the digital humanities. Information technology clearly provides powerful

tools for the humanities, and the ‘digital’ proves to be an integral part of our

culture. These are actualities that affect all the humanities disciplines on a

fundamental level (Svensson, 2009). Traditionally, digital humanities centers

and initiatives have also been institutionalized differently than regular depart-

ments, which probably helps explain this ‘free’ or in-between position.

The digital humanities also seem to represent the humanities in different

contexts. There are several reasons for this. The current ‘buzz’ and interest in

the digital humanities is certainly one factor, but, more deeply, the intermediate

position of the digital humanities makes the field a useful one-stop manifestation

of the humanities. In terms of funding agencies and institutional work, the digital

humanities can sometimes function as a part of the humanities that is ‘easier’ to

understand or target from a humanities-external point of view. The discourse on

humanities research infrastructure is a good example of this (Svensson, 2011).

Importantly, new funding agency schemes, such as the Office of Digital

Humanities at the National Endowment of the Humanities in the US, can

serve an important function in reaching across the humanities and speaking

both to the broader funding agency ecology as well as to the humanities at large.

There is a strong link between visionary discourse and technology, histor-

ically and contemporarily (Streeter, 2011; Turner, 2006), and the digital

humanities clearly have a strong investment in technology, technological

infrastructure, and the digital more generally. An obvious example would

be visions that draw directly on existing or future technological innovation.

These are, for example, common in the discourse of cyberinfrastructure

(Svensson, 2011) and traditional humanities computing.

Importantly, there seems to be a sense that doing digital humanities work

requires pushing on established traditions and structures. A relevant example is a

one-week online (and soon to be print) book project called Hacking the Academy

(2010), introduced thus: ‘today serious scholars are asking whether the


[49]




institutions of the academy as they have existed for decades, even centuries,

aren’t becoming obsolete. Every aspect of scholarly infrastructure is being ques-

tioned, and even more importantly, being hacked.’ This is probably one of the

principal reasons why people interested in thinking about and reconfiguring the

humanities are attracted to the field. The tension between the digital humanities

and the academic establishment is multifaceted and involves institutional hur-

dles to doing interdisciplinary and collaborative work, need for space and tech-

nological infrastructure, tenure systems not adapted to digital production and

publications, and the need for non-faculty experts and corresponding career

paths. Based on these and other factors, there is a strong sense that the university

and the humanities need to change to accommodate this type of work, and all

this feeds into a vision of transformed humanities.

On a more general level, there is a strong visionary and transformative

sentiment that goes beyond the intermediate-level issues discussed above.

This is where we find intense, sweeping statements, exemplified by David

Perry when he says, ‘I don’t want a digital facelift for the humanities, I want

the digital to completely change what it means to be a humanities scholar’

(Perry, 2010). This discourse seems grounded in the issues discussed above

(coming from the practical work of the field), but also more generally in

discontent with the current situation for the humanities, the academe, and,

to some extent, society at large.

There are several reasons for this sentiment. As we have seen, there is a strong

sense that the humanities are in a precarious situation in terms of funding and

recognition (Donoghue, 2008; Nussbaum, 2010), and that higher education as a

whole is facing a series of major challenges. The current financially dire times in

countries such as the United States and United Kingdom are part of this sce-

nario. We see frustration and discontent expressed by both junior and senior

faculty. Younger faculty and graduate students are concerned about the seem-

ing lack of possibilities for the future, there is a sense that the humanities have an

inward-looking sentiment, and structural resistance to new ideas.

As we have seen, the digital humanities can be a platform or means for

rethinking the humanities and higher education, and a way of canalizing

transformative sentiment and disciplinary interest in the ‘digital’ that arguably

makes the digital humanities into a humanities project.

t h e d i g i ta l h u m a n i t i e s a s a t r a d i n g z o n e

a n d m e e t i n g p l ac e

As we have seen, there is an ongoing and fairly intense discussion of the

territory of the digital humanities. A recent key metaphor for this discussion


[50]




has been the idea of ‘big tent’ digital humanities (Trettien, 2010), which was

the theme of the 2011 Digital Humanities Conference at Stanford University.

While a Google search for ‘small tent digital humanities’ (carried out on

5 March 2011) does not render any results, it seems clear that the alternative,

whether historical or present, is a smaller tent model. The size factor relates

both to the disciplines or areas involved and the geographical dispersion of the

field:

With the Big Tent theme in mind, we especially invite submissions from Latin American

scholars, scholars in the digital arts and music, in spatial history, and in the public

humanities. (Call for Proposals, 2011 Stanford Digital Humanities Conference)

Here we see both these variables in play, and interestingly, Latin America is

singled out, as well as some specific areas such as digital arts and music, but not,

for instance, explicitly (new) media studies. There seems to be a growing

connection between the public humanities and the digital humanities

(Svensson, forthcoming; Woodward, 2009), but not one normally emphasized

in the tradition of digital humanities that the annual conference represents

(largely humanities computing). Presumably there must also be other variables

in play that relate to the size of digital humanities, relating to factors such as

the inclusion of practice-oriented work as well as theory-oriented work,

gender, etc. And, despite the inclusive theme of the Stanford conference, it

seems clear that the call itself – although more open than previous ones

(Svensson, 2010) – can be seen as excluding. Reid (2011) discusses this from

a rhetorician’s perspective: ‘In other words, no mention of the significant

digital technologies and practices that are transforming human experience

on a global scale. No, instead, we’re going to talk about writing software to

analyze hundreds of out of print literary texts that no one can even name’, and

Cayless (2011) notes that ‘from reading my (possibly) representative sample of

DH proposals, I’d say the main theme of the conference will not be ‘‘Big Tent

Digital Humanities’’ but ‘‘data integration’’’. Both these comments, regardless

of how the actual conference was implemented (Cayless’s entry is, inciden-

tally, called ‘DH tea leaves’), illustrate some of the tension and range involved.

One pertinent question is how big the tent can be. The etymological origin of

‘tent’ is Latin tentus ‘stretched’, and Trettien (2010) asks us how much the big

digital humanities tent can be stretched, when she says that ‘I’m not sure

Digital Humanities, even a big-tent Digital Humanities, has room for all

these digital humanists’. Thus even a large tent has boundaries.

A tent is a spatially delimited space and, whether small or big, there is a

fairly distinct demarcation. Of course, a tent can be more or less permeable,

but the discussion of digital humanities tents mainly seems to focus on the size

of the tent; in other words, a way of describing a larger territory and a more


[51]




inclusive stance (Warwick, 2011). This is a sensible and probably necessary

direction of change. One interesting question, however, is whether a more

inclusive notion and a larger tent also translate into more far-reaching struc-

tural change. They probably do to some extent, as the bringing together of

different epistemic traditions will necessarily lead to change, but it may also be

argued that the metaphor and the associated discussion do not necessarily

highlight these more radical aspects or, for that matter, a different basic

stance. Arguably, big tent digital humanities (as articulated by the conference

call above) are still grounded in a particular epistemic tradition. Hence big size

comes with a certain epistemic flavor.

Trading zones

In analyzing the collaboration between physicists of different paradigms,

Galison (1997) developed the concept of trading zones as a way of under-

standing how scientists can communicate and collaborate even if they come

from different paradigms in the Kuhnian sense and even if there is incom-

mensurability between experimentalists and theorists (Galison, 2010: 27). His

research importantly explores the tension between local practices and a global

language of science. The concept of trading zones applies more broadly to

interdisciplinary work, and demonstrates the possibility of maintaining disci-

plinary depth and focus (expertise) as well as meaningfully engaging in inter-

sectional work. Galison (2010: 36) talks about the ‘thinness of interpretation’ in

trade rather than the ‘thickness of consensus’. Trading zones are about bro-

kering cultural exchange, and, while they operate on an institutional level,

they can never be successful without cultural performance and individual

enactments. Indeed, individual enactment and engagement are critical to

well-functioning meeting places. On a critical note, we should be aware

that the concept of trading zones comes from work on science (not the

humanities), that it is obviously based on trading as a structuring metaphor

(which may be questioned in relation to the academy), and that it conse-

quently has a functional focus.

In the following, I argue that the digital humanities can be seen as a trading

zone and meeting place, and that this construal is compatible with the sense of

the digital humanities as a humanities project. I see ‘trading zone’ and ‘meeting

place’ as partially overlapping concepts, where the latter is more general and less

instrumental. A related notion is that of contact zones (Pratt, 1991). It is more

focused on specific situations than on the work of meeting places or trading

zones, and accentuates the often asymmetrical relations of power in ‘social

spaces where cultures meet, clash, and grapple with each other’ (Pratt, 1991:

34). Another relevant concept, closer to an open and dynamic meeting place


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than to trading zone, is ‘temporary autonomous zones’ as used to describe the

strategy of creating temporary spaces that elude formal structures of control, and

that are created on the boundary lines of established regions (Bey, 1991).

Collins et al. (2010) discuss trading zones in relation to interactional exper-

tise, and suggest a link between this type of expertise and the ability to pro-

ductively engage in cross-disciplinary work. They present a model based on

two dimensions: the extent to which power is used to enforce trade and the

extent to which trade leads to a homogenous new culture. Furthermore, they

propose an evolution of trading zones, where one starting point can be when a

university ‘encourages’ faculty from different disciplines to collaborate around

formulating a new initiative or proposal. In the case of digital humanities,

there is currently a fair amount of such encouragement. Under this reading,

there is some degree of coercion in such situations, which would presumably

also be the case when a funding agency launches a new program for an area

such as the digital humanities. If a group decides to work together, the trading

zone would become more collaborative and voluntary, and Collins et al.

(2010) propose that this may lead to a fractioned trading zone with shared

boundary objects or interactional expertise emerging from deeper interest in

the others’ work. Further evolution under this model might include the trad-

ing zone and cultures becoming more homogenous, leading to an interlan-

guage trading zone, which may eventually turn into a new disciplinary

formation and loss of the actual trading zone.

It is here suggested that the digital humanities can be seen as a fractioned

(not homogeneous), collaborative (not coerced) trading zone with a contin-

uous development of interlanguage, and that the digital humanities as a ‘meet-

ing place’ afford individual expression, non-instrumental connections,

unexpected coalitions, and synergetic power. The ‘digital’ in a broad sense

and in various manifestations constitutes a shared boundary object. The field is

grounded in local practice – where much of the negotiation occurs – as well as

in a more overarching sense of field and global project. Local practice can

partly be carried out through critical engagement in a technologically and

humanistically rich environment. Critical making is a relevant framework

here, and aims to connect ‘‘‘critical thinking’’, often considered as abstract,

explicit, linguistically-based, internal and cognitively individualistic’ and

‘‘‘making’’, typically understood as material, tacit, embodied, external and

community-oriented’ (Ratto and Hockema, 2009).

The liminal position of the digital humanities

The digital humanities have often been institutionalized as centers, initiatives

or institutes. Part of the struggle of humanities computing and traditional


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digital humanities has been to manage this ‘in-between’ or liminal position,

which has often made it difficult (at least in the past) to employ faculty, gain

institutional credibility, and achieve a respectable level of scholarly status

(University of Virginia, 1999). The digital humanities have often been more

practice-based than theoretically oriented, and in this regard also there can be

a sense of differentness or even stigmatization. Many humanities computing

centers have been closed or restructured over the years (Flanders and

Unsworth, 2002), a fate not too uncommon in relation to academic enter-

prises that are seen as service units, and, at least from a historical point of view,

there is thus considerable risk associated with being a humanities computing or

digital humanities center.

At the same time, this position has allowed the digital humanities to work

outside established structures and to gain leverage from being different and not

competing directly (or as obviously) with other departments and disciplines. It

is arguably easier to have a catalyst and intermediary role and to work with a

range of disciplines if you exist somewhat outside the traditional structures.

This is not to suggest that the traditional digital humanities have been posi-

tioned ‘in between’ in all respects. One key question in any case is whether

the digital humanities prefer this liminal position, or whether we are seeing a

push towards a more independent role and a more disciplinary, departmental

structure. Importantly, the recent influx of other scholars and communities

into the digital humanities has infused a higher degree of visionary discourse,

interest in rethinking the humanities or the academy on a large scale and,

arguably, public engagement and activism. This kind of work is likely to

benefit from an in-between position. Indeed it may depend on it.

Beyond the tent

The digital humanities as a trading zone and meeting place would seem con-

gruent with a view of the interrelation between the humanities and digital as

rich and multiplex. If the digital humanities are about engaging with technol-

ogy as tool, object of inquiry, medium of expression, activist venue and more

(Svensson, 2010), and if we see these modes as intrinsically interconnected, we

presumably need to see the field as a place where these perspectives and

epistemic traditions come together. In terms of structural integrity and sus-

tainability, it may be more advantageous to construe the digital humanities as a

meeting place, innovation hub and trading zone than a distinct discipline. This

would clearly give the field reach across the humanities. Ratto and Ree (2010)

argue that the digital media are not a sector, and a similar argument can

be made for ‘the digital’ not being a discipline. The digital cuts across and,


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by seeing the digital humanities as a trading zone and meeting place, we can

take this seriously.

In looking at the field as a meeting place, certain qualities are emphasized

that are present in almost all varieties of the digital humanities: e.g. the relative

openness to working with other disciplines and areas, and having a facilitating

or intermediary function. However, it would seem that digital humanities as a

meeting place and trading zone presumes profound openness to a number of

different epistemic traditions, and a facilitating role that is not strictly instru-

mental or service minded, but richly multiplex and dynamic.

There are several rationales for framing the field as a meeting place and

trading zone. First, it may be argued that a multiple mode engagement with

the digital across the humanities benefits from or may even require the digital

humanities to be a meeting place. This is also a way of expanding the territory

and reach of the field considerably without ‘raising tents’. Importantly, a

trading zone implies respecting (but not necessarily adopting) other epistemic

traditions and a shared interest in boundary objects. Furthermore, there may

be considerable potential gains across the territory that do not currently seem

to be fully exploited; for instance increased use of digital research tools and

rigorous data management in media studies or a stronger theoretical anchoring

of some more tool-based work. Opening up the digital humanities in this way

would make it easier to incorporate the various traditions and newcomers.

Secondly, the coming together of disciplines and competencies could be

said to be necessary for tackling the scholarly, technical and structural ques-

tions associated with the digital humanities (and the humanities). What does it

mean to be human in a digital age? Can media be thought of in terms of

architectural representation? How do we build robust metadata schemes for

cultural heritage materials and humanities research? How can the trajectory

from the ‘democratic’ representation through multiple screens in the 1950s be

related to the current growth of multiple-screen contexts? What is our audible

past? What kind of interpretative power can a temporal-geographical system

with ‘facetted browsing’ access to cultural heritage possibly give? How is the

digital recruited for collaborative fan fiction? What is the future of academic

publishing? How can students, faculty and the public benefit from different

types of multimodal representation to represent and explore key issues in e.g.

history, philosophy or comparative literature? What is twenty-first-century

textual scholarship? How can we profoundly explore the interrelation

between media, place and technology? Most of these issues require concerted

efforts, collaboration inside and outside the humanities, access to infrastructure

and a combination of scholarly and technological expertise. We do not nec-

essarily have to use the term ‘big humanities’ to describe such efforts, but there

are clearly some parallels with the notion of big science.


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Additionally, it can be argued that the humanities need an intersectional

place or laboratory for thinking about, rethinking and innovating itself. Here

the digital humanities can offer a platform, and we can see how this is already

happening. As explored earlier, there is resistance to this conception of the

field, and there is a point to being articulate about the digital humanities being

such a platform (not necessarily the only one). This can arguably not be

achieved from the position of the digital humanities being a traditional depart-

ment or discipline. Such a distinct role will speak to Schools of Humanities or

the equivalent, but also to university and external leadership, and in either case

it would be framed and receive support as a humanities project.

The digital humanities as a humanities project – reaching across the human-

ities and outside – can also be seen as a powerful way of canalizing resources.

Even in the imaginary, almost technology-free humanities division, there will

be dispersed resources in terms of staff, technology and faculty assignments.

Some of these can be part of a truly humanities (or more) wide initiative.

Maybe more importantly, a large enough reach and ‘mass’ make it easier to

argue for infrastructure in terms of space, people and technology. It is notice-

able that relatively few digital humanities (and humanities) environments have

‘strong’ spaces and obviously innovative technology setups. If we see knowl-

edge production as spatially and materially situated (Livingstone, 2003), the

digital humanities as a humanities project would seem to be an opportunity to

make a case for acquiring and designing space (both physical or digital). This is

something that speaks to many humanities scholars and students (HASS

Committee on the Humanities Library, 2001, retrieved on 7 December

2010), and which can be instrumental in making the meeting place or trading

zone come to life. There is potential for synergy and unexpected connections

coming from such a development. Also, if we believe that situated and

embodied practice is important, humanities laboratories provide one place

for such work (Ratto, 2009, and the notion of ‘critical making’).

Finally, universities and institutions of higher education often lack inter-

sectional meeting places and trading zones. This is clearly a niche that largely

has not been filled in many institutions of higher education, and where there is

opportunity and increasing need. The digital has the intersectional power

required and the humanities the awareness and potential legitimacy to be

that place. So rather than disregarding ‘the digital’, interpreting it as purely

technical or seeing it as an uncomfortable denomination (Mattern, 2011), it

can arguably be used as a means of making the humanities a catalyst for

interchange, development and envisioning the future of the academy.

Needless to say, this is a function and direction that is likely to be attractive

to university leadership and management.


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c o n c l u s i o n

In this article, it has been suggested that the digital humanities can be seen as a

humanities project, and that there are advantages to framing the field as a

trading zone and meeting place rather than a strained ‘big tent’. The back-

ground is the scholarly, educational and technical challenges, the multiple

epistemic traditions linked to the digital humanities, the potential reach of

the field across and outside the humanities, and the ‘digital’ as a ‘boundary

object’. Furthermore, there is arguably a need for an outreaching humanities

laboratory – a place for thinking about, experimenting with and rethinking

the humanities – and an intermediary player in the university system with a

substantial level of integrity. In other words, there is a niche to be filled.

Concerted efforts in this direction could lead to a new wave of digital human-

ities, a revitalization of the humanities, and indeed, an academy changed for

the better.

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b i o g r a p h i c a l n o t e

patrik svensson is a docent in the digital humanities and director of HUMlab at Umea

University, Sweden. His research interests include educational technology, the develop-

ment of digital humanities, research infrastructure and screen research. He has just finished

a series of four articles on the digital humanities for Digital Humanities Quarterly. Address:

HUMlab, Umea University, 90187 Umea, Sweden. [email: patrik.svensson@

humlab.umu.se]


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Documents

The digital humanities as a humanities project