'Several essays in the volume level pointed critiques at DH for a variety of ills: a lack of attention to issues of race, class, gender, and sexuality; a preference for research-driven projects over pedagogical ones; an absence of political commitment; an inadequate level of diversity among its practitioners; an inability to address texts under copyright; and an institutional concentration in well-funded research universities.'
(Matthew K. Gold, 'The Digital Humanities Moment,' the introduction to Debates in the Digital Humanities)[1]
A simple premise: be a good feminist, queer, digital humanist. Method: evaluate two prominent anthologies of essays on the digital humanities using computation. Generate an algoRhythmic text that reports the inventories of findings. Inventories run through algorithms.... Details: find and count keywords: {tool#, rac#, fem#, queer#, gender#, sex#}, which generated the following list of keywords (and plural forms) and their frequencies: tool: 700 race: 73 (47 usages in a single essay) racism: 5 racial: 13 (10 usages in the same single essay as “race”) feminism: 8 feminist: 10 femme: 1 female: 26 (usage of this term mostly deployed with “male”) fem: 1 (as in, feminine pronoun) feminine: 2 (as in, feminine pronoun) queer: 2 (1 usage refers to 'odd' or 'unusual') queerer: 2 (both usages refer to 'odder' or 'more unusual') gender: 26 gendered: 2 sexuality: 8 sex: 10 (7 references to a binary category: male/female) sexual: 1 sexy: 2 (1 usage followed by “librarian”) sexually: 1 (followed by “assaulted”) Statistics: 14 out of 87 essays (16%) from both anthologies make no mention of {tool#} at all. 3 out of 38 essays (~8%) in A Companion to Digital Humanities make no mention of {tool#}. 11 out of 49 essays (~22%) in Debates in the Digital Humanities make no mention of {tool#}. *** 10 out of these 11 essays that make no mention of {tool#} are blogposts. 700 uses of {tool#} occur in 73 essays. Average: ~9.6 uses of {tool#} per essay that uses the term. 313 uses of {tool#} occur in A Companion to Digital Humanities, in 35 essays. Average: ~8.9 uses of {tool#} per essay that uses the term. 387 uses of {tool#} occur in Debates in the Digital Humanities, in 38 essays. Average: ~10.2 uses of {tool#} per essay that uses the term. The average number of uses of {tool#} for all essays in both anthologies: ~8. 61 out of 87 essays (70%) make no mention of {rac#, fem#, queer#, gender#, sex#} at all. 28 out of 38 essays (74%) in A Companion to Digital Humanities make no mention of {rac#, fem#, queer#, gender#, sex#}. 33 out of 49 essays (~67%) in Debates in the Digital Humanities make no mention of {rac#, fem#, queer#, gender#, sex#}. 193 uses of {rac#, fem#, queer#, gender#, sex#} occur in 26 essays. Average: ~7 uses of {rac#, fem#, queer#, gender#, sex#} per essay that use these terms. 110 uses of {rac#, fem#, queer#, gender#, sex#} occur in 3 essays. Average, if these three essays are removed: ~3.5 uses of {rac#, fem#, queer#, gender#, sex#} per essay that use these terms. 58 uses of {rac#, fem#, queer#, gender#, sex#} occur in A Companion in 10 essays. Average: ~6 uses of {rac#, fem#, queer#, gender#, sex#} per essay that uses these terms. 26 uses of {rac#, fem#, queer#, gender#, sex#} occur in A Companion in 1 essay. Average, if this essay is removed: ~2.5 uses of {rac#, fem#, queer#, gender#, sex#} per essay that uses these terms. 135 uses of {rac#, fem#, queer#, gender#, sex#} occur in Debates in 16 essays. Average: ~8.5 uses of {rac#, fem#, queer#, gender#, sex#} per essay that uses these terms. 84 uses of {rac#, fem#, queer#, gender#, sex#} occur in Debates in 2 essays. 70 occur in 1 essay alone. Average, if these essays are removed: ~3.5 uses of {rac#, fem#, queer#, gender#, sex#} per essay that uses these terms. The average number of uses of {rac#, fem#, queer#, gender#, sex#} for all essays in both anthologies: ~3.5. Maybe I don’t need to say more. But we always do have to say more in the face of institutional privilege that is unwilling or unable to recognize its privilege. Let me be ethical. To begin, there are so many flaws in the data, the categories, the database, the inventories. 'As a queer feminist,' I must flag (a big red one) the use of the term 'sexy' occurring in the term 'sexy librarian' (Scheinfeldt, 'Sunset' 125)… …especially as it is used to indicate the rising social status of (female?) digital humanists. This term, prefaced by (the male?) 'library geek' (ibid), does not offer conceptions of gender and gender politics… …that most feminists and queer practitioners (not to mention librarians) are likely to celebrate. Furthermore, 19 usages of the term 'female' in one essay are coupled with the term 'male.' Hetero/normative sex and cisgender coupling 101. This is the stuff of bathroom conversations— --that would be bathroom conversations held in the 'ladies' bathroom. Those conversations about blatant and banal sexism and racism, in both their over-present and absenting forms that occur too regularly to recount. And more, the off-site, queer quorums, where the topic is sexism compounded by homophobia and normative cisgender bias, in both their over-present and absenting forms, that occur too regularly to recount and that often happen away from our hetero-, cisgendered feminist 'sisters' [and 'allies']. [It does sound like the '70s and '80s all over again...] Less inter-'personal', but still hegemonic and statistically problematic are the uses of the term 'feminine' to refer uncritically to gendered linguistic structures. I am left wishing only that Tara McPherson’s reference to Kara Keeling’s ‘work on the black femme’ (McPherson 157) might make you wonder. Butch, boi, bear and bdsm don’t come up as terms in these collections. And these are just a few queer 'b' words. Because it isn’t that we don’t find race, sexuality, gender, and all manner of axes of stratification in DH, but that we find ourselves back in a place where these axes of stratification don’t have to matter because they are not material nor audible nor visible nor a mode of constraint and capture to those running the game. We will remember Audre Lorde, as she had plenty to teach us regarding white feminists publishing 'Special Third World Women’s Issue': 'For the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house. They may allow us temporarily to beat him at his own game, but they will never enable us to bring about genuine change. And this fact is only threatening to those women [and allies] who still define the master’s house as their only source of support' (Lorde 112). Yes. And I also wonder: if we jettison the 'man and his tool' business, what might we hack, make and build?