Nepantla and the Big Tent of the Digital Humanities

Today I have been exposed to a critical key phrase in the Digital Humanities, “the big tent”.  At first glance, and having no previous deep knowledge of the school of Digital Humanities (which can make me an unwanted outsider), I imagined a circus.  I recalled the failed attempts of childhood happiness at Circus Vargas.  As I mention in the subject heading of my blog, this is my first attempt at entering “the big tent”.  The description of the Visual Research Methods course I am currently taking included a “no experience necessary” statement which made entering the big tent less frightening.  And as someone that has a major gap in the digital arena, I am finding the discourse and the tensions of the Digital Humanities similar to the discourses and tensions found in Cultural Studies.  The instabilities of Cultural Studies, the notion of a center, the intersections of disciplines and the interrogation of research methodologies found in traditional disciplines seem to be consistent with the historical and latest developments found and colliding within the big tent of the Digital Humanities.

Patrik Svensson’s article, “Beyond the Big Tent” published in Debates in the Digital Humanities, raises important questions regarding the Digital Humanities.  Questions of ownership of the field, questions pertaining to the legitimization of the field, questions regarding the threatening of the field, and the questioning of needing a big tent for the field are explored.  Svensson acknowledges that Digital Humanities stems from a tradition (Humanities Computing) and that, “…with the expansion of the field comes a higher degree of heterogeneity and inclusion of other epistemic traditions…In other words, digital humanities institutions tend to depend on interaction with other institutions to a larger extant than most traditional departments and disciplines…and it is also notable to note that traditional humanities computing, as well as the digital humanities institutions have often been institutionalized as centers and institutes rather than as traditional departments” (37).  I’m starting to have a better understanding of this field as it resembles the field of Cultural Studies.  Svensson also notes that with this heterogeneity a tension and threat arises.  This tension regards the legitimization of an institutional position in which the gate keeper of the Digital Humanities is threaten by the multiple intersections, collaborations, and multiple visions that are found in the Digital Humanities, thus creating an insider/outsider (who is welcomed and who is excluded) condition in the Digital Humanities.  I remember once in a literary theory and criticism class, students wear puzzled with the idea of multiple intersections of identity.  As a queer bilingual Chicano Mexicano I was questioned to why I could not just pick a single identity.  After reading “How to Tame A Wild Tongue” by Gloria Anzaldúa, many students questioned the notion of living in a liminal space where intersections of gender, class, race, sexuality, and language, collide and interact.  Svensson states that although there is opposition to the heterogeneity found in the big tent, the heterogeneity can serve as an asset that gives rise to the opportunity of expansion without being positioned in one tradition (47).

Gloria Anzaldúa’s notion of the state of Nepantla, living in a third space where intersectionalities and multiple ways of being give rise to new consciousness, survival, and empowerment, calls to  mind Svensson’s understanding of a liminal space in the Digital Humanities.  Svensson embraces the Digital Humanities as a trading zone and meeting place, “that supports deeply collaborative work, individual expression, unexpected connections, and synergetic power.  The ‘digital’ in a broad sense and in various manifestations, functions as a shared boundary object” (46).   Therefore, a queer Chicano Mexciano state of Nepantla in the Digital Humanities makes more sense to me than the unfulfilled happiness of Circus Vargas.

Svensson urges me to challenge and interrogate the mode of privatization and legitimization prevalent in the Digital Humanities.  The field of Cultural Studies urges me to interrogate modes of exclusion and methodologies of colonization and capitalism.  I am finding myself empowered by the tensions and the opportunities that the Digital Humanities is offering me to explore.  I am finding my roots expanding and new branches emerging.