Breaking or Building?: The Curious Case of Postcolonial Digital

Humanities

Roopika Risam

Salem State University

@roopikarisam #dhpoco

@roopikarisam #dhpoco

#dhpoco 101

@roopikarisam #dhpoco

#dhpoco 101

• Emerging field of study

• Situated at the intersections of postcolonial studies and digital humanities

@roopikarisam #dhpoco

#dhpoco 101

• Brings together the making, building, and creating ethos of the digital humanities and global analyses of knowledge and power from postcolonial studies

@roopikarisam #dhpoco

#dhpoco 101

• Advocates for an anticolonial approach to digital humanities by interrogating digital cultures and objects, including code and platform.

@roopikarisam #dhpoco

#dhpoco 101

•Urges critical engagement with progress-oriented approaches to technology, incorporating a global lens

@roopikarisam #dhpoco

#dhpoco 101

• Builds community of scholars interrogating global dimensions of power and technology, grounded in methodologies of digital humanities and humanities computing

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Building in DH

• “Digital Humanities is about building things. I’m willing to entertain highly expansive definitions of what it means to build something.” –Stephen Ramsay, “Who’s In and Who’s Out”

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Building in DH

• “The promise of the digital is…. in the way the digital reshapes the representation, sharing, and discussion of knowledge.” –Mark Sample, “The Digital Humanities Is Not About Building, It’s About Sharing”

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Building in DH

• “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.” –Stephen Ramsay, “On Building”

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Building in DH

• “The ‘radical’ potential of the digital humanities that Ramsay envisions is that building and interpreting is a lapidary process: slicing facets of the same gem.” –Brian Croxall and Kathi Inman Berens

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Breaking in DH

• “I’ve also been thinking about a complementary mode of learning and research that is precisely the opposite of building things. It is destroying things.” –Mark Sample, “Notes towards a Deformed Humanities”

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Breaking in DH

• “The digital brings different playgrounds and new kinds of interaction, and we must incessantly ask questions of it, disturbing the edge upon which we find ourselves so precariously perched.” –Jesse Stommel

@roopikarisam #dhpoco

Breaking and Building in #dhpoco

@roopikarisam #dhpoco

Breaking and Building in #dhpoco

•Operates through dialectical relationships between breaking and building, between digital humanities and postcolonial studies

@roopikarisam #dhpoco

Breaking and Building in #dhpoco

• Integrates breaking and building as digital humanities praxis through theoretical and multimodal approaches

@roopikarisam #dhpoco

Breaking and Building in #dhpoco

• Theoretical approaches stress dismantling of implicit, unequal power structures subtending technology on a global scale and building frameworks for analysis

@roopikarisam #dhpoco

Breaking and Building in #dhpoco

•Multimodal approaches stress importance of building community, archives, and avenues for pedagogy, while breaking down barriers to sharing knowledge through digital spaces

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#dhpoco as Breaking

• Critiquing language and cultural imperialism in digital humanities

•Unearthing assumptions about networks and networked knowledge

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#dhpoco as Breaking

• Deconstructing role of material culture and practices within digital humanities

•Uncovering imperial and colonial silences within digital humanities

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#dhpoco as Building

• Embracing technological strategies for counter-discourse

• Intervening in archival silences through digital humanities

@roopikarisam #dhpoco

#dhpoco as Building

• Cultivating frameworks for representing and analyzing multivocality in digital spaces

• Foregrounding identity-oriented approaches to technology

@roopikarisam #dhpoco

Works Cited

Croxall, Brian and Kathi Inman Berens (2011). “Building Digital Humanities in the Undergraduate Classroom.” http://www.briancroxall.net/buildingDH/

Ramsay, Stephen (2011). “On Building.” http://stephenramsay.us/text/2011/01/11/on-building/

Ramsay, Stephen (2011). “Who’s In and Who’s Out.” http://stephenramsay.us/text/2011/01/08/whos-in-and-whos-out/

Sample, Mark (2011). “The Digital Humanities Is Not About Building, It’s About Sharing.” http://www.samplereality.com/2011/05/25/the-digital-humanities-is-not-about-building-its-about-sharing/

@roopikarisam #dhpoco

Works Cited

Sample, Mark (2012). “Notes towards a Deformed Humanities.”http://www.samplereality.com/2012/05/02/notes-towards-a-deformed-humanities/

Stommel, Jesse (2013). “The Digital Humanities Is About Breaking Stuff.” http://www.hybridpedagogy.com/journal/the-digital-humanities-is-about-breaking-stuff/