Digital humanities or humanities in digital: revisiting scholarly primitives

Abstract

The use of computing tools and methods has irreversibly impacted the creation, use and communication of research. As a result, a still divisive movement of digital humanities (DH) has emerged over the last few decades. This article attempts to provide a theoretical contribution to the discussion of the core fundamentals of the field. In order to do so, it takes a sample of papers indexed under Library and Information Science, in the Web of Knowledge database, and studies them using a quantitative data analysis and a qualitative literature review combined with the author’s personal reflection to illustrate the main research topics. The notion of scholarly primitives, initially formulated by John Unsworth, provides the background for the theoretical analysis. It is concluded that DH embody a community patterned by collaborative and shared networks of communication, where digital tools amplify research possibilities without changing the humanistic values of its practitioners.

Digital humanities: Mission accomplished? An analysis of scholarly literature

“…In the preface to Schreibman et al (2016), the authors foresee a time when the modifier 'digital' will have become pleonastic in humanities. Pacheco (2022) agrees with them and believes that, at present, that modifier is necessary to mark a methodological transition, and it will eventually be dropped. Robertson (2016) maintains that several disciplines are contained in DH, and they have not erased their differences; he looks at DH as a house with many rooms-'entry points to central spaces where those from different disciplines working with particular tools and media can gather'.…”

“…At the same time, they warn against the passive acceptance of technology -part of the so-called traditionalists' response to the newly available tools offered by the internet. Critical remarks are also made by Pacheco (2022), who discusses different opinions on DH and complains about the lack of a thorough debate.…”

“…Digital humanities (DH), ‘a broad designation that many might know, but fewer understand’ (Pacheco, 2022), is a relatively recent field of research. Most historical accounts find its origin in 1949, the same year when the first stored-program computer was realized, in the collaboration between Father Roberto Busa and IBM for a computer-assisted compilation of word indices and concordances in St Thomas Aquinas's works.…”

“…The linguistic computing centers and the joint projects funded in subsequent years led the humanists who were collaborating with computer scientists to develop quantitative approaches to their problems and originate what was then called humanities computing (HC) (Berry, 2012). Applying quantitative methods in fields in which the qualitative approach was the almost exclusive tradition raised discussions within the new community, as well as between them and traditional humanists; this produced a wave of scepticism motivated by the fear that the new methods would contaminate the ‘genuine’ humanistic disciplines, or that humanities may ‘sell their essence to technology’ (Pacheco, 2022). The growing HC community also launched academic and professional associations and, in 1966, the first dedicated journal, Computers and the Humanities ( CHum ) (Raben, 1966); this was followed in 1986 by Literary and Linguistic Computing ( LLC ).…”

“…The terminological switch from HC to DH occurred as an effect of this evolution, 1 emphasizing the fact that this research is no longer viewed as a branch of computing but as the subject of a new academic discipline (Sula and Hill, 2019). In fact, scholars have long debated whether DH is a true academic discipline (Brink, 1990; McCarty, 1998; Burnard, 1999; Papadopoulos and Reilly, 2020; Drucker, 2021; Orlandi, 2021; Pacheco, 2022). A related long-standing debate is on interdisciplinarity, multidisciplinarity, transdisciplinarity (McCarty, 1999; Schreibman et al, 2004, 2016; Berry, 2012; Darbellay, 2019; Jacobs, 2021), or even postdisciplinarity (Schnapp and Presner, 2009).…”