Benedict Anderson’s concept of imagined communities as one that is built around the construct of shared values and ideals essentially pushes for a division between those who belong in the community and those who do not. The article seemingly argues for the alternatives, in the case of looking at community archives. For the author, community archives need to be involved in what he calls “information work” i.e. the infrastructure of “getting things done” and community archives as “grassroot tools of individual and collective identity, education, and empowerment”. Towards that end, therefore, community archives information work therefore needs to be geared for challenging and transforming the normative paradigms of archival practices that remain exclusionary, centered, and un-democratic. Community archives, therefore, needs to be collaborative in nature with other institutions and practices.
The author argues for the need to focus on "alternative book-historical genealogies" i.e academic publishing itself, in order to draw attention to the technological, economical, and institutional factors that "both a product and a value-laden object of knowledge exchange within academia".
In her discussion on these alternatives, Janneke argues that they are primarily focused on two aspects of reimagining the future of academic publications:
1. Focusing on the institutional and material aspects of publication as a practice
2. Focusing on the writer and their work and publishing practices.
What is the main argument, narrative, or e/affect?
In this piece, Vidali & Phillips struggle with what seems to be a common theme in archive ethnography, how to bring to life an archive from countless hours of fieldnotes and collected materials? As the authors note, anthropologists often have hundreds of hours of recordings, images, fieldnotes, documents, and other collected materials produced through their ethnographic fieldwork. Yet, what to do with these materials and whether or how to archive them is often a difficult undertaking, and like Vivaldi and Phillips point out, an endeavor that continues to be undervalued and polemical within the field of anthropology. Scholars who would like to pursue this work, must think critically about “the ethical dimensions of consent, respect, ownership, stewardship, legacy, and propriety” in relation to creatively using ethnographic collections to construct archives and build artistic installations (p. 72). Overall, Vidali & Phillips’ work in building a remix and artistic installation from years of Zambian radio fieldwork, demonstrates one of many ways to repurpose ethnographic materials to recreate memories and spaces in time for a public audience, allowing both the researchers and the public audience to actively engage with such materials on their own terms.
What is the main argument, narrative, or e/affect?
Gallon examines the relationship between the digital humanities and Black studies, emphasizing the racialization of “humanity” within the humanities and how racialized systems of power continue to shape “blackness” and marginalize the voices of black peoples within both the fields of the humanities and digital studies. Gallon argues that through Black Digital Studies, the intersection of digital humanities and Black studies, scholars can “bring forth the humanity of marginalized peoples through the use of digital platforms and tools” (p. 2). In particular, Gallon suggests that one way to do this is through, what they term, a “technology of recovery.” In terms of the Black Digital Humanities, this “recovery” consists of using digital tools to delve into archival and historical silences caused by “systemic global racialization” to restore marginalized voices and histories (p. 2).
Exemplary quotes or images?
I found the following quote to be very important for understanding Gallon’s argument: “The black digital humanities therefore foregrounds the digital as a mutual host for racism and resistance and brings to light the “role of race as a metalanguage” that shapes the digital terrain, fostering hegemonic structures that are both new and old and replicate and transcend analog ones” (p. 4).
While not perhaps the intended argument of the authors, one of my main takeaways from this article was affirmation that other researchers come up against a similar dilemma which is the desire to hoard research materials but the lack of desire to formally and systematically archive the assets. Using their experience with material collected in Zambia, the authors lift up multimodal installations as an opportunity to renew and reinvigorate archival assets and create a multisensory experience that increases opportunities for interdisciplinary collaboration and not only understanding tensions that arise within the archive but experiencing them firsthand.
Gallon connects the digital humanities to Black studies by using the concept of technology as a space for “expos[ing] humanity as a racialized social construction” (Gallon 2016, 1). Pointing to the nearly nonexistent literature on Black studies represented through the digital humanities, Gallon makes a case for considering technology as a moment in a longstanding mode of Black resistance within practices of Eurocentric oppression. I liked especially that Gallon points out practices of “black technophobia” within academia – the idea that Black people have an aversion to technology. I was not aware of this term before reading this piece, and I found it both surprising and unsurprising – in an age of employing Instagram and Twitter infographics in order to disseminate racial, gendered, and sexual theories on resistance and oppression, I imagine that many Black people and people of color are actually providing an abundance of emotional labor. In the same vein, it is unsurprising that this emotional labor remains unrecognized in a world structured on racialized hierarchy.
The primary argument that the author puts forward in the essay is two fold:
1. There needs to be a concerted effort to draw connections between African American studies and digital humanities in order to reveal the politics of race and power that constructs the tools of the former as well as the entire itself. Digital humanities, without such interrogation and engagement, would essentially be a "white" driven field, one that is built on the assumption of a 'natural reality' that is predominantly built on the predominance of the white experience at the expense or marginalization of all others.
2. If efforts are made to build these engagements and connections, then it could lead to a 'revitilzation' of the discipline itself, where the experiences of the marginalized are centered, racial power dynamics exposed and the deconstruction of the assumed 'natural' that defines digital humanities can take place. Therefore a 'technology of recovery' is required, where digital spaces that have been shut off to the black experience and agency can be reclaimed and re-engaged by considering "the intersections between the digital and blackness" (pg 2)
The syllabus' objective seems to draw a working relationship between digital humanities and African American studies through the lens of racial power dynamics in both fields. Furthermore its seeks to train the students in the use of digital technology in conjunction with the application of theory, with the end goal of conceptualizing a Black Digital Humanities Project
The article primarily revolves around a more nuance and multi - modal approach to archives. Essentially it argues that archives are not bounded or fixed entities that are constructed primarily of material documents and a single interpretation of a researcher using them. Instead, the authors put forwar the argument that archives are in a constant process of negotiation between institutional factors that seek to bound it within a framework and decentralized actors and forces that push for diversity. The ethnographic archive, therefore, is in man ways a decolonization project, speaking back to the homogenizing narrative of the state, essentialization of meaning and understanding of ethnographic and archive date as processes of collection, appropriation and linear representation.
What is the main argument, narrative, or e/affect?
The document is a syllabus for an Introduction to Black Digital Humanities course. The course introduces students to this emerging field in Digital Public Humanities, which serves to “unmask the racialized systems of power at work in how we understand the digital humanities as a field” (Rizzo citing Gallon, p. 1). Through participating in regular lab sessions, students will develop digital technology skills such as using mapping software, blogging, social media, and digital archiving to apply theories of Black Digital Humanities to their projects.