About a post-alphabetical philology

ABSTRACT

The aim of the project is to develop a methodological framework for a digital philology

in the electronic age. Peculiar to this analysis must be an interdisciplinar approach. The

project will be divided in two sections: 1) the first is theoretical and will concern the

history of philology, as the attitude towards the written expressions, subjected to

technologies and supports. 2) the second is practical and will consist in a multimedia

digital edition of one or more born digital literature’s witnesses.

Background

No modern sensibility has been affected by digital technologies as the

philological spirit1. Within a half century of experimentations in

applying digital tools to written materials has left us with a great

inheritance of digital textuality, perhaps one of the largest ever known. It

means that computers, by now, have widely contaminated the

humanities re-orienting the whole experience of knowledge. Moreover,

the present media revolution has been come along with a considerable

academic attention which has transitioned into a more or less established

subject all around the world – the Digital Humanities. Furthermore, as

things stand now, philology2 seems to be out of the process of

knowledge construction. Is there a tension between traditional3 criticism

and digital expression? For the most part digital expression is actually

far from being scholarly considered and elected as a part of the literary

canon. But in the meantime electronic texts have overcome the analogic

ones.

Section 1

The first step is an historical reconstruction. It will look into the history

of philology trying to demonstrate how the exercise of criticism is used

to rely on technologies and supports. It will point out that the digital

revolution, apart from introducing a new medium in the social and

cultural practices, as the past media revolutions did; has introduced a

new technology. A technological revolution concerns the translation of a

knowledge system into another4 and, in this respect, some particular

features will be studied: a) the difference between media and

technological revolutions; b) how TECHNOLOGY and SUPPORTS work

within the established knowledge; c) how digital technology modifies

categories of the literature – author, text, originalality, textual tradition

1 See R. Dyer, The New Philology: An Old Discipline or a New Science, in Computer

and the humanities, vol. 4 n. 1 (1969) pp. 53-64. 2 It is a term that needs a disambiguation. Its meaning has changed from time to time

since it first appeared in the Library of Alexandria. Here is used to summarize a

scientific attitude towards oral and written expressions. 3 Referred to the Lachmann’s method.

4 M. McLuhan, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man, The MIT Press,

Cambridge, MA, 1994.

d) the technological bias of those categories; e) binary code as the first

technological revolution since the invention of the alphanumeric code5;

f) the time dimension [t] incidental to the code and the literary tradition;

g) the policies of digital preservation. Such analys will also go through

other general issues, some of those are: a) how different cultures give

neutral statements the status of knowledge6 b) how technology bias the

policies of its production and preservation; c) the reasons and the

strategies by which potential cultural statements are excluded from the

established knowledge – they’re out of the canon or in apparatus d) why

some of them are condemned.

Section 2

The second step is a concrete attempt to develop a methodology for an e-

philology according to the digital environment’s principles. The choice

of testing born digital writings7 arises both from the lack of preservation

standards8 and the general hesitation about their meanings and aesthetic

values. By now digital textuality is surrounded by a high degree of

illiteracy. Traditional criticism is unable to explain it because is shaped

on printed books9; it aims to printed publications. A new model for

scholarly editing digital textuality must set the principles in developing

shared preservation strategies and alternative research approaches. I am

firmly convinced that such alternative model could also give reason to

many literary phaenomena neglected by traditional theories: such model

will be based upon MULTIMEDIALITY, which should be considered both

a resource for plurisensorial communications and a category of

literature. The general lack of software for a computer-assisted analysis

of born digital expressions, in fact, is the reflection of the obsolescence

in which traditional ermeneutics – concordance/discordance – has fallen.

The degree of INTERACTIVITY, showed by most of the new forms,

should be considered an elusive form of orality which could lead

scholars to reconsider the newest, as well as the oldest, literary traditions

in their real essence, that is variation. I think the concept of

5 See G. Longo, Critique of Computational Reason in Natural Sciences,

ftp://ftp.di.ens.fr/pub/users/longo/PhilosophyAndCognition/CritiqCompReason-

engl.pdf; D. Schmandt-Basserat, How Writing came about, University of Texas Press,

1966; C. Herrenschmidt, Les Trois Écritures, Langue, nombre, code, Gallimard, Paris,

2007. 6 It needs to say: “and by conserquence, the status of law”. The concept of “document”

on which the law is based derives from nothing but a way to practise textual criticism

oriented toward the reconstruction of the originality. That is the way the idea of

normative arise, supported by “the agreement upon the written document” and, by

consequence, its irrevocable and shared truthfulness. 7 I speak generally because of the many genres of digital expression. In the general

term “digital expressions” are even included those forms of unintentional writings, in

which many categories of literature are implied. 8 About the missing anttention in preserving digital objects see T. Harpold, Ex-

Foliations and the upgrading path, Minnesota Univeristy Press, 2008 about the famous

Nelson’s floppy “Literary Machines”; another significative case is the obsolescence in

which many Voyager ipertexts have fallen. See

http://www.eai.org/resourceguide/preservation/computer/pdfdocs/voyager_casestudy.p

df . 9 Which has been more or less the same since the middle of the 19

th century.

TECHNOLOGICAL VARIATIO is a helpful lens through which look into

literary traditions and most of the changes in techniques and taste from

time to time10

; it will sensitize the academic world and other istitutions

of the need of policies concerned with the digital heritage preservation11

.

The primary aim of a textual e-criticism (or e-philology) is to give

written and oral expressions back its complexity, plurality, occasionality,

volatility and performative component which printing culture refuses to

aknowledge. Such attitude to textuality will put in the public eye the

social challenge to re-write past knowledge, that has been subjected to

printing press’ bias. Above all, this new philology is a new science and

an act of social engagement, sensitive to exceptions and minorities as it

is, it aims to explain and appreciate the cultural pluralism and promote a

strong DIGITAL ALPHABETIZATION12.

10

L. Manovich, Software Takes Command, 2008.

http://lab.softwarestudies.com/2008/11/softbook.html. 11

Like the PAD initiative promoted by the Electronic Literature Organization.

http://eliterature.org/pad/bab.html. Every university, for example, should start to build

its hardware and software museum. 12

The other face of the digital analphabetization is the digital divide. Digital

alphabetization will also benefit the conscious use of computers, as a common good, so

liable to a shared recycling program and donations.