Towards a Cultural Critique of the Digital Humanities1

Domenico FiormonteDipartimento di Italianistica, Università Roma Tre (fiormont@uniroma3.it)

«The English texts of non­native writers cannot be assumed to reflect their vernacular discourses.» 

A. Suresh Canagarajah, Geopolitics of Academic Writing

«[Nisargadatta] Maharaj said quite often that books get written; they are never written by authors. Only a little thought is necessary to see the truth of what he meant. He was NOT referring only to books on spiritual   matters;   he   was   referring   to  all   books.   In   the   overall functioning  of   the  manifested universe,  whatever  was necessary as written or spoken words appeared spontaneously (…). No credit or blame could attach to any individual writer for the simple reason that the individual is a mere illusion and has not autonomous existence.»

Ramesh S. Balsekar, Experience of Immortality

1. The Last Dinosaurs

Are there non Anglo- American DH, and if so, how are they charac t e r ized?

This is the ques tion that Manfred Taller asked me several months ago and

from which my attend an c e to this meeting origina t es . As a prelimina ry

remark, I must confess that from the very early exchanges between Manfred and I, a  

difference  seems  to  emerge  in   terms of  approaches.  As  other  eminent  European  scholars 

(especially Dino Buzzetti and Tito Orlandi) Thaller identifies the methodological question as 

the core of the differentiation of the several DH approaches (i.e. continental IU vs. Anglo­

American DH). I think the methodological issue is very important, and I don’t see our two 

opinions in stark contrast (i.e. methodological vs. cultural monopolization). Of course much 

depends on what we mean by “culture” and “methodology”. There has always been an attempt 

in Anglo­American DH/HC to maintain a methodological dominion (and dominance) in terms 

of   applications,   standards,   and   protocols.   This   is   natural   of   any   competing   situation   or 

scenario. Besides, to assume that the root of this dominion is cultural, does not mean to deny  

that a methodological monopolization exists. But where do the “monopolies” come from? In 

my opinion, methodologies are successful sets of interconnected discourses on procedures and 

rules that arise from dominant cultural visions. Any distinction or genealogic attempt reminds  

me   of   the   obstinate   persistence   of   the   Aristotelian   form/content   dichotomy.   A   dualistic  

approach that is very far from reflecting the multi­layered dimension of cultural objects. One 

the core assumption of my approach to DH is that any human­born knowledge (including 

computer science models) is subject to the cultural law of the artifact (Vygotsky 1978, 1986). 

1 Translated from the Italian by Federica Perazzini, revised by Desmond Schmidt. 

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This law affirms that both material and cognitive artifacts produced by humans are subject to 

the influence of its environment, culture, and the social habits of the individual and groups  

that devise and make use of them. The artifact influences and at the same time is influenced 

by its context; in other words, technology is always a part of culture, not a cause or an effect 

of it (Slack and Wise 2005, 4; 112). 

In this perspective, it is clear that answering our opening question is something far less simple 

than one could expect. From the historical point of view, it would be easy to answer “Yes” as, 

for example, Italian “Informatica Umanistica” has a strong tradition and a long history. 2 But 

for   from   the   point   of   view   of   the   scientific   results,   research   projects,   and   institutional 

presence, Informatica Umanistica, as most of the “other” DH practiced in the world, don’t 

exist. The reasons of such partial or total invisibility (depending of course on the countries and 

the observer) are not a mystery: the undisputable Anglo­American hegemony in the academic 

and research field. This phenomenon, certainly complex and debated, is perfectly summarized 

by Suresh Canagarajah (2002) in the famous story of Chinese dinosaurs. In April 1997, the 

New York Times  published an  article   titled:  “In  China,  a  Spectacular  Trove of  Dinosaurs 

Fossils  is  Found”. Although the finding was made around one year  earlier,   the American 

newspaper reported the news in that moment because the discovery was publically announced 

by Western scientists the day before, during a conference at the Academy of Natural Sciences 

at Philadelphia

The discovery had been made by a Chinese farmer. The date he discovered the site is not given anywhere in the report. His name is also not given. The name of the international team and their university affiliations are, on the other hand, cited very prominently. (…) When the newspaper claims that “the   spectacular   trove   was   not   announced   until   today”   there   are   many questions that arise in our minds. Announced  by  whom?  To  whom? (…) The   whole   world   is   claimed   to   know   about   the   fossils   after   the announcement at the Philadelphia conference. It is as if the finding is real only  when   the  West  gets   to  know about   it.   It   is   at   that  point   that   the discovery is recognized as a “fact” and constitutes legitimate knowledge. Whatever preceded that point is pushed into oblivion. (Canagarajah 2002, 1­2). 

Having said that, the aim of this pape r is not to ques tion the pres tige of

Anglo- American colleague s , reversing the curren t hiera rchie s or

proposing new and more objective rankings . In fact, I came to realize that

pursuing this kind of investiga t ion would be a vain, though healthy,

exercise. On the other hand, periphe r a l cultures don’t need any revenge

or, worse, any seat at the winner s table and that is why the aim of this

paper is simply to acknowledge a situation, evalua ting it for itself and

2 There is not much information in English available on the history of Informatica Umanistica, but Geoffrey Rockwell has effectively outlined the Italian scenario on a recent post on Tito Orlandi festschrift: http://www.theoreti.ca/?p=4333.

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perhaps sugges t ing that a differen t model is possible.

In the last ten years, the extended colonization, both mate ria l and

symbolical, of the digital technologies has complet ely overwhelme d the

resea rch and educa t ional world. Digitalization has become not only a

vogue or an impera tive, but normali ty. In this sort of digital “gold rush”,

DH perhaps have been losing their original openness and revolutiona ry

poten t ial . If we want to get them back and, at the same time, go furthe r it

is impor tan t to star t from the analysis of what I personally see as the most

relevant DH bottlenecks .

2. The Ways of the Crisis

The   first,   identifiable  gap  has   to  do   the   little   inclination  of  DH  to  develop  what  French 

sociologist   Pierre   Bourdieu   called   “a   theoretical   model   for   reflecting   critically   on   the 

instruments through which we think of reality” (Bourdieu and Chartier 2011, 47). This means 

that, after constituting the tools, the instruments, one reflects on their use and their impact.  

Only rarely, though, one takes time to reflect also on their cultural foundation. In other words, 

it is as if DH have always started from the “results” without considering the whole process 

that lead them there. A recent article by Alan Liu expresses some concerns about the «lack of  

cultural   criticism»   (Liu   2012,   492)   of   DH,   evoking   the   image   of   the   foundation   of   an 

«intellectual infrastructure» for the digital humanities; quite a proper image which appears to 

be in contrast with the nowadays mainstream tendencies. Moreover, highlighting the political 

limitations of the instrumental approach, Liu’s article is a real shot in the arm in the Anglo­

American   context   (even   though   it   still   doesn’t   enter   in   the   geopolitical   balance   and 

economical interests within the DH system).

On the other hand, the little inclination of DH in reflecting on the origins of its objects has 

probably different roots. There is no doubt for example that the historical character of the 

humanities  disciplines  has  contributed   to  an  excess  of  concentration  on   the  conservation, 

management and analytical procedures rather than the more revolutionary (in both its positive 

and negative sense) computational components, that is to say the capacity to affect research 

processes, even before the products.

Another,   more   concrete,   limitation,   regards   the   geopolitical   and   the   cultural­linguistic 

composition   of   the   discipline;   something   consequently   connected   with   the   tool   issue 

(Fiormonte 2001­2002). In fact, though deeply entangled, the problem with this kind of issue 

relies   in   two   different   order   of   factors   :   a)   the   composition   of   the   government   organs,  

institutions   etc.,   inspiring   and   managing   the   processes,   the   strategies   and   ultimately   the 

research   methodology   (thus   affecting   also   the   visibility   of   the   results);   b)   the   cultural­

linguistic nuances and features of the tools (Fiormonte 2008; 2009). In addition to that, within  

this   second  category,   it   is   possible   to   identify:   b1)   the   cultural   and   political  problem of 

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softwares   and  platforms  (i.e.   social  networks)  almost  exclusively  produced   in   the  Anglo­

American   environment   b2)   the   cultural­semiotic   problem   of   the   different   tools   of 

representation: from the icons of the graphical interfaces to the Unicode standards, from the 

Second Life proxemics to the universal concept of usability etc. In what follows, I will try to 

focus especially on a) and b2) sacrificing, for space reasons, the important software issue b1).  

But let’s proceed in order, and start with the institutional and organizational structures.

3. Geopo l i t i c s of DH (and beyon d)

A deepen e d view of the matte r reveals that these influences are genera lly

highly pervasive and this is because these are assum ed as an

unques t ionable norm. Each medium and its correspond e n t technical

artifact, as Harold Innis taugh t us (Innis 1951), implies a bias , and it is

subject to the ‘cultural law’ mentioned above. A banal example is the long

dominion of the 7 bit ASCII code (American Standa r d Code for

Information Interchan g e) which has been the only set of charac t e r

recognized by all computing platforms – Web included – for more than 40

years.   The same techno­cultural  bias affects  most of  the services and  instruments of  the 

network, e.g.  the domain name. In the last forty years it  was not possible to use accented  

vowels   in   the   URL   address,   and   in   spite   of   recent   IETF   and   ICANN   efforts 3   the   new 

Internationalizing Domain Names in Applications (IDNA) system can be implemented only in 

applications that are specifically designed for it, and it is scarcely used in Latin alphabet­based 

URLs.   Some  of   the   initial   top­level   domains   can  be  only  used   by   U.S.   institutions.   For 

example, a European university cannot use the top­level domain .edu, which was and is still  

reserved only for U.S. academic institutions. The domain .eu could not be included in the top­

level domains until 2006, and applications for top­level domains using characters outside of 

ISO­Latin were recently invited (requests are open from 12 January to 12 April 2012). ICANN 

(the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) finally allowed the opening up of 

top level domains to Arabic or Chinese characters, included in Unicode, but every decision 

rests   in   the   hands   of   an   organization   under   the   clear   control   of   western   industries   and 

governments. The request procedure is very complicated, many of the rules are described only 

in English, the cost of the application is $185,000, and the application does not guarantee that  

the request will  be accepted. The applying  institution needs to show a clear  technical and 

financial capability that must be certified discretionally by ICANN itself. The problem is that 

ICANN,   although   it   has   always   taken   decisions   of   global   relevance,   still   lacks   a   clear 

institutional   and   multi­stakeholder   accountability.  Up to 2009 the ICANN, self-

defined as a «not- for- profit public- benefit corpora t ion», was controlled by

3 http://www.icann.org/en/news/announcements/announcement­30oct09­en.htm.

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the USA Depar tm e n t of Commerce 4 and even today, its curren t CEO, Mr

Rod Beckst rom, is past presiden t of the National Cybersecu r i ty Cente r

(NCSC) for the Depar tm e n t of Homeland Securi ty 5; an impeccable

pedigree for a cybercop but less impeccable for a manage r of a common

resource such as the Net 6 .

As for areas closes t to humanities interes t s , power struc tu re s don’t

appea r to be less discoura ging . The Unicode case is a perfect example of

this phenom eno n. By its own definition Unicode is, at least in theory, a no-

profit organiza tion «devoted to developing, maintaining, and promoting

software interna t ionalization standa r ds and data, particula rly the Unicode

Standa r d , which specifies the repres e n t a t ion of text in all modern

software produc t s and standa r ds » 7 . Its Board of Directors is curren t ly

made of two Google’s employees, two Microsofts’s, one from Apple, one

from JustSyste m s, one IBM’s and one from OCLC 8 . Not that differen t is

also the composi tion of the Executive Office: the presiden t has been a

Google engineer since 2006 and, a part a couple of exceptions coming

from the academic or the resea rch world, no public institu tion is

repre s en t e d . As a mat te r of fact, Unicode is an indust r ial standa r d

controlled by the indust ry. And claims about the neutr ali ty or impar t iali ty

of this organiza tion appea r at least ques tionable.

If this can be taken as a credible example of the global scene ry, it is clear

that the DH situation cannot be but affected. Compar ed to the survey I

carried out in 2001 (Fiormon te 2002), even though so much effort has

been put to make the DH existing associations and organiza tions more

interna t ion al, the impression stays the same: a solid Anglo- American base

on which several individualities of mostly European count r ies are

engraf ted . Table 1 shows how boards and commit tee s of the eight top DH

interna t ion al organiza tions (four associations , one network, one

consor t ium, and two journals 9) are composed. Data are organized by

count ry of institutional affiliation, i.e. what is shown is not the count ry of

origin of the membe r , but the place where the individual appear s to work.

4http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/commerce_department_loosens_grip_on_icann.php.5 http://www.icann.org/en/biog/beckstrom.htm.6 While Western governments and companies try to preserve their primacy on the Internet, data show a different scenario. In terms of access to the Internet, Western Countries (Europe and USA) represent only 35.7% out of the total of the users whereas Asia records 44%. (Source: http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm).7 http://www.unicode.org/consortium/consort.html.8 http://www.unicode.org/consortium/directors.html9 Association for Computers and the Humanities (ACH), Alliance of Digital Humanities Organizations (ADHO), Association for Literary and Linguistic Computing (ALLC), Centernet (International Networks of Digital Humanities Centers), Digital Humanities Quarterly, Literary and Linguistic Computing, Society for Digital Humanities/Société pour l'étude des médias interactifs (SDH­SEMI), Text Encoding Initiative (TEI). 

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Table 2 aggrega t e s data from the same organiza t ions and shows the

multiple- appointm e n t s effect, i.e. how commit tee s and boards tend to

replicat e themselves, sometimes appointing the same people to up to five

differen t organiza tions. These roughly collected data may be are not

sufficien t for demons t r a t ing that curren t top DH organiza t ions suffer from

ethnocen t r i s m, but cer ta inly point out a problem.

Table 1. DH organizations: presence of individuals by country of institutional affiliation.

  ACH ADHO ALLC CNet DHQ LLC SDH­SEMI TEI

John Unsworth (5)                

Melissa Terras (5)                

Geoffrey Rockwell (4)                

Michael Eberle­Sinatra (4)                

Ray Siemens (4)                

Stéfan Sinclair (4)                 

Susan Brown (4)                

Bethany                 

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Nowviskie (3) 

Daniel O'Donnell (3)                

Jan Cristoph Meister (3)                 

Lisa Lena Opas­Hänninen (3)                 

Lorna Hughes (3)                 

Neil Fraistat (3)                 

Susan Hockey (3)                 

Willard McCarty (3)                 

Table 2. Multiple or cross­appointments top­list. In red are showed people that appear in five organizations, in orange people that appears in four, in yellow people that appear in three.

Of course , initiatives such as Cente rn e t , ADHO (Alliance of Digital

Humani ties Organizat ions 10 ) and CHAIN (Coalition of Humani ties and

Arts Infras t ruc t u r e s and Networks) have the merit of gathe ring and

registe r ing the major reali ties of the Atlantic Axe (USA–Canada–UK) but

this is just a self- strengt h enin g opera tion of existing identi ties rathe r than

an actual knowledg e sharing or an explorat ion of other cultures ,

methodologies or practices. Let’s consider the monolinguis m of the above

sites and organiza tions. Their rhetorical struc tu re doesn’t leave space to

anything but the ‘inner’ Anglo- American rhetoric and academic nar ra t ive

(Canaga r a j ah 2002, 109- 127). Furthe r m o r e , the self- repor t of some

initiatives, such as Melissa Terras’ flatland, cont ribu ted to presen t Digital

Humani tes as an empire made of two macro- kingdoms, USA and UK, at

the cente r the orbits of some scanty satellites (Fig.1). These sort of

universalist ic repres e n t a t ions (or self- repres en t a t ions) seem but to reveal

the actual state of subordina t ion in which non- English speaking digital

humanis t s are; a situa tion that is trigger ed at the very moment we use the

label “digital humanities”.

One exception to this scenario are the THATCamp un- conference series

(http:// tha t ca m p .o rg /) which are becoming a good oppor tuni ty for

periphe r a l communi ties to share alterna t ive views of what DH are or

10 At the moment, ADHO’s Steering Committee is made of 7 members, of which only 2 are not from USA o rUK: http://digitalhumanities.org/administration/steering. 

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could be. 11 This seems the case of the recent initiative Humanis tica. eu , a

project launched at THATCamp Florence in 2011 12 for creating a

European Association of DH (a “new common space for nurturing and

practicing this discipline from a genuine multi- cultural and multi- lingual

perspec t ive”, as we can read on the websi te) .

Figure 1. M. Terras’ DH Graph13.

In this perspec tive, I could go on with further consider a t ions regarding

the cultural and epistemic bias implied in the markup languag es as well

as in the solutions proposed by TEI 14 . Howeve r, in the next parag r a p h I

would rathe r focus on relaunching the fundam en t al ques tion of the

impor tance , especially in the humanities and social sciences , of the

residual categories.

Any attempt to creat e an obligatory system of classification, rigid and universal, will result in residual categor ies (…) It is necessa ry to root the awarene s s of what happens every time one tries to standa r dize . In other words, that in this crea tion there is someone who wins and someone who loses. This not a simple ques tion, nor a mat te r easy to analyze. (Bowker and Leigh Star 2006, 13)

11 A quick look at the upcoming THATCamps shows that out of 35 THATCamps listed on the website 24 will take place in USA.12 See the relative Manifesto proposed in Paris: http://tcp.hypotheses.org/411.13 The complete graph is available on line: http://www.ucl.ac.uk/infostudies/melissa­terras/DigitalHumanitiesInfographic.pdf.14 To deepen this issue, see Schmidt 2010; Fiormonte e Schmidt 2011; Fiormonte et al. 2010.

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The crisis (of self- estee m too) of the humani ties 15 could be summarized in

this point: the constitu tive necessi ty – in order to keep on surviving – to

be always on the margins, to be a hybrid, a varian t of the system. This

repres e n t s the first obstacle and the poten tial friction betwee n the role of

the DH and the one of the humani ties. It is quite evident, in fact, that a

legitimat ion of the DH, or a revitalization which is not simply a defense of

the existen t to the end, can’t be realized without a critique of the

economical and geopolitical interes t s lying beyond the universe of the Net

and its applications . It appear s that DH are the victims of a continuous

paradox: showing of being able to keep up with technologies (and their

actual and virtual protagonis t s ) and, at the same time, not to becom e

subject ed to them.

4. Stan d ard s and Cultural Heg e m o n i e s

According to G. Bowker and S. Leight Star «classifications and standa rd s

are mate r ial , as well as symbolic», and their control «is a cent ral , often

underan a lyzed feature of economic life» (Bowker and Leigh Star 1999,

15; 39). In their studies the two sociologist s show how the classification

techniques (and the standa rd s genera t e d from them) have always played

a fundam en t a l economic and socio- cultural role. Curren t digital

technologies standa r d s appea r to be the result of a double bias: the

technical one and the cultural one (geopolitical). These two bias are

entangled and it is almost impossible to distinguish where the

technological choice begins and where the cultural prejudice ends.

As the lexicograph e r and blogger José Antonio Millán, noticed more than

10 years ago «while networks are the highways of digital goods and

service flows, technologies linked to the user’s language are their

compulsory tolls» (Millán 2001, 140). Thus, at the roots of economic,

social, political primacy we do not find “just” technology, but rathe r the

mix of copyrighted algorithms and protocols that manipulat e and control

languag es . In this perspec t ive, standa r ds are but the results of a balance

of powers 16 . Presiding over linguis tic technologies has thus become both a

profitable business and a geopolitical mat te r . As Millán states, for many

count r ies , not investing in this sector presen t ly means being forced to pay

15 The link between the crisis of the Humanities and the role of the DH is the central theme of the advocacy initiative carried out by a group of universities, associations as well as British, American, Canadian and Australian research center: http://humanistica.ualberta.ca.16 «On the other hand, our new global information structure, is based on classification schemes elaborated within developed countries in order to solve problems particularly connected with the educated élite.» (Bowker e Star 2006, 15).

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to be able to use one’s own languag e .

«Localization still mat te r s» , and the resea rch e r s of the Language

Observa to ry Project (http://www.lang u a g e- observa to ry.org/) noted that

although Unicode is recognized as a step forward for multilingualism,

«many problems in languag e processing remain»:

The Mongolian languag e , for example, is writ ten either in Cyrillic script or in its own historical and tradi tional script, for which at least eight differen t codes and fonts have been identified. No standa r dis a t ion of typed font exists, causing inconsistency, even textual mistrans la t ion, from one compute r to anothe r . As a resul t, some Mongolian web pages are made up of image files, which take much longer to load. Indian web pages face the same challenge . On Indian newspape r sites proprie t a ry fonts for Hindi scripts are often used and some sites provide their news with image files. These technological limita tions prevent information from being intercha n g e a b le , and lead to a digital languag e divide. (Yoshiki and Kodama 2012, 122-123)

The Italian linguis t and anthropologis t Antonio Perri has offered

convincing examples of the cultural bias of the Unicode charac t e r s

repres e n t a t ional system, showing the concre t e risks of oversimplifying

and drying up the “phenom en ological richness of human writing

practices” (Perri 2009, 747). Perri analyzed a numbe r of encoding

solutions proposed by the Unicode consor tium for differen t problems

related to Indian sub- continen tal scripts , to Chinese, Arabic and Hangul

(Korean writing). In all these cases, in addition to being excessively

depend e n t on visualization software , which raises problems of portabili ty,

he showed that the Unicode solutions were based on a

“hyper typogr a p hic” concep t of writing, i.e. weste r n writing embodied in

its print form and logical sequencing, By neglecting the visual featur es of

many writing systems this view overlooks their impor tan t functional

aspect s , Perri gives a striking example of this bias when discussing

Unicode trea tm e n t of ligatur es and the position of vowel charac t e r s in the

Devanaga r i Indic script. Often in Indian systems aspects of a graphic

nature prevail over the reading order of the graphe m e s . As showed in

Figure 2.2, in the second glyph the order pronuncia t ion/gr a p hic sequenc e

is revers ed . Unicode exper t s , however, argue that Indic scripts are

repres e n t e d in its system according to a “logical schem e” that ignores

“typograp hic” details. Perri concludes:

But why on ear th should the order of charac t e r s corresponding to the phonet ic segmen t be consider ed logical by an Indian litera t e? Who says that the lineari ty of Saussu r e’s alphabe t ic signifier should play a role in his

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writing practices? (…) It is therefore all too evident that the alphabe t ic filter, the rende ring software and the automa tic process of normalization of Indic scripts are the result of a choice that reflects the need for structu r a l uniformity as opposed to the emic cultural practices of the real user . (Perri 2009, 736; our transl.).

Figure 2. Two graphe m e s of Devanaga ri Indic script as shown in Perri 2009, 735.

Unfortuna t e ly, the problem of cultural primacy overflows linguistic

bounda r ies . The pervasivenes s of cultural repres en t a t ions and metaphors

belonging to the Anglo- American context in all technological appliances

and computing tools is a well- known tendency since at least the 1960s.

Many familiar elemen t s borrowed from everyday U.S. life were expor ted

to the compute r world. We are not speaking here of progra m min g

languag es or algori thms , where the deep semiotic bias is intrinsically

evident (Andersen 1997), but of the ‘superficial’ (and not less subtle)

world of icons and graphic interfaces (GUI). One example is the manila

folder, an ubiquitous object used in all American offices that owes its

name to a fiber (manila hemp) commonly used in the Philippines for

making ropes, paper produc ts and coarse fabrics. An object coming from

a removed colonial past suddenly, thanks to the Xerox Star desktop 17 ,

becam e later the metaphor for any computing conten t : a symbol that

17 «By far its most striking feature was its graphical user interface, ... The arrangement of folders and icons built around what the Star engineers called the ‘desktop metaphor’ is so familiar today that it seems to have been part of computing forever.» (Hilzik 1999, 364).

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conceals the bureauc r a t ic origins of the desktop compute r and its unique

ties to the cultural imagina ry of the averag e U.S. customer . Examples of

symbolic cyber- colonization are Second Life facial expressions and user-

playable animations, where we can find body languag e gestur e s which

can be only deciphe re d by exper t American native speaker s 18 . Take for

example the famous «kiss my butt» animation (see Figure 2), where both

the verbal expression and the body postur e would sugges t (at best)

deceptive or vaguely alluring meanings to most of Latino or

Medite r r a n e a n culture s.

Figure 3. the «kiss my butt» gestur e in Second Life

5. Langu a g e Differe n c e s and Global Ineq u a l i t i e s

Our last example isn’t a real example, but a compara t ive experim en t

18 A complete list of such animations can be found in: http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Internal_Animations#User­playable_animations.

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based on two graphic repres en t a t ions . The first image (Figure 4) is a map

of world income inequali ties from the Universi ty of California Atlas of

Global Inequali ty databas e. The second world map (Figure 5), a Wikipedia

image based on Ethnologue.com sources, represe n t s linguistic diversi ty in

the world: in red are shown the 8 megadivers e countr ies that togethe r

repres e n t more than 50% of the world’s languages , and in blue, areas of

grea t diversity.

Figure 4. World Gross Domestic Product in 2004. Source:

http://uca t las .ucsc .edu/

Figure 5. Linguis tic diversi ty in the world. Source: http://en.wikipedia.org /wiki/Linguis tic_diversi ty # Ling uis tic_diversi ty

If we overlap these two maps, we can notice that – excluding Australia,

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where linguistic diversity is due to the enormous number of immigran t s

from all continen t s 19 – the lower income count r ies of the first map in many

cases fit the areas of grea t e r linguis tic diversi ty. In other words: cultural

richness does not necess a rily match mate rial wealth.

The comparison betwee n the two maps we have proposed does not seek

to sugges t superficial and easy conclusions; however, it is legitimate to

believe that in some of the poores t areas of the world, in deser t s , jungles,

and mountains at the margins of our globalized socie ty, a handful of

communities continue to cultivate the last resource still entirely in their

own hands: language .

Finally, it is not surprising, that the world income map perfectly overlaps

also with the “Quantifying Digital Humani ties” one produced by the UCL

Centre for Digital Humanities . 20 This seems to confirm Millán’s hypothes is

on the strict relation between economic hegemony, technological

concent r a t ion and linguis tic impoverishm e n t , raising the un- approache d

question of the internal and external digital humani ties divide in Weste rn

Count r ies.

6. Beyon d the Alphab et i c Machin e ?

What is the role and the position of DH in the geopolitical scene ry

presen te d so far? Notwiths t an ding the unques t ionable expansion of the

discipline (Gold 2012), I have the impression that DH haven’t taken

cognizance of what is happening in the world, yet. Maybe this has to do

with the inevitable repre ssion of a too bitte r truth, that is to say that so

far, DH haven’t succeede d in either streng th e ning the field of humanities

nor putting some balance into the power relationships between

humanities and compute r sciences .

If, on one hand, the perspec t ive of the “formal methods” 21 didn’t manag e

to establish an equal dialogue between humani ties and compute r

sciences , on the other hand it made compute r sciences too short- sighted

and even hostile to the so- called digital cultures relega ting these latte r to

a mere “sociological” ques tion. As already pointed out by the ACO*HUM 22

(De Smedt et al. 1999) resea rch in the nineties, a compute r is a “univers al

19 According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, the European invasion during the XIX and XX centuries eradicated both languages and cultures from the aboriginal populations: “Today, there are approximately 22 million Australians, speaking almost 400 languages, including Indigenous languages”. (http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/Latestproducts/1301.0Feature%20Article32009%E2%80%9310?opendocument&tabname=Summary&prodno=1301.0&issue=2009%9610&num=&view=)20

21 For a discussion on the formalization of humanities disciplines cfr. Van Zundert et al. 2012.22 The website is still active and available on online: http://www.hd.uib.no.

14

machine” and the application of formal methods is the lowest common

denomina to r of the DH. However, all form of oral or writ ten discours es

are not reducible or ascribable to a logical struc tu r e (the ‘model’, cf.

Buzzet ti 2002), but reflect and imply a dynamic interac tion between

produce r s , codes, mate r ial suppor ts , and audiences . The meaning doesn’t

simply emerge from the two processe s of analysis and modeling but from

coopera t ion (Halliday 1977). In other words, a discourse is a cultural

artifact made of syntax, seman tics and, above all, pragm a tics and that is

why all the data of human culture are so hard to formalize.

On the other hand, the depende nc e between the machine and the

alphabe t goes beyond the mere difficulty or impossibility to be

independ e n t from the print model. In fact, such depend en ce seems to be

inscribed in the very DNA of the machine:

So I would like to readdr e s s the fact that the roots of this machine are veryold and can be found in the alphabe t . First of all, 5000-6000 years ago, thealphabe t was, for differen t reasons , an invention compar a ble to the compute r- media ted discret izat ion of knowledge we have now perform ed. Think of the originality of these first social groups from Mesopota mia who fractioned the linguistic flux, a continuous spoken song, marking certain pitches as first consonan t s [Herrens ch mid t C. et al. 1996]. It was the onset of a developm en t and of a culture which were quite differen t to those inheren t to the hieroglyphic writing of ideogra m s which proposed concept s or evoked whole images, situations , or feelings, by means of drawings . Conversely, the alphabe t discret izes , subdivides continuous language into insignificant atoms, into the bits which are lette rs . (Longo 2009, 58- 58) 23 .

Howeve r, as Longo reminds us, the presen t computa t ion al dimension is

not the manifes t destiny of humankind . Humanis t s can join other

pionee ring scientis ts around the globe who are star t thinking “of the next

machine: history is not over, with digital computabili ty” (Longo 2009, 60).

In conclusion, the implicit flattening of the technological, commer ci al and

indust ria l policies as well as the essentially mono- cultural origins of the

logical and symbolical repre s en t a t ions are but obstacles to the expansion

of DH beyond the simply instrum e n t a l function. I agree with Alan Liu

(2012) who says that in order to extend their range of action and be

legitimate d as an actual discipline , DH need to infect with other close

23 It is important to notice that the author of this J’accuse is a computer scientist and mathematician currently engaged into biology researching. A specular historical­technical support to Longo’s thesis is to be found in the studies on the numerical origins of the cuneiform writing (see also Denise Schmandt­Besserat 1996).

15

disciplines 24 such as social sciences (from the Science and Technology

Studies to Mediology 25 ) and cultural anthropology (especially the varian t

dealing with the cultural artifacts form André Leroi- Gourhan to Jack

Goody, from the ethnogr ap hy of James Clifford and George E. Marcus to

the digital ethnography of Michael Wesch 26 ).

But maybe, the most urging issue would be stopping considering the

methodological question and the socio- cultural one as separa t e entities.

In other words, stop thinking, paraph r a s ing Harold Innis, DH were born

in a vacuu m :

Innis happily accepted as a star ting point the inevitably ethnocen t r ic bias of social science. (…) He recognized that scholars hip was not produced in a historical and cultural vacuum but reflected the hopes, aspira tions, and heresies of national culture s . American and British scholar ship was based, he thought , on a concei t: it pre tend ed to discover Universal Truth, to proclaim Universal Laws, and to describe a Universal Man. Upon inspec tion it appea re d , however, that its Universal Man resem bled a type found around Cambridge , Massachu s e t t s , or Cambridge , England: its Universal Laws resembled those felt to be useful by Congres s and Parliame n t ; and its Universal Truth bore English and American accents . Imperial powers, so it seems, seek to create not only economic and political clients but intellectual clients as well. (Carey 1992, 149).

So, are we digital humanis t intellectual clients , dinosau r s or “the next big

thing” 27 ? Personally, I would rathe r prefer not to choose among these

options. Instead , I like to think of DH as a cultural and political project .

We could star t it from three basic steps: a) stop being obsess ed with

large- scale digitization projects and «archiving fever» (Derrida 1996)

which unique result is to increase our depende ncy from private indust ry

standa r ds , produc ts and of course funding; b) improve and cultivate the

margins , i.e. give more atten tion our variega t ed cultural and linguistic

local diversi ty; c) help to elabora t e a new concep t of knowledge as

com mon s. As for c), Hess and Ostrom (2011) provide a set of design

principles for common- pool resource institu tions:

• Clearly defined bounda ri es should be in place.• Rules in use are well matched to local needs and

24 I pointed out a list of possible intersections in Numerico et al. 2010, 102­103.25 Loan from the French médiologie (http://www.mediologie.org/), this term spread also in Italy (http://www.mediologia.com/). According to Régis Debray, mediology «deals with the analysis of the ‘superior social funcion’ (religion, ideology, art, politics) in their relationships with the transmission means and environments» (Debray 1999). 26http://mediatedcultures.net.27 This expression, referred to DH, became immediately famous after it was used by W. Pannapacker upon commenting the 2009 MLA Convention: http://chronicle.com/blogPost/The­MLAthe­Digital/19468/.

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conditions.• Individuals affected by these rules can participa te in modifying the rules.• The right of community members to devise their own rules is respec t ed by external authori t ies.• A system for self- monitoring member’s behavior has been established.• A gradua t ed system of sanctions is available.• Communi ty member s have access to low- cost conflict resolution mechanis ms .• Nested enterp r i se s – that is, appropri a t ion, provision, monitoring, and sanctioning, conflict resolution, and other governanc e activities – are organized in a nested struc tu r e with multiple layers of activities. (Hess and Ostrom 2011, 7)

If the DH community would star t to discuss the possibility of applying

some of these design principles to its own organiza tions , a complet ely

new way of thinking and resear ching would emerge – more respec tful of

our mutual cultures , more democr a t ic, and more powerful.

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