Literary characters do not receive the same attention from literary scholars as other components of literature (i.e. the narrative, theme, motif). In contrast to this lack of interest, various studies have shown that characters in particular play an important role for readers. We draw on this observation to explore a user-oriented notion of World Literature according to the collaborative encyclopedia Wikipedia. Based on its language-independent taxonomy Wikidata, we collect data from 321 Wikipedia editions on more than 7000 characters presented on more than 19000 independent character pages across the various language editions. We use this data to build a network that represents affiliations of characters to Wikipedia languages, which leads us to question some of the established presumptions towards key-concepts in World Literature studies such as the notion of major and minor, the center-periphery opposition or the canon.
{"title":"The Wikipedia Republic of Literary Characters","authors":"P. Wojcik, Bastian Bunzeck, Sina Zarrieß","doi":"10.22148/001c.70251","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.22148/001c.70251","url":null,"abstract":"Literary characters do not receive the same attention from literary scholars as other components of literature (i.e. the narrative, theme, motif). In contrast to this lack of interest, various studies have shown that characters in particular play an important role for readers. We draw on this observation to explore a user-oriented notion of World Literature according to the collaborative encyclopedia Wikipedia. Based on its language-independent taxonomy Wikidata, we collect data from 321 Wikipedia editions on more than 7000 characters presented on more than 19000 independent character pages across the various language editions. We use this data to build a network that represents affiliations of characters to Wikipedia languages, which leads us to question some of the established presumptions towards key-concepts in World Literature studies such as the notion of major and minor, the center-periphery opposition or the canon.","PeriodicalId":33005,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Cultural Analytics","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-05-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43391457","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
One of the recurring questions of world literary history is how to ensure that marginalized writers are represented. The advent of a data-driven literary history has made this question even more pressing, as collaborative and distributed projects like Wikidata have been shown to exhibit large gaps between groups, despite the diversity of topics and contributors represented. In order to get an idea of how entrenched the gender gap is within literary Wikidata, I will examine the representation of male writers versus writers who are women or other genders using Wikidata. Since the data are vast and complex, I will particularly focus on the subset that is related to French and Francophone writers in Wikidata with an eye to how the gender gap evolves across nations, geography, and time. I will show that the gender gap is less significant in recent periods and in smaller Wikidata communities and that the largest Wikidata communities with the longest histories have larger gender gaps. As in other subject fields, literary topics in Wikidata are disproportionately linked to male authors. Finally, I consider some ways that the gender gap intersects with linguistic justice movements and how the gender gap can be reduced in literary Wikidata. The patterns in the data and procedure may be generalizable to literary Wikidata as a whole, especially larger Wikidata communities, because the gender gap in both the French and the Francophone subsets of the data is close to the global average; there is also a higher-than-average representation of writers of other genders that resembles other large Wikidata communities.
{"title":"Quantifying the Gap: The Gender Gap in French Writers’ Wikidata","authors":"M. Conroy","doi":"10.22148/001c.74068","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.22148/001c.74068","url":null,"abstract":"One of the recurring questions of world literary history is how to ensure that marginalized writers are represented. The advent of a data-driven literary history has made this question even more pressing, as collaborative and distributed projects like Wikidata have been shown to exhibit large gaps between groups, despite the diversity of topics and contributors represented. In order to get an idea of how entrenched the gender gap is within literary Wikidata, I will examine the representation of male writers versus writers who are women or other genders using Wikidata. Since the data are vast and complex, I will particularly focus on the subset that is related to French and Francophone writers in Wikidata with an eye to how the gender gap evolves across nations, geography, and time. I will show that the gender gap is less significant in recent periods and in smaller Wikidata communities and that the largest Wikidata communities with the longest histories have larger gender gaps. As in other subject fields, literary topics in Wikidata are disproportionately linked to male authors. Finally, I consider some ways that the gender gap intersects with linguistic justice movements and how the gender gap can be reduced in literary Wikidata. The patterns in the data and procedure may be generalizable to literary Wikidata as a whole, especially larger Wikidata communities, because the gender gap in both the French and the Francophone subsets of the data is close to the global average; there is also a higher-than-average representation of writers of other genders that resembles other large Wikidata communities.","PeriodicalId":33005,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Cultural Analytics","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-04-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48636040","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Large numbers of maps have always been difficult to examine in detail, even now that they are being digitized around the world. But imagine searching digitised map collections by their text content: moving beyond titles or other catalogue fields, you could search every single word that appears on map sheets, as if they were book pages in any of the well-known, full-text-search enabled collections. This experience is now a reality. This piece is a data-driven journey across such experimental “text on maps” searching in the online interface for one of the largest and best-known digital libraries of maps, the David Rumsey Map Collection. Starting from the search for a single placename, the author discusses potential, as well as the limitations, of this approach, and suggests ways in which this new interface, which brings together the power of machine learning, the beauty of data visualisation, and the interactivity of annotation, can fuel scientific curiosity as well as playful exploration
{"title":"Searching maps by words: how machine learning changes the way we explore map collections","authors":"Valeria Vitale","doi":"10.22148/001c.74293","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.22148/001c.74293","url":null,"abstract":"Large numbers of maps have always been difficult to examine in detail, even now that they are being digitized around the world. But imagine searching digitised map collections by their text content: moving beyond titles or other catalogue fields, you could search every single word that appears on map sheets, as if they were book pages in any of the well-known, full-text-search enabled collections. This experience is now a reality. This piece is a data-driven journey across such experimental “text on maps” searching in the online interface for one of the largest and best-known digital libraries of maps, the David Rumsey Map Collection. Starting from the search for a single placename, the author discusses potential, as well as the limitations, of this approach, and suggests ways in which this new interface, which brings together the power of machine learning, the beauty of data visualisation, and the interactivity of annotation, can fuel scientific curiosity as well as playful exploration","PeriodicalId":33005,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Cultural Analytics","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-04-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48694708","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This paper explores the construction of Peruvian literature in two different language editions of Wikipedia: Spanish and Quechua. Comparing both versions I analyze the way they approach the representation and writing of a national literature in relation to two factors: region (writers from the 25 Peruvian political regions) and language (words used to provide information about writers). I argue that the exclusion of cultural contributions of Amazonian regions in both Wikipedias not only has a high correlation with the regional population and Gross Domestic Product, but also reproduces a traditional notion of Peruvian literature. However, because of its accessibility and collaborative nature, the Quechua Wikipedia innovates by enabling the user community to propose an alternative representation of national literature. The research also demonstrates the urgency of engaging and fostering the participation of indigenous communities in the creation and editing of Wikipedia.
{"title":"Escritor / Qillqaq: The Representation of Peruvian Literature in the Spanish and Quechua Wikipedias","authors":"Daniel Carrillo-Jara","doi":"10.22148/001c.73258","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.22148/001c.73258","url":null,"abstract":"This paper explores the construction of Peruvian literature in two different language editions of Wikipedia: Spanish and Quechua. Comparing both versions I analyze the way they approach the representation and writing of a national literature in relation to two factors: region (writers from the 25 Peruvian political regions) and language (words used to provide information about writers). I argue that the exclusion of cultural contributions of Amazonian regions in both Wikipedias not only has a high correlation with the regional population and Gross Domestic Product, but also reproduces a traditional notion of Peruvian literature. However, because of its accessibility and collaborative nature, the Quechua Wikipedia innovates by enabling the user community to propose an alternative representation of national literature. The research also demonstrates the urgency of engaging and fostering the participation of indigenous communities in the creation and editing of Wikipedia.","PeriodicalId":33005,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Cultural Analytics","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-04-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47885416","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Magic realism is a disputed genre in world literature scholarship today. While many Latin American critics have advocated for its historical and geographical significance, others see it as an inherently postcolonial aesthetic formation, a worldwide literary trend, and even a global commodity. Indeed, since its emergence in the first half of the 20th century, magic realism has remained an attractive and active category, as new artworks are classified as such worldwide. To address these tensions, this essay engages with definitions, general information, and lists of authors and literary works classified as magic realists on Wikipedia. To do so, we compile a thorough database of all writers mentioned in Wikipedia’s entries for magic realism in fifty-six different languages. We visualize this data and close-read Wikipedia entries to understand better which writers are most often identified as magic realists, to which literary and linguistic traditions they belong, and how definitions of magic realism in different languages interact. We trace how the narrow and broad definitions of magic realism tend to both compete and overlap on Wikipedia. We argue that magic realism on Wikipedia can be better understood as a glocal phenomenon. In this sense, we reflect on what the worldliness of magic realism means in a non-academic context and ask how the broad circulation of magic realism can inform our understanding of world literature.
{"title":"An Ever-Expanding World Literary Genre: Defining Magic Realism on Wikipedia","authors":"Matylda Figlerowicz, Lucas Mertehikian","doi":"10.22148/001c.73249","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.22148/001c.73249","url":null,"abstract":"Magic realism is a disputed genre in world literature scholarship today. While many Latin American critics have advocated for its historical and geographical significance, others see it as an inherently postcolonial aesthetic formation, a worldwide literary trend, and even a global commodity. Indeed, since its emergence in the first half of the 20th century, magic realism has remained an attractive and active category, as new artworks are classified as such worldwide. To address these tensions, this essay engages with definitions, general information, and lists of authors and literary works classified as magic realists on Wikipedia. To do so, we compile a thorough database of all writers mentioned in Wikipedia’s entries for magic realism in fifty-six different languages. We visualize this data and close-read Wikipedia entries to understand better which writers are most often identified as magic realists, to which literary and linguistic traditions they belong, and how definitions of magic realism in different languages interact. We trace how the narrow and broad definitions of magic realism tend to both compete and overlap on Wikipedia. We argue that magic realism on Wikipedia can be better understood as a glocal phenomenon. In this sense, we reflect on what the worldliness of magic realism means in a non-academic context and ask how the broad circulation of magic realism can inform our understanding of world literature.","PeriodicalId":33005,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Cultural Analytics","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-04-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45457404","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Michel Foucault famously introduced the method of “discourse analysis” in the humanities, especially in historiography. In his Archaeology of Knowledge, originally published in 1969, in particular, Foucault argues for making the history of knowledge the object of discourse analyses. In the context of the current surge of interest in discourse analysis in the field of computer science, however, there are hardly any references to Foucault, partly because he never defined a methodological process that could be operationalized. Nonetheless we argue for re-reading the Archaeology of Knowledge in the context of computer science and the digital humanities. As a matter of fact, there are considerable affinities between Foucault’s search for the regularities of discourse and current projects dealing with the digitization of texts, their indexing, distributional features, stylometry, etc. We show that these projects were already quite prominent in Foucault’s day, to the point that historian Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie could assert, in 1968, that “the future historian will be a programmer.” A year later, Foucault’s Archaeology of Knowledge actively responded and constructively took up the challenge – which, given the recent advances in machine learning and computational linguistics, strikes us as a crucial move today.
米歇尔·福柯（Michel Foucault）在人文科学，尤其是史学中引入了著名的“话语分析”方法。尤其是在1969年出版的《知识考古》一书中，福柯主张将知识史作为话语分析的对象。然而，在当前计算机科学领域对话语分析的兴趣激增的背景下，几乎没有提到福柯，部分原因是他从未定义过一个可以操作的方法论过程。尽管如此，我们还是主张在计算机科学和数字人文学科的背景下重读《知识考古学》。事实上，福柯对话语规律的探索与当前处理文本数字化、文本索引、分布特征、风格学等的项目之间存在着相当大的相似性。我们表明，这些项目在福柯时代已经相当突出，历史学家Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie可以在1968年断言，“未来的历史学家将是一名程序员。”一年后，福柯的《知识考古》积极回应并建设性地接受了这一挑战——鉴于机器学习和计算语言学的最新进展，这在今天给我们的印象是一个至关重要的举措。
{"title":"From the Archive to the Computer: Michel Foucault and the Digital Humanities","authors":"H. Schmidgen, Bernhard J. Dotzler, Benno Stein","doi":"10.22148/001c.55795","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.22148/001c.55795","url":null,"abstract":"Michel Foucault famously introduced the method of “discourse analysis” in the humanities, especially in historiography. In his Archaeology of Knowledge, originally published in 1969, in particular, Foucault argues for making the history of knowledge the object of discourse analyses. In the context of the current surge of interest in discourse analysis in the field of computer science, however, there are hardly any references to Foucault, partly because he never defined a methodological process that could be operationalized. Nonetheless we argue for re-reading the Archaeology of Knowledge in the context of computer science and the digital humanities. As a matter of fact, there are considerable affinities between Foucault’s search for the regularities of discourse and current projects dealing with the digitization of texts, their indexing, distributional features, stylometry, etc. We show that these projects were already quite prominent in Foucault’s day, to the point that historian Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie could assert, in 1968, that “the future historian will be a programmer.” A year later, Foucault’s Archaeology of Knowledge actively responded and constructively took up the challenge – which, given the recent advances in machine learning and computational linguistics, strikes us as a crucial move today.","PeriodicalId":33005,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Cultural Analytics","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-03-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41926731","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The production, distribution and consumption of the Italian novel in the global editorial market has accompanied the gradual creation of a national branding process that does not coincide with the literary identity Italy tends to associate with. When considering the main analysis approaches of the Italian literary canon—the top-down one of the country’s yearly national bestsellers, literary prizes, suggested readings in Literature courses at University and school anthologies—and the larger-scale, bottom-up view of digital platforms like Amazon and Goodreads, Wikipedia stands in a middle, unexplored ground between the two. Through the comparative quantitative analysis of data derived from some of these sources, this article aims to gain more awareness on Italian literature from 1980 to 2021, to start addressing why national book prizes winners do not make it to the global market and if it is possible to talk about a national cultural resistance, which allowed authors like Elena Ferrante and Goliarda Sapienza to become literary sensations abroad before it happening in their own country. While some studies have already dealt with the unchanging aspect and the lack of diversity of the Italian literary canon, there has been little quantitative research on the two brands of the country, the national and the global, and on the dynamics between them. As well as proposing a methodology for the ongoing study of literary reception of Italian novels under multiple points of view, this article contributes to the discussion on the reliability of measures for studying the canon.
{"title":"Italian Nostalgia: National and Global Identities of the Italian Novel","authors":"Anna Sofia Lippolis","doi":"10.22148/001c.68341","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.22148/001c.68341","url":null,"abstract":"The production, distribution and consumption of the Italian novel in the global editorial market has accompanied the gradual creation of a national branding process that does not coincide with the literary identity Italy tends to associate with. When considering the main analysis approaches of the Italian literary canon—the top-down one of the country’s yearly national bestsellers, literary prizes, suggested readings in Literature courses at University and school anthologies—and the larger-scale, bottom-up view of digital platforms like Amazon and Goodreads, Wikipedia stands in a middle, unexplored ground between the two. Through the comparative quantitative analysis of data derived from some of these sources, this article aims to gain more awareness on Italian literature from 1980 to 2021, to start addressing why national book prizes winners do not make it to the global market and if it is possible to talk about a national cultural resistance, which allowed authors like Elena Ferrante and Goliarda Sapienza to become literary sensations abroad before it happening in their own country. While some studies have already dealt with the unchanging aspect and the lack of diversity of the Italian literary canon, there has been little quantitative research on the two brands of the country, the national and the global, and on the dynamics between them. As well as proposing a methodology for the ongoing study of literary reception of Italian novels under multiple points of view, this article contributes to the discussion on the reliability of measures for studying the canon.","PeriodicalId":33005,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Cultural Analytics","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-03-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47620529","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The article uses a corpus workbench (Sketch Engine) to investigate practices of evaluation in online book reviews. The reviews were taken from Goodreads, Amazon, bol.com and a number of Dutch online book discussion platforms. We look at tools that have been used to study online book reviews. Then we investigate our own collection of reviews. Findings suggest (1) that online reviews are not just centred on the reviewers’ experiences but include solid discussion of the merits of books; (2) that reviewers of suspense prefer plot and character while reviewers of literary books prefer style and story; (3) that literal and metaphorical phrases referring to the body are often used in describing positive reading experiences; and (4) that positive reviews recount parts of the story, while negative reviews try to explain why the book was a disappointment.
{"title":"‘A pretty sublime mix of WTF and OMG’. Four explorations into the practice of evaluation on online book reviewing platforms","authors":"P. Boot","doi":"10.22148/001c.68086","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.22148/001c.68086","url":null,"abstract":"The article uses a corpus workbench (Sketch Engine) to investigate practices of evaluation in online book reviews. The reviews were taken from Goodreads, Amazon, bol.com and a number of Dutch online book discussion platforms. We look at tools that have been used to study online book reviews. Then we investigate our own collection of reviews. Findings suggest (1) that online reviews are not just centred on the reviewers’ experiences but include solid discussion of the merits of books; (2) that reviewers of suspense prefer plot and character while reviewers of literary books prefer style and story; (3) that literal and metaphorical phrases referring to the body are often used in describing positive reading experiences; and (4) that positive reviews recount parts of the story, while negative reviews try to explain why the book was a disappointment.","PeriodicalId":33005,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Cultural Analytics","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-02-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43320562","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This paper takes a network analytic approach to investigating crime in seventeenth-century Japan. In 1667, the Nagasaki magistrate’s office conducted the largest documented smuggling crackdown in Tokugawa Japan (1603–1867), busting a ring of 87 arms traffickers who had been shipping contraband to Chosŏn Korea (1392–1910). I use the office’s “criminal investigation records” (hankachō 犯科帳) to build a dataset of the 94 suspects from ten Japanese towns who were interrogated about their involvement at the time. Using a three-mode network (people, place, crime), the resulting graphs and statistics reveal a new geography of the crime in question: contrary to the conclusions of the original investigators and of modern-day historians who “closely read” their records, the digital analysis relocates the epicenter of the smuggling ring to be in Tsushima, not Hakata or Nagasaki, and its ringleader as a merchant named Komoda Kanzaemon, rather than Itō Kozaemon. Though various limitations are recognized, the case study demonstrates the utility of network analysis on early modern crime data in general and for archives built with criminal-investigative intent like the hankachō in particular.
{"title":"How Network Analysis Uncovers International Networks of Smuggling History: Criminals in Nagasaki, Japan circa 1667","authors":"Hyeok Hweon Kang","doi":"10.22148/001c.68188","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.22148/001c.68188","url":null,"abstract":"This paper takes a network analytic approach to investigating crime in seventeenth-century Japan. In 1667, the Nagasaki magistrate’s office conducted the largest documented smuggling crackdown in Tokugawa Japan (1603–1867), busting a ring of 87 arms traffickers who had been shipping contraband to Chosŏn Korea (1392–1910). I use the office’s “criminal investigation records” (hankachō 犯科帳) to build a dataset of the 94 suspects from ten Japanese towns who were interrogated about their involvement at the time. Using a three-mode network (people, place, crime), the resulting graphs and statistics reveal a new geography of the crime in question: contrary to the conclusions of the original investigators and of modern-day historians who “closely read” their records, the digital analysis relocates the epicenter of the smuggling ring to be in Tsushima, not Hakata or Nagasaki, and its ringleader as a merchant named Komoda Kanzaemon, rather than Itō Kozaemon. Though various limitations are recognized, the case study demonstrates the utility of network analysis on early modern crime data in general and for archives built with criminal-investigative intent like the hankachō in particular.","PeriodicalId":33005,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Cultural Analytics","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-02-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47450378","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Why are the Digital Humanities a genuine part of the Humanities? Attempts are currently being made by arguing that computational methods are at the same time hermeneutic procedures (‘screwmeneutics’, ‘hermenumericals’): computation and hermeneutics were mixed. In criticizing this fusion of ‘literacy’ and ‘numeracy’, it is argued that what really connects the classical Humanities and the Digital Humanities is methodologically based on the ‘cultural technique of flattening’ and not on hermeneutics. The projection of spatial and non-spatial relations onto the artificial flatness of inscribed and illustrated surfaces forms a first-order epistemic and cultural potential in the history of the Humanities: diagrammatic reasoning, the visualizing potential of writings, lists, tables, diagrams, and maps, the sorting function of alphabetically ordered knowledge corpora have always shaped and determined basic scholarly work. It is this ‘diagrammatical’ dimension to which the Digital Humanities are linked to Humanities in general. The metamorphosis of texts, pictures, and music into the surface configurations of machine-analyzable data corpora opens up the possibility of revealing latent and implicit patterns of cultural artifacts, and practices that mostly are not accessible to human perception. The quantifying, computational methods of the Digital Humanities operate like computer-generated microscopes and telescopes into the cultural heritage, ongoing cultural practices, and even the culturally unconscious.
{"title":"Should we really ‘hermeneutise’ the Digital Humanities? A plea for the epistemic productivity of a ‘cultural technique of flattening’ in the Humanities.","authors":"Sybille Krämer","doi":"10.22148/001c.55592","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.22148/001c.55592","url":null,"abstract":"Why are the Digital Humanities a genuine part of the Humanities? Attempts are currently being made by arguing that computational methods are at the same time hermeneutic procedures (‘screwmeneutics’, ‘hermenumericals’): computation and hermeneutics were mixed. In criticizing this fusion of ‘literacy’ and ‘numeracy’, it is argued that what really connects the classical Humanities and the Digital Humanities is methodologically based on the ‘cultural technique of flattening’ and not on hermeneutics. The projection of spatial and non-spatial relations onto the artificial flatness of inscribed and illustrated surfaces forms a first-order epistemic and cultural potential in the history of the Humanities: diagrammatic reasoning, the visualizing potential of writings, lists, tables, diagrams, and maps, the sorting function of alphabetically ordered knowledge corpora have always shaped and determined basic scholarly work. It is this ‘diagrammatical’ dimension to which the Digital Humanities are linked to Humanities in general. The metamorphosis of texts, pictures, and music into the surface configurations of machine-analyzable data corpora opens up the possibility of revealing latent and implicit patterns of cultural artifacts, and practices that mostly are not accessible to human perception. The quantifying, computational methods of the Digital Humanities operate like computer-generated microscopes and telescopes into the cultural heritage, ongoing cultural practices, and even the culturally unconscious.","PeriodicalId":33005,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Cultural Analytics","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-01-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49449975","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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