Towards a cultural critique of the digital humanities

Abstract

"In this article the author tries to articulate a critical assessment of the current geopolitical assets of Digital Humanities. This critique is based firstly on data about the composition of various government organs, institutions and the principal journals in the field, and secondly on a general reflection on the cultural, political and linguistic bias of digital standards, protocols and interfaces. These reflections suggest that DH is not only a discipline and an academic discourse dominated materially by an Anglo-American élite and intellectually by a mono-cultural view, but also that it lacks a theoretical model for reflecting critically on its own instruments. The author concludes by proposing the elaboration of a different model of DH, based on the concept of knowledge as a commons and the cultivation of cultural margins, as opposed to its present obsession with large-scale digitization projects and 'archiving fever', that leads to an increase in our dependency on the products of private industry and, of course, on their funding." (author's abstract)