Niels-Oliver Walkowski

Die Geburt der Theorie aus dem Geiste der Kritik – oder wie zwei neue Publikationen den Stand der Digital Humanities reflektieren

Niels-Oliver Walkowski — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 15:15:32 +0000

Eine der spannendsten Diskussionen in den Digital Humanities konzentriert sich auf die Frage, was sich sinnvoll mit diesem Begriff verbinden lässt. Interessant ist diese Frage vor allem deshalb, weil sie die Suche nach dem Kern dessen betrifft, was wir Digital Humanists täglich praktizieren und womit wir uns identifizieren. Doch gerade in implementierenden Projekten bleibt zu wenig Zeit für derartige Reflexionen. Einige Disziplinen tendieren dazu, eine solche reflexive Perspektive grundsätzlich aus der alltäglichen Arbeit „outzusourcen“ und sie als Meta-Knowledge zu begreifen (Evans & Foster 2011). Die Schwierigkeit dieser Strategie liegt darin, dass sie die Grundlagen und Voraussetzungen einer Forschung oder einer Forschungsrichtung in etwas Statisches verwandelt, das damit nicht mehr denselben Prinzipien zeitlicher, räumlicher und sozialer Abhängigkeit unterworfen ist wie die projektbezogene Forschung selbst. Gerade Geisteswissenschaftler haben durch ihre alltägliche Arbeit gegenüber dieser Problematik ein besonderes Verhältnis entwickelt. Im Bereich der Digital Humanities lassen sich ganz unterschiedliche Bestrebungen finden, einen Begriff davon zu entwickeln, welchem Konzept der eigenen Wissenschaft man sich zugehörig fühlt. Am bekanntesten dürften dabei wohl offensive Ansätze sein, wie z. B. das Digital Humanities Manifesto 2.0, das eine regelrechte Mobilisierung der Community zur Folge hatte (UCLA 2009). Ein ganz anderer, dagegen fast schon nüchtern anmutender Ansatz ist die empirische Studie The Landscape of Digita Humanities (Svensson 2010). Hier wurde die Diversität an Projekten und Initiativen untersucht, die sich selbst dem Feld der Digital Humanities zuordnen. Trotz zahlreicher weiterer Aktivitäten rund um eine Standortbestimmung fällt seit jüngerer Zeit jedoch auf, dass zunehmend auch kritische Stimmen aus dem Bereich der Digital Humanities selbst ihre Unzufriedenheit gegenüber einem Mangel an reflexiver, theoretischer oder kritischer Durchdringung des Feldes äußern. Stellvertretend mag der Vortrag von Alan Liu auf der Modern Language Association Convention 2011 genannt werden, in dem konstatiert wird:

In the digital humanities, cultural criticism – in both its interpretive and advocacy modes – has been noticeably absent by comparison with the mainstream humanities (Liu 2011)

Darüber hinaus wurde auf Digital Humanities Now unter dem Titel „Digital Humanities and theory round-up“ eine Zusammenstellung an Blog-Artikeln veröffentlicht, die sich der Rollenbestimmung von Theorie in den Digital Humanities widmete (ohne Autor 2011). Und zum Jahresende suchte Frederick Gibbs schließlich noch den „critical discourse in the digital humanities“ (Gibbs 2011). Auch der jüngst stattgefundene „Cologne Dialogue on Digital Humanities“ war nicht unbeeinflusst von diesem sich entwickelnden Thema, so wenn z. B. Willard McCarty im Prelimanry Paper schreibt „it’s the worrying I take interest in. This worrying is worth far more to us than to be treated either as romantic reaction or as premonition“ (McCarty 2012, p.4) und dieser Sorge um die “Idee der Geisteswissenschaften” seinen Vortrag widmet.

Um ein Analysewerkzeug für die beschriebenen Entwicklungen und Äußerungen zu entwickeln, bietet sich ein Anschluss an die hybride Grundkonstellation der Digital Humanities selbst an. Digitale Techniken erscheinen immer noch derart messianisch und besitzen eine solche Innovationsdynamik, dass sie die Vorstellung produzieren, als würde sich die Welt innerhalb der digitalen Techniken reproduzieren. Ein Motiv, welches z. B. in der Rede über die Digital Natives zum Ausdruck kommt, die alles nur noch digital machen. Bezogen auf die Geisteswissenschaften kommt diese Denkart im Blog von Lauren Klein zum Ausdruck, wenn ein Autor das Unternehmen Digital Humanities beschreibt als: „Taking humanities and putting them into a digital format“ (cpeagler1 2012). Wie eine breit angelegte, empirische Studie vor kurzem deutlich gemacht hat, ist der Ansatz des nativ Digitalen eine Mär. Vielmehr kommt es 30 Jahre nach der Etablierung dieses Begriffs zu komplexen und unterschiedlichen Arrangements zwischen digital vermittelten Handlungsweisen und anderen Praktiken (Shah 2011). Um in der beliebten Werkzeugmetapher zu bleiben, die gerne bei der Konzeption von Tools benutzt wird, bedeutet dies im Bereich der Digital Humanities, nicht nur bei einer Suche nach digitalen Werkzeugen/Tools zu verweilen. Vielmehr sollte die Werkzeugmetapher im Rahmen andauernder Reflexion auch auf digitale Techniken als solche angewendet werden. Bevor man das zuvor formulierte Bedürfnis nach einer derartigen Reflexion in einer sehr einfachen Argumentation lediglich als eine gewöhnliche Begleiterscheinung eines Medienwechsels verwirft, ist zu bedenken, dass hiermit auch eine im Kern geisteswissenschaftliche Tätigkeit verworfen werden würde, die immer darin bestand,

nicht nur Lösungen für Probleme anzubieten, (…) sondern über die eigentliche Form dieser Probleme nachzudenken; ein Problem auch genauso zu erkennen, wie wir ein Problem wahrnehmen. (Zizek 2010)

Es sagt also etwas über das Feld der Digital Humanities aus, wenn die bloße Bedürfnisformulierung nach dieser ureigensten geisteswissenschaftlichen Bewegung bei einigen Skepsis und Kritik hervorruft. Gegenteilig könnte man diese Entwicklung auch als Erfolgsgeschichte der Digital Humanities werten. Sie markiert einen Prozess, in dem die Digital Humanities sich wirklich in den Geisteswissenschaften verankern und den Status einer „eingeschworenen Gemeinde“ verlassen. Auch aus der Perspektive empirisch arbeitender Richtungen, die weniger Anlass für ein epistemisch begründetes Zaudern verspüren, sollte eine solche Auseinandersetzung begrüßt werden. Schließlich bietet sie doch die Möglichkeit, vermeintliche oder reale Vorurteilen und Barrieren zu entkräften. Um der Pointe halber diese Beobachtung etwas zu pauschalisieren, ließe sich sagen, dass in den geisteswissenschaftlichen Publikationen in Zusammenhang mit digitalbasierten Medien das diffuse Feld der Digital Humanities bisher primär die Rolle übernahm, die Möglichkeiten dieser Medien für die geisteswissenschaftliche Forschung zu propagieren. Eine Reflexion dieser Medien fand vorwiegend in Bereichen der Medientheorie und der Kulturwissenschaften statt. Für die dortige Forschung waren digitale Medien aber mehr ein Objekt der Forschung denn ein Objekt, mit dem geforscht werden könnte. Durch diese Distanz praktizierten beide Diskursräume in der Vergangenheit zu häufig unabhängig voneinander. Gerade hier findet aber zur Zeit eine Verschiebung statt. Diese zeigt sich, so die angestrebte Pointe und gleichzeitig eigentlicher Anlass dieses Posts, in zwei nahezu zeitgleich publizierten Büchern der letzten Monate:

Berry, David M. (Hrsg.): Understanding Digital Humanities, Palgrave Macmillan 2012.
Gold, Matthew K. (Hrsg.): Debates in the Digital Humanities, Minneapolis, London: University of Minnesota Press 2012.

Beide Publikationen beinhalten eine Sammlung von Aufsätzen, die versuchen, das Feld Digital Humanities zu erschließen, zu theoretisieren und zu kontextualisieren. Dabei hat sich David Berry von der Universität in Swansee als Herausgeber von „Understanding Digital Humanities“ bisher dem Thema vor allem aus medientheoretischer Richtung genähert. Dazu zählen Beiträge, wie „The Philosophy of Software“ (Berry 2011) oder auch „The Computational Turn“ (Beavers et al. 2011). „Debates in the Digital Humanities brings together leading figures in the field“ und war daher von vornherein stärker als Selbstreflexion der Community konzipiert. Der Umstand, dass einige Autoren in beiden Büchern auftauchen, sowie die stärkere Fokussierung der Medienphilosophie auf das Feld der Digital Humanities jenseits des überfrachteten Forschungsgegenstandes „Computation“ bezeugen die angesprochene Entwicklung. In einer ersten Reaktion auf die Debates durch Ramsay (Ramsay 2012) begrüßt er zwar die Publikation, belastet sie aber gleichzeitig wieder dadurch, dass er der Suche nach einer intensiveren theoretischen Durchdringung der Digital Humanities und der partiell kritischen Distanz einiger Autoren die Ursache der Ängstlichkeit unterstellt. Hoffnungsvoll bleibt er „not because it (die Debates in Digital Humanities, A.d.V.) shows no signs of the anxieties I’ve mentioned, but because “debate” always holds out the possibility that benevolence will be the result.“ Wer so argumentiert, hat für sich im Vorfeld bereits definiert, was das Ziel dieser Diskussion sein soll, und hofft nun auf das „Wohlwollen“ der Diskutierenden. Jenseits seiner Angst, dass dies nicht passieren könnte, sollten wir uns verdeutlichen, dass eine ernsthafte Debatte selbst definiert, wie Ergebnisse und Kriterien „zum Wohle“ der Sache aussehen könnten. Eine Debatte deren Maßstäbe von vornherein festgelegt sind, ist keine offene Debatte mehr, und sie wird mit Sicherheit auch nicht das Unbehagen – Unbehagen, nicht Angst – beseitigen, aus der sie hervorgegangen ist. Vielmehr muss es darum gehen diesem Unbehagen eine wissenschaftliche Form zu geben und dies geschieht in der Theorie.

In diesem Sinne, viel Spaß beim Lesen und Denken…

Anon, 2011. Digital Humanities and Theory Round-Up. Digital Humanities Now. Available at: http://digitalhumanitiesnow.org/2011/11/digital-humanities-and-theory-round-up/ [Accessed April 16, 2012].

Anon, 2009. Digital Humanities Manifesto 2.0.

Berry, D.M., 2011. The Philosophy of Software: Code and Mediation in the Digital Age, Palgrave Macmillan. Available at: http://www.amazon.com/Philosophy-Software-Code-Mediation-Digital/dp/0230244181.

cpeagler1, 2012. Digital Humanitites. Digital Humanities. Available at: http://lkleincourses.lcc.gatech.edu/dh12/2012/01/23/digital-humanitites/ [Accessed March 16, 2012].

Evans, J. a. & Foster, J.G., 2011. Metaknowledge. Science, 331(6018), pp.721–725.

Gibbs, F., 2011. Critical Discourse in the Digital Humanities. Historyproef. Available at: http://historyproef.org/blog/digital-humanities/critical-discourse-in-the-digital-humanities/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+DigitalHumanitiesNow+(Digital+Humanities+Now).

Liu, A., 2011. Where is Cultural Criticism in the Digital Humanities, Available at: http://liu.english.ucsb.edu/where-is-cultural-criticism-in-the-digital-humanities/.

McCarty, W., 2012. The residue of uniqueness. In Cologne Dialogue on Digital Humanities. Köln. Available at: http://www.cceh.uni-koeln.de/files/McCarty.pdf.

Ramsay, S., 2012. The Hot Thing. Stephen Ramsay. Available at: http://lenz.unl.edu/papers/2012/04/09/hot-thing.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+DigitalHumanitiesNow+%28Digital+Humanities+Now%29 [Accessed April 12, 2012].

Shah, N., 2011. In Search of the Other: Decoding Digital Natives, Available at: http://dmlcentral.net/blog/nishant-shah/search-other-decoding-digital-natives.

Svensson, P., 2010. The Landscape of Digital Humanities. , 4(1). Available at: http://www.digitalhumanities.org/dhq/vol/4/1/000080/000080.html.

Zizek, S., 2010. Zeit der Monster. Le Monde Diplomatique (Deutsch). Available at: http://www.monde-diplomatique.de/pm/2010/11/12.mondeText.artikel,a0048.idx,14 [Accessed April 5, 2012].

Grounding Networks

Niels-Oliver Walkowski — Sat, 14 Jan 2012 13:36:58 +0000

Great critique by +David Berry on the occasion of a review of three publications which tell the utopic story of networks. It emphasizes that the idea of networks remains a model (or I would argue an epistem) to approach to reality in showing its limitations, black boxes and hidden power structures. Coming more from Networks as a Culture Technique for the organization of social space, software development etc. from a Science Theory point of view on could continue to head to a direction Berry touches at the end of his review saying:

the network as an explanatory approach offers a particularly enticing view of society for those who want to argue for a break or discontinuity with what has gone before.

This point illustrates the strategic use of the network metaphor in discourse. Nevertheless within scientific discourse (actor network theory) for example the network can have repressive function withdrawing somebody the control over his discursive object. Implementing the network perspective for a special object complicates the use of this object as a whole. As there is no metaphysic answer to what is a whole and what is compound (Wittgenstein) but only a situative pragmatic the notion of strategy as argumentative strategy appears again. There is nothing out there which is more a network than it is monolithic. How we treat it only reflects our discursive and strategic goals.

The Poverty of Networks

The Poverty of Networks. The Wealth of Networks by Yochai Benkler New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2007, pp. 515, ISBN 0 300 12577 1, pbk £11.99 Decoding Liberation: The Promise of Free and Open …

Digital Humanities, e-Science, Research Objects, OAI-ORE

Niels-Oliver Walkowski — Fri, 11 Nov 2011 09:07:20 +0000

As pointed out in the short introduction to this blog some weeks ago the blog will be the core of a demonstrator to an evaluation and adaption of what I call the Aggregating Research Representation approach for the so called Arts and Humanities. Not invented by the OAI-ORE 1 model but increasingly promoted by it the idea to extend the entities of publication within science led to different realizations of what van de Sompel describes as Compound Information Objects 2. The goal is not only to publish an article in the end of a research process summarizing the results but additionally the whole package of material and information which supported this research process like Data, Algorithms, Stuff Information and so on. There are two main ideological patterns by which these ideas are driven: a) to guarantee transparency of research in the way that people can follow up and question the process behind a conclusion presented in a text. b) to offer the possibility of reuse in the way that other people can transfer parts of others work to their own research context without the need to start from the scratch. Therefor the concept of Aggregating Research Representations is strongly linked to the e-Sciene theme and an epistemological leitmotif introduced by Microsoft as the fourth paradigm 3 of research and generally denominated as data-driven-science.

Until today most implementations of Aggregating Research Representations represent research of the sciences. There is the myExperiment example 4 which curates Aggregating Research Representations mainly produced by scientists of Life Science, Bioinformatics and Chemistry, there is the Open Notebook or Open Laboratory Book 5 approach heavily linked to the chemistry community, there is the Compound Information Object example mentioned before introduced by van de Sompel with Embedded Networked Sensing research data and there is the Enhanced Publications model 6 of the EU funded project DRIVER applying its model to natural sciences from different areas and to other statistical oriented disciplines like quantitative social sciences and linguistics.

This list is only a short introduction but the main point why I enlisted it is obvious. It raises the question if and to which extent the idea of Aggregating Research Representations can be transferred and applied to arts and humanities research. This question by which my PhD project begins is situated in different playing fields. First it has a political dimension thinking of what Bruno Latour is eager to call the Science Wars 7. Speaking of constructivistic vs. positivistic epistemology this “battle” is often used in political conflicts between humanities and sciences research. Giving the point of Latour that this battle is grounded in an epistemical missunderstanding and that constructivism and positivism are only two different perspectives on the same research process we nevertheless must admit that these two perspectives play a different role in humanities and in sciences and that former has to justify its existence and viability in research and science policy on a different level. This has consequences on the one hand for the funding of humanities research which has no comparison to natural sciences funding and which becomes increasingly attached to unholy conditions 8. On the other hand and even more important for the question of my PhD is the consequence that humanities researchers are under continuous pressure by the e-Science community to be more collaborative, to finally adapt a culture of sharing, to leave their literally dark room of solipsism and to embrace the new digital possibilities. One could argue that this is the reason why there grew a loosely connected community called Digital Humanities: to support the adaption of digital environments to humanists needs and to create digital practices specific to humanities research. But one shouldn’t forget that the Science Wars mentioned before has its battle lines not only between disciplines but also within disciplines or in other words that there is not such thing called arts and humanities as referred to by the Digital Humanities. And in fact the strong players in the Digital Humanities are disciplines like Linguistics, Empirical Literacy and so on. On the other hand David Berry records that: In the digital humanities, cultural criticism-in both its interpretive and advocacy modes-has been noticeably absent by comparison with the mainstream humanities. The same applies to the Aggregating Research Representations discussion as the given list only show examples of empirical oriented humanities research.

Sally Wyatt once said that analyzing the so called Non-Adapters of a media or an invention is a good method to uncover the limitations of this invention by itself often forgotten in the euphoria of its appearance 9. In fact humanities researchers often have well developed reasons why they refuse to make use of digital tools and possibilities. It’s revealing that researchers of e-Science normally don’t ask what are existing practices of sharing and collaboration in the humanities or under which conditions it make sense for humanists to collaborate, where do they do so, under which conditions results of humanities research are sharable, what is the epistemic of Opennes and so on but just demand that humanists have to change their research culture. Doing this will reveal new ways of engaging into the digital for the humanities. Consequently Digital Humanities is not only about bringing the Humanities into the pre-existing digital world. There is no digital nativity as pointed out by a lately published study 10. One always has to arbitrate between the digital and the non-digital and within the digital itself to gain a digital identity. Hence Digital Humanities is also about relations and frontiers between the digital and the non-digital. To aim in this direction a reflection of e-Science and its paradigms has to include methods and epistemics used within humanities itself. An issue which is not self-evident when looking at Berrie’s observation. Therefor my research will involve a cultural-science-based reflection of networks as culture techniques and an epistemological critique to the extent and nature of use of data in what is called data-driven-science.

There are several reasons why an investigation of Aggregating Research Representations is a research object of preference. As underlined in this post such Representations have not only grown on the theoretical background of e-Science but modelers of Aggregating Research Representations formulate their implementations as a contribution to this discourse. Additionally they are progressively implemented in an Linked Open Data environment which seems to be the most convincing architecture so far representing the idea of Opennes, Sharing and Collaboration. Finally to connect these issues to Aggregating Research Representations – and not to remain standing in a pure e-Science perspective – offers the possibility to transfer some of the results into an operational level. Although following former argumentation it has to be pointed out that results won’t only effect the design of Aggregating Research Representations but its integration into (e-)research in general. By doing so I want to apply my idea of Digital Humanities as reflexive coding between media theory, cultural-science, epistemology etc. and informatics, information sciences etc. where reflexivity means to code not only to achieve an objective but also to make an object out of the code at the same time. This is how we get to a setting which is typical for humanities research and which enroll its activity between the object in its positive objectivity and the priority of the object as Adorno would describe it 11.

1 http://www.openarchives.org/ore/

2Carl Lagoze and Herbert Van de Sompel, ‘Compound Information Objects: The OAIORE Perspective’, (Open Archive Initiative, 2007) <http://www.openarchives.org/ore/documents/CompoundObjects-200705.html> [accessed 23 July 2011].

3A.J.G. Hey, S. Tansley and K.M. Tolle, The Fourth Paradigm: Data-intensive Scientific Discovery (Microsoft Research Redmond, WA, 2009) <http://iw.fh-potsdam.de/fileadmin/FB5/Dokumente/forschung/tagungen/i-science/TonyHey_-__eScience_Potsdam__Mar2010____complete_.pdf> [accessed 23 May 2011].

4 http://www.myexperiment.org/

5Jean-Claude Bradley and Kevin Owens, ‘Chemistry Crowdsourcing and Open Notebook Science’, in Nature Precedings, 2008 .

6Barbara Sierman, Birgit Schmidt and Jens Ludwig, Enhanced Publications?: Linking Publications and Research Data in Digital Repositories (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2009), p. 212 <http://dare.uva.nl/document/150723>.

7Bruno Latour, Die Hoffnung Der Pandora: Untersuchungen Zur Wirklichkeit Der Wissenschaft (Suhrkamp Verlag; Auflage: 3, 2002).

8Daniel Boffey, ‘Academic Fury over Order to Study the Big Society’, The Observer, 27 March 2011 <http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2011/mar/27/academic-study-big-society> [accessed 4 November 2011].

9S Wyatt, ‘Challenging the Digital Imperative’, Development (Maastricht: Maastricht University, 2008) <http://www.narcis.nl/publication/RecordID/oai:dare:16649/Language/en> [accessed 8 July 2011].

10Nishant Shah, ‘In Search of the Other: Decoding Digital Natives’, DMLcentral, 2011 <http://dmlcentral.net/blog/nishant-shah/search-other-decoding-digital-natives> [accessed 4 November 2011].

11Theodor Wiesengrund Adorno, Negative Dialectics, 2nd edn (London, New York: Continuum, 1981).

Call for a new approach in Digital Humanities

Niels-Oliver Walkowski — Tue, 15 Feb 2011 09:51:54 +0000

In his interesting new Blog Post David M. Berry gives a nice new model of the development of Digital Humanities from Computing Humanites over Digital Humanities to somewhat he calls Digital Humanities 3.0. WhetherÂ it is an adequate term to describe what he is looking for, because of its marketing like speech and its notion of a linear progress, the concept behind it is a fascinating one. It’s a demand for a more reflexive approach in the Digital Humanities, the attempt to raise questions how the digital, the software, the computional change our methods, our way we interact with material, our concept of truth and last but not least our epistemology. Consequently he argues for a ‘Computational Turn’. In this perspective Digital Humanities began as a support for analog research and research methods stepping forward to a field where humanities core qualities were transformed into tools to interact with now born digital content in a ‘humanities way’ (reflexive, qualitative …) to point out now that this transformation process isn’t a one way movement. What Berry demand isn’t new in its media reflexive position and has a long tradition in Media Theory and a performative sidekick in netcritics and hacktivism as he mentioned himself. Identifying that this perspective is astonishing absent in Digital Humanities it would be an interesting discussion to clarify what a computational turn could mean contrasting to classical media theory and where the connections are. Moreover identifying the connections to other theories with same perspectives could produce a profile of what are the main questions for the Digital Humanities followed by such a perspective. For example Derrida’s concepts of trail and postponement are really interesting approaches to discuss what Berry calls the “Streaming Internet”. At least there is still a practical problem consisting in the heterogeneous backgrounds of people acting within the Digital Humanities and the still contingent discussion of what Digital Humanities should be. Grounding this issue there is still an opposition of humanities orientated computer specialists and humanities researchers with computional capacities within the field focusing on there backgorundperspecitves. This often leads to infertile discussions and a lot of misunderstanding. So a question for the computational turn would also be how it should be spelled out to make the communication about it possible.

Regarding automatic inferencing

Niels-Oliver Walkowski — Wed, 04 Aug 2010 08:16:58 +0000

As an reply to the OKF Blog entriy about machine reasoning I want to outline some personal concerns. The problem of automatic inference is not the lack of context which could be compensated as you have demonstrated. It is the fact that context from the perspective of the rdf statement or an inference machine is in many cases indescribable. Not because there is an ontology missing but because there are many possible contexts imaginable. A very simple phenomena of this problem is the ambiguity of many words. The more abstract the concept the more it could be integrated in different contexts. The next problem is that Ontologies like OpenSync represents a particular perspective about the world which may not fit for all people in their own situations. This problem my not be so dramatic with simple things like sheeps and lambs but it becomes a problem with more theoretical concepts. One dream of automatic interference apostles was always to bring it into science and to generate new knowledge with it. In my opinion this is impossible because of the problems mentioned. Interference is build up upon reasoning and reasoning is a deterministic thing: you can only get out what you put in. This is not the way scientific innovations work.