Josh also chides me for being technologically deterministic. Since the main burden of the post was that the location of DH within universities influences practice, I would have accepted a charge of organisational determinism. As for technological determinism, I’m afraid I simply don’t see the force of the criticism.

I’ve tried to embody this “wider” view of DH in my work as a librarian, particularly in A Guide to Digital Humanities” (and I’m always open to suggestions and criticisms!) and in my consultations and collaborations with faculty interested in digital humanities, through acts of critical curation of tools and wide-ranging discussions on everything from the cultural biases of metadata to the dangers to techno-utopianism. To me, DH is a way of confronting the anxieties of the digital age, but also of making sure we remain human, even as what it means to be human takes on more virtual and digital forms.

Your post made me ponder the differences implicit and explicit between a “silo” (boo! bad! I presume) and a “community of practice” (huzzah, good?) as well as between a “cluster of new techniques that give rise to new questions” as compared to a “discipline” (what’s the difference between those two?), and “disruptive technologies” as compared to “integrated” ones (do all disruptive technologies eventually get integrated? Is this a good thing always? What would it mean for dh to never stop disrupting?).

My question is this: what if you turned around your fear-of-the-silo argument? If DH is indeed a “cluster of new techniques that give rise to new questions” is that not a discipline in its own right? And if it is a discipline in its own right, should it then have the institutional clout afforded by departmental status, funding, etc. even if that status is in service of trying, ultimately, to reimagine the very existence of “siloing” forces? Will DH have enough institutional strength to disrupt those isolating tendencies—intellectually, ethically, politically, economically—if its goal is to one day self-immolate, purified into the pure spirit of the existing disciplinary traditions? Why are those existing siloed departments good, but a department of digital humanities bad?

I think the key here is not just the presence of the term “digital” but also of the term “humanities” in DH. That’s the difference between DH and word processing or social media. So I don’t agree with your comparisons there. Something different going on with DH, more like History, Philosophy, Classics perhaps in its methodological distinctiveness, perhaps?

Indeed, I would even venture to say that it might be good if suddenly others were sending digital folks over to the Perkins Building, as it were, to the Department of Digital Humanities. This might even have a strange way of achieving the very integration you seek. Only now that integration would happen not by the end game of bringing DH into History, Philosophy, Classics and closing up shop so that there is no more DH. Rather it would be by bringing History, Philosophy, Classics into DH. But not to close up those other “shops” (I mean silos, I mean disciplines, I mean communities of practice!). Rather the goal of bringing other humanistic fields into DH would be to enhance them both as specialized pursuits—disciplines, even silos—and as interdisciplinary ventures

What are these silos anyway? Grain silos? Missile silos? I never quite understand the metaphor at work in this buzzword.

Well, this is what your post made me ponder. Thanks. See you over at the Perkins Building one day, I hope!

– Michael