In reading the last two sections of the Debates in Digital Humanities, I've had a hard time coming up with possible post topics for the Facebook page or indeed for this blog entry. There's a real sense of "a discipline in search of itself" that runs through the entire book (hence the debates), but a lot of the last two sections comes across as even more so. We see, in the section on teaching DH, a real awareness that the lab work DH is engaged in to some extent takes away from the pedagogy of it. You can show better than you can teach, seems to be the message of some essays, and with the fluid, amorphous definition of DH itself, a lot can be done by those outside DH (like, say, in college administration) to undercut the idea of DH being taught on campus. So in that sense, it's just as much a part of the humanities as the English department and other "traditional" disciplines.
It all seems to go back to justification, not self-justification so much as justification to the outside world, and in that I can relate. As someone who's pursued degrees in English for well over a decade (my undergrad career, first at South Carolina in 1997-1998, then Tri-County Tech in 2001-2004, and finally at Clemson in 2006-2008), my choices have left a lot of people in my family scratching their heads. I'm not sold on the idea of being a teacher, per se; I'm closer to acknowledging that it's probably where I'm headed more today than ever before, but at heart I'm a writer, or a wannabe writer. Problem is, my fiction is lacking (to me, anyway), and while I could tell you what makes a book good or bad, I'm not sure I have the ability to render a book myself (which bodes well for the "publish or perish" mentality of faculty, I'm sure). I've had a hard time justifying to others and to myself just why I am pursuing such avenues of education, if I can't "do" anything with it, at least not in the eyes of a lot of people.
A humanities degree in some circles seems like a waste; compared to pre-med or pre-law, it's easy to see why some might think that it's a waste of time. A digital humanities degree, or a class in DH, might be even harder to justify to someone unfamiliar with the concept. It all ties back to the idea of functionality in education: pursue a degree in something that gives back to the common good, the idea seems to be.
But art is important, if you'll forgive a lifelong English major saying it. Art informs life, makes it worth living, makes it bearable when science and other more rational, more fact-based ideas fail. I've gotten through more tough times with the help of good books (and even some bad ones) than with any other coping mechanism save humor (which is also an art). The divide in DH seems to be between emphasizing the cold mechanics of making a text available online and making the text come alive through interpretations, or doing something totally unthought of before. It reminds me of the Robin Williams speech in Dead Poets Society: all the sciences are noble pursuits, but poetry gives meaning to life. I believe that, anyway.
Perhaps in the texts to come, we can get away from debates about the merits of DH, because in a sense it doesn't matter. DH has the ability to make art, to make it accessible. That should be enough, I think, to justify any amount of expenditure from the higher-ups. Yes, the law schools and science labs might be more flashy, with their output more easily identified. But art has the ability of burrowing into your soul, changing your outlook on life. It's not easily quantifiable, and it shouldn't be. Perhaps if DH embraces the less results-oriented approach of its sister humanities, we wouldn't have to have debates about its merits.
No comments:
Post a Comment