Black girls were still the fodder of porn sites, dehumanizing them ascommodities, as products and as objects of sexual gratification.
Black girls are still being depicted on pornographic websites, dehumanized and treated as mere products and objects of sexual desire. This is so inhuman and not appropriate to treat people as such based on their skin tone.
#TransformDH was our attempt to turn the digital humanities toward these radical traditions, as well as toward the bodies of critical work in new media studies by Wendy Chun, Lisa Nakamura, Anna Everett, Tara McPherson, and many others, that unpack the politics inherent in the force of the digital, the powers that shape the hardware and software that in turn shape our scholarly work.
The goal with #transformDH was to steer digital humanities towards radical traditions, as well as to engage with critical scholarship in new media studies by scholars like Wendy Chun, Lisa Nakamura, Anna Everett, Tara Mcpherson, and others. These works examine the political dimensions of digital forces and how hardware and software shape our academic pursuits.
I find this to be the best locus to explore the division that Drucker andMcGann pointed to, because these digital objects [whose existence is anchored inmateriality] and the immateriality of the rational logos that sits behind the traditional,abstract and modern, humanities discourse are essentially in opposition.
I believe this is the prime focal point for investigating the division emphasized by Drucker and McGann because the Digital entities, grounded in materially, stand in contrast to the intangible rational concepts that underpin traditional humanities discourse. This dichotomy highlights the inherent opposition between tangible digital objects and the abstract principles of traditional humanistic study.
We argue that critical digital humanities starts with thesepremises in order to avoid the dangers of treating thecomputer as a ‘truth machine’ or allowing the technicalissues of the research infrastructures and projects drivethe kinds of questions that digital humanities is allowed toask
The statement underscores the significance of critical digital humanities in not viewing computers as unquestionable sources of truth and in not letting technical challenges determine the direction inquiry. It stresses the need for maintaining a critical outlook on technology and infrastructure to uphold broader intellectual and ethical considerations within digital humanities research.
The aim of outlining a critical digital humanities here is notto offer a prescription for a final approach, rather it is tobegin to enumerate the plurality of approaches within sucha field, and more specifically a constellation of conceptsrelated to a notion of ‘digital humanities’ and thesoftwarization of the humanities more generally.
The purpose of of introducing a critical digital humanities approach here isn't to prescribe a fixed method. Instead, it's to kickstart a conversation about the multitude of approaches within this field. More specifically, it aims to delve into different concepts associated with 'digital humanities' and the broader trend of software integration in humanities scholarship.