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Consultation on Figures of Learning in the Digital Context - Report
The Researchers at Work (RAW) programme at the Centre for Internet and Society organised a consultation on ‘Figures of Learning in the Digital Context’ on September 22, 2014 in Bangalore.
Digital Humanities and the Alt-Academy
The emergence of Digital Humanities (DH) has been contemporaneous to the ‘crisis’ in the humanities, spurred by changing social and economic conditions which have urged us to rethink traditional methods, locations and concepts of research and pedagogy. This blog post examines the emergence of the phenomenon of the alt-academy in the West, and examines the nuances and possibilities of such a space in the Indian context.
Asia in the Edges: A Narrative Account of the Inter-Asia Cultural Studies Summer School in Bangalore
The Inter-Asia Cultural Studies Summer School is a Biennial event that invites Masters and PhD students from around Asia to participate in conversations around developing and building an Inter-Asia Cultural Studies thought process. Hosted by the Inter-Asia Cultural Studies Society along with the Consortium of universities and research centres that constitute it, the Summer School is committed to bringing together a wide discourse that spans geography, disciplines, political affiliations and cultural practices for and from researchers who are interested in developing Inter-Asia as a mode of developing local, contextual and relevant knowledge practices.
Reading from a Distance — Data as Text
The advent of new digital technologies and the internet has redefined practices of reading and writing, and the notion of textuality which is a fundamental aspect of humanities research and scholarship. This blog post looks at some of the debates around the notion of text as object, method and practice, to understand how it has changed in the digital context.
," Let There be Geometry"
This is the first blog in the series to view perfect Mathematical objects in the postmodern world and see if the centrality of these objects can be or has been subverted by language and the technological. In this preliminary blog, we will explore a particular phenomenological philosophy of mathematics by Edmun Husserl in "The Origin of Geometry" and closely read the implications of ontological and methodological lens' we are offered. We will do this with the help of Derrida's critique/ introduction to the essay and see if the phenomenological origin of ideal objects comes within the grasp of Derridean differance.
Living in the Archival Moment
The archive has been and continues to be a key concept in Digital Humanities discourse, particularly in India. The importance of the archive to knowledge production in the Humanities, the implication of changes in archival practice with the advent of electronic publishing and digitisation, and the focus on curation as a critical and creative process are some aspects of the debate that this blog post looks at.
Not a Goodbye; More a ‘Come Again’: Thoughts on being Research Director at a moment of transition
As I slowly make the news of my transition from being the Research Director at the Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore, to taking up a professorship at the Leuphana University, Lueneburg, Germany, there is a question that I am often asked: “Are you going to start a new research centre?” And the answer, for the most part, is “No.”
Binary Code Invades the Universal Problematic
This essay looks at language as an archive and posits, through a reading of Foucault, Derrida, Saussure and Jakobson that the means of perceiving language in the digital has changed. Communication requires community and the large networks made possible by the binary code, an added layer of linguistic units, changes the way we are able to communicate online. Big Data has further changed the way we interact with language and the world. The way the machine perceives language, through selection rather than combination with access to the “complete” archive allows it to make predictions and decisions through mere correlation rather than the causational mode of science hitherto conducted by human beings.
Digital Humanities and the Problem of Definition
The Digital Humanities as a field that still eludes definition has been the subject of much discourse and writing. This blog post looks at this issue as one of trying to approach the field from a disciplinary lens, and the challenges that this may pose to the attempts at a definition.
Exploring the Digital Landscape: An Overview
One component of the Digital Humanities mapping exercise was a series of six research projects commissioned by HEIRA-CSCS, Bangalore over November 2013-March 2014. These studies attempted to chart various aspects of the digital landscape in India today, with a focus on emerging forms of humanistic enquiry engendered by the Internet and new digital technologies. This blog post presents a broad overview of some of the key learnings from these projects.
The Machinistic Paradigm Collapse
Looking at the example of the scientific practices surrounding protein folding study, this blog explores the modern relevance of Thomas Kuhn’s conception of a paradigm. This blog posits that because of the heavy reliance on computational technology and simulation, the philosophical basis of Kuhnian scientific paradigm has ceased to exist and hence science, along with the Digital Humanities has moved into a post structuralist age.
‘Doing’ Digital Humanities: Reflections on a project on Online Feminism in India
A core concern of Digital Humanities research has been that of method. The existing discourse around the field of DH assumes a move away from traditional humanities and social sciences research methods to more open, collaborative and iterative forms of scholarship spanning some conventional and other not so conventional practices and spaces. In this guest blog post, Sujatha Subramanian reflects upon her experience of undertaking a research study on online feminist activism in India and its various challenges.
Animating the Archive – A Survey of Printed Digitized Materials in Bengali and their Use in Higher Education
With the advent of digital technologies and the internet, archival practice has seen much change in its imagination and function, such as to extend its scope beyond preservation to a collaborative, open source model which facilitates new modes of knowledge production. In this blog post, Saidul Haque reflects upon his research project on a survey of digitized materials in Bengali, and some of the impediments to their use in higher education and research.
Confession in the Digital Age
The pervasive influence of digital technology, particularly the Internet in our lives today seems to have blurred the boundaries between the real and virtual, public and private. The perceived condition of anonymity made available by the digital sphere brings forth questions about identity and the self, and more importantly the conditions that have come together in creating a new notion of the private sphere. In this guest post Rimi Nandy reflects upon her research study on the trend of Facebook confessions in India, and its implications for questions of identity and self-representation.
The Digital Humanities Discourse: The Knowledge Question on the Wikipedia
The emergence of alternative modes and spaces of knowledge production has been a core concern of the Digital Humanities, particularly with respect to the collaborative or public archive. Wikipedia, as a collaborative knowledge repository indicates a shift in the ways of imagining knowledge as dynamic and ever-changing, thus bringing to the fore questions of authorship and authenticity, which are also questions for the Digital Humanities. In this guest blog post, Sohnee Harshey presents a reflection on her research study on the gender-gap on Wikipedia, and the politics of collaborative knowledge production.
A Queer Digital Humanities Experience
Questions of identity and citizenship have been an important aspect of understanding the digital realm, and what it means to be ‘human’ in this space. While one may still mull over the separation of the real and the virtual, the digital as a condition of existence has engendered new notions of the public sphere, and sought to redefine the methods of traditional humanistic enquiry. In this guest post, Ditilekha Sharma shares some reflections on her research on the queer community and the politics of identity on the Internet, within the perspective of the Digital Humanities.
Fishing is the New Black: Contemporary Art Imitates the Digital
Marshall Mcluhan once said, “Art at its most significant is a Distant Early Warning System that can always be relied on to tell the old culture what is beginning to happen to it.” Philosophers, on the other hand, think about things in retrospect and hence, as much as Derrida’s writings about the collapse of the semiotic structures of capture and meaning say about the Digital age, Mark Rothko’s art, a generation ahead of Derrida in depicting this collapse, can say about the future that it saw in visceral and energetic forms. To understand Rothko’s paintings we must sit through a short history of the different epochs of Being and their epistemological shifts before we get to the Digital Age about which Rothko had violent and destructive premonitions.
Structure, Sign and Play in the Digital
I have come to realize, in my research, that I have been looking for and staring at the various entry points of the Digital Humanities by looking at the primordial lighting arrangements and formative forces that are in play in it. So far, there have been some clear emergent patterns like the fact that the Digital Humanities is the story of the University itself and a condition of the socio-political and economic forces shaping our education system.
Digital Gender: Theory, Methodology and Practice
Dr. Nishant Shah was a panelist at a workshop jointly organized by HUMlab and UCGS (Umeå Centre for Gender Studies) at Umeå University from March 12 to 14, 2014. He blogged about the conference.
A Question of Digital Humanities
The emergence of digital humanities as a new field of interdisciplinary research enquiry has also seen growth in literature around the problem of its definition. This blog-post lays out some of the conceptual frameworks for the mapping exercise taken up by CIS to look at digital humanities in India.
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