The Humanities in the digital

Abstract

This chapter delineates the scope and core ideas of the book. The Digital Turn had promised to bring neutrality, fairness and accuracy to research; it created the illusion that it was possible to incorporate technology in knowledge creation practices whilst still operating within the traditional model of disciplines separation. But by adding further complexity to reality and by worsening existing inequalities in the world, the digital transformation has increasingly exposed how illusory such promises were. More recently, the dramatic increase in technology adoption brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic has conclusively established the inadequacy of our current model of knowledge. In this chapter, I examine how the rigid division into compartmentalised, competing disciplines has contributed to exalting computational methods as neutral whilst stigmatising consciousness and criticality as carriers of injustice. Taking the humanities as a focal point, I retrace schisms between the humanities, the digital humanities and critical digital humanities; these are embedded, I argue, within the old dichotomy of science versus humanities. In moving beyond the current static framework, I argue for a new model of knowledge creation.