Manan Ahmed’s “Polyglot Manifesto” seems to be a popular reading for discussion this week—and rightfully so, as it brings to the fore a number of the important questions digital historians must (however painfully) pose to themselves . These are largely of the why-type of question. Why bother with digital humanities? If I do, why should I learn the technical aspects of new media instead of letting someone else do the heavy lifting? And perhaps most importantly, why is digital history a step forward, why is it potentially an improvement over traditional methods?
What I found particularly interesting was how Ahmed’s underlying theme of tying academic and public history more closely together. Pointing to the examples of some prominent intellectuals, he indicates that scholars who enter themselves into public discussion risk headaches (not to mention harassment) without great reward.
There is nothing new in the notion about scholars as public intellectuals—Noam Chomsky, Edward Said, Bernard Lewis, Cornel West etc. are readily available examples. Yet, the fact that all of the people I cited are highly polarizing figures illustrates, to me, the reticence of the average scholar to engage with the public.
Oddly, Ahmed seems to mention this briefly, almost in passing. He mentions the new forms of communication we now have, Web 2.0, etc., but seems to do little with it. Maybe this is because his focus is on the need to learn the technical side of digital humanities and the need for online archives. But on a theoretical level he hints at some important points.
I might argue that public discourse is a the vital aspect of digital humanities. For the academics Ahmed mentioned, there is quite a bit of “glory” as he describes it. Their books are widely read. They are asked to speak in front of large crowds in non-academic settings. And when they comment on current issues, people (whether they agree or disagree) listen. Certainly they expose themselves to a great deal of criticism (much of it undue), but isn’t this the situation educators hope they can be in? One where people read and comment on their work; where their ideas move beyond the classroom and are often put into action; where, most importantly, their ideas begin a dialogue, drawing new people, perspectives, ideas into the conversation.
To the point of this class, isn’t that what we hope to do with our blogs? That by opening up our ideas we can learn from each other? That we can engage as broad an audience as possible (Whether or not this happens, I feel, is a different issue. It will not be through lack of effort) and encounter their feedback, and adapt. I think projects like The History News Network are a great step in this direction. The era of the web as a simple publishing platform was brief, and it has quickly become about participation and interaction (just take a look at the facebook, flickr, and myspace accounts already in play for the Democratic presidential primary for an example of how fast this has become mainstream). These new community mediums seem to hold great promise for the humanities, both in and out of the classroom, and an excellent way for historians to bridge the gap between academia and the public.
Misha has some excellent commentary on historical translation over at Propaganda Redux
You put your finger on a strange element of Ahmed’s Manifesto. It seems he’s voicing a personal preference to stay out of the limelight, but blogging a provocative comment within the Clio-wired crowd seems to be having the opposite effect.
As you note, blogging (even these humble entries) is opening our efforts to a wider audience. I wonder if we’re just preaching to the choir, though.
Bill
I have to respectfully disagree with your assessment that he “seems to do little with it.”
This is a blog entry in an ongoing blog, one that updates fairly regularly (it’s bookmarked in my del.icio.us)… I think it’s unfair to expect someone voicing opinions such as these to, in the same place, put up some sort of content-hosting web 2.0 application right there.
Blogging has less cultural capital than publishing, still, certainly, but it’s a cheap, easy way to get your ideas out into the aether. Search-engine spiders love blogs, because they’re highly hyperlinked… the idea behind the word “blogosphere” deserves some attention. An idea that gets out into a blog that others are reading tends to create a “cloud” of interlinked blog articles… these then generate further readership by drawing in from each blog’s periphery– the readership that doesn’t fall in the Venn diagram of two blog’s readerships…
Overall, it’s just a single article by someone who is hoping to create a public presence for himself. It’s linked to this class’s page, which is linked to all of Prof P’s other class’s pages, the blogs that are attached to each of those classes, and it’s also linked to many of our blogs. Suddenly, as spiders pass through, we’re building this guy “Google juice” as this happens– and a certain amount of residual juice trickles down to our blogs, too.
All this widens the pool to a group that’s larger than just, say, those who have access to and read a certain scholarly journal.
It’s easy to forget, when you’re blogging like we are for this class, that blogging is in fact a very public act. Do you read the visitor stats on your blog? You might be surprised how many people end up on your page from seemingly-random Google searches.
Overall, though, the guy did something public in publishing a blog, and ended up getting read by a PhD level class at a school halfway across the country– not bad for someone who, according to his bio, still hasn’t completed his PhD.
Personally, because of the public nature of all this, I try to always remind myself that the assignments in the classes that require blogs are at least potentially profile-raising (for better or for worse.)
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It’s interesting that you mentioned flickr, though– it’s another thing, like blogging, that’s democratizing access to production…
A friend of mine just paid half her rent with a picture on her flickr account that got picked up by Newsweek online.
Just to clarify, in saying I thought Ahmed did little with it, I did not mean anything along the lines of software production. I simply meant he seemed to explore the idea of developing a public discourse via the Web only briefly, which I found surprising. Maybe this is because the idea is too obvious to warrant much attention, but I found it interesting nonetheless. Your comment basically explicates what I tried (but seemingly failed) to say-that blogging is a public discourse and allows us to much more easily approach the model Ahmed offers of historian-as-translator in a Chomsky or a West.
Yes, web 2.0 is qualitatively different from the venues of public discourse traditionally available to a scholar: Op-ed, newspaper quote, a book etc. Yes, web 2.0, lowers the bar of entrance, widens your audience by multifold, enables dialogue that is transformative by its very nature.
A digital archive though – a presentation of one’s research – is a far greater contribution – by the mere fact of substance alone.
My reticence about the traditional mode of public-scholarship is that it is dependent on media which must pay attention to word-limits, attractiveness to the audience, appeal etc. My case in point, heck, my shining example, is Niall Ferguson [about whom you can read further on CM]. There is a lot more that Ferguson can do with a digital archive than he can do with an op-ed.
Thanks though, for your comments, everyone. Lots for me to think through.
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