REPRESENTING SPATIAL CONCEPTS: MODERN EAST ASIAN HISTORY IN A DIGITAL PUBLICATION FORMAT

Abstract

How do we adequately capture multivocal history? What are good ways to represent multiple narratives and arguments in an open-ended fashion? The online publication Bodies and Structures 2.0: Deep-Mapping Modern East Asian History, edited by David R. Ambaras and Kate McDonald, addresses these questions for modern East Asian spatial history. Mainly a tool for teaching and research, the website works by interlinking historiographical information and primary sources. Complementarily, Bodies and Structures 2.0 displays all its contents via a set of visualizations. In this review essay, I argue that this multimodal format is innovative on two ends. First, the site convincingly implements what earlier research on hypertext and visualization has long sought—namely, to exceed traditional text and its limitations to represent intricate matters neatly. This is because of these media formats’ semiotic efficiency in analytically representing complex wholes and their parts. Second, Bodies and Structures 2.0 successfully translates its multivocal concept of spatial history into an interactive multimodal user experience. All in all, it demonstrates that representing concepts is not just about the applied language of narrative and argumentation; it is also about the publication's form. Bodies and Structures 2.0, therefore, is an exciting work from the perspective of theory of history.