I found Katherine Hayles' How We Think: Digital Media and Contemporary Technogenesis to be a perfect book to guide our course on DH toward its conclusion, since Hayles is able to summarize and balance out many questions and debates that we have taken into consideration in these months: what Digital Humanities is/are, whether it is/should be a separate field or discipline, how reductive the idea of 'mere tools' can be, the transformative effects of our interactions with, and creation of, digital cultural objects.
I was particularly pleased to find, in Hayles, a good answer to the perplexities I had about Moretti's theories of distant reading. Hayles shows us how different modes, such as close, hyper and machine-based, readings, can, should, and do, inevitably, interact, instead of excluding one another. This whole book calls for a dynamic synergistic interaction, and an hybridization, rather than a rigid separation, between TH (Traditional Humanities) and DH; among close, hyper, and machine-based readings and among the pedagogies based on these types of reading; between narrative and database; between spatial and temporal visualizations and representations; between analysis and interpretation. One of the crucial moments of the book is when Hayles, on page 81, argues that the right attitude toward the technogenesis she describes is not that of understanding it as progress but rather, that of adapting to it, and, most of all, to intervene in the activist sense discussed by Anne Balsamo in her call for humanist scholars to develop new tools, and even in the resistant and opposing anti-dominant ideology sense, in Malabou's idea of neural plasticity vs. flexibility. Hayles's book is in this sense, both very lucid and visionary, close to reality and flirting with utopias. It's also a very brave attempt to explore the questions of the redefinition of the boundaries of cognition and perception, their unconscious mechanisms, and the questions of their extendedness and embeddedness. In this sense, this book is an overview of the main questions and problems that crucially regard DH. I think its merits also lie in the curiosity toward multimodal electronic novels such as TOC or toward the spatial aesthetic of OR. I have not read extensively in recent DH theory, but it seems to me pretty rare to find this interest in digital-born literature as conjugated with the praise of algorithmic and computational thinking and operating within DH.
Hayles is even able to discuss code and related visions of it as a lingua franca, and even has time to dig into the changes brought about by telegraphy and its bearing on the understanding, and the practicing, of language and writing. Indeed, Hayles is successful to show, or at least to indicate the path of, the changes that the "technogenetic spiral" is bringing forth, and its "strong aesthetic dimension as well as neurocognitive and technical implications"(247). I would have not been happy with this book if I felt it was only about showing that there is no other option but adapting to, or aligning with, the digital technogenesis. This book is, more importantly, about intervening within it and, possibly, against it. In this sense, the proposed object of study of Comparative Media Studies seems to me to be a good counterpoint to Manovich's theorization about the dissolving status of the very concept of media. Yes, Hayles call for the hibridization of forms of reading and of cognitive patterns of imagination and representation, but she also argues that the materiality of different media (and not only of software!) and its interactions with human understanding should be studied, while differences between and among media should be emphasized and observed in their evolution. In other words, she proposes synergies and ruptures, continual transformation but also resistant identities. And, most of all, she helps us develop an awareness of the reciprocal causality between the human and the technological, to accept of the coexistence of the old and the new, and, possibly, to create fruitful interactions between the two. Hayles' book is both cynical and hopeful. It refuses simplistic explanations, and proposes complex questions, it shows how much is unconsciously happening to us but also how much we can actively do, how much we can consciously try to make happen.
I was particularly pleased to find, in Hayles, a good answer to the perplexities I had about Moretti's theories of distant reading. Hayles shows us how different modes, such as close, hyper and machine-based, readings, can, should, and do, inevitably, interact, instead of excluding one another. This whole book calls for a dynamic synergistic interaction, and an hybridization, rather than a rigid separation, between TH (Traditional Humanities) and DH; among close, hyper, and machine-based readings and among the pedagogies based on these types of reading; between narrative and database; between spatial and temporal visualizations and representations; between analysis and interpretation. One of the crucial moments of the book is when Hayles, on page 81, argues that the right attitude toward the technogenesis she describes is not that of understanding it as progress but rather, that of adapting to it, and, most of all, to intervene in the activist sense discussed by Anne Balsamo in her call for humanist scholars to develop new tools, and even in the resistant and opposing anti-dominant ideology sense, in Malabou's idea of neural plasticity vs. flexibility. Hayles's book is in this sense, both very lucid and visionary, close to reality and flirting with utopias. It's also a very brave attempt to explore the questions of the redefinition of the boundaries of cognition and perception, their unconscious mechanisms, and the questions of their extendedness and embeddedness. In this sense, this book is an overview of the main questions and problems that crucially regard DH. I think its merits also lie in the curiosity toward multimodal electronic novels such as TOC or toward the spatial aesthetic of OR. I have not read extensively in recent DH theory, but it seems to me pretty rare to find this interest in digital-born literature as conjugated with the praise of algorithmic and computational thinking and operating within DH.
Hayles is even able to discuss code and related visions of it as a lingua franca, and even has time to dig into the changes brought about by telegraphy and its bearing on the understanding, and the practicing, of language and writing. Indeed, Hayles is successful to show, or at least to indicate the path of, the changes that the "technogenetic spiral" is bringing forth, and its "strong aesthetic dimension as well as neurocognitive and technical implications"(247). I would have not been happy with this book if I felt it was only about showing that there is no other option but adapting to, or aligning with, the digital technogenesis. This book is, more importantly, about intervening within it and, possibly, against it. In this sense, the proposed object of study of Comparative Media Studies seems to me to be a good counterpoint to Manovich's theorization about the dissolving status of the very concept of media. Yes, Hayles call for the hibridization of forms of reading and of cognitive patterns of imagination and representation, but she also argues that the materiality of different media (and not only of software!) and its interactions with human understanding should be studied, while differences between and among media should be emphasized and observed in their evolution. In other words, she proposes synergies and ruptures, continual transformation but also resistant identities. And, most of all, she helps us develop an awareness of the reciprocal causality between the human and the technological, to accept of the coexistence of the old and the new, and, possibly, to create fruitful interactions between the two. Hayles' book is both cynical and hopeful. It refuses simplistic explanations, and proposes complex questions, it shows how much is unconsciously happening to us but also how much we can actively do, how much we can consciously try to make happen.
I couldn't agree more with your comment that Hayles' book is not "only about showing that there is no other option but adapting to, or aligning with, the digital technogenesis.This book is, more importantly, about intervening within it and, possibly, against it..." I too appreciated Hayles book because it seems to capture the perfect balance between pragmatism and utopian vision. So often it seems as if arguments about, or rather against, DH, act as if digital media has not already arrived, as if somehow humanists can ignore the advent of technology. On the other hand, theorists who make the argument that, well, technology is here, so we just have to accept it, also seem off base since their attitude is one of passive acceptance. Ignoring reality seems just as harmful as arguing that we should go with the flow. Hayles on the other hand seems to say, yes, technology is here, so we have a responsibility to engage, change, and critique it.
ReplyDeleteI thoroughly enjoyed your post Caterina, and I can't help but think about Shelley Jackson's Patchwork Girl and other digital texts that change our concept of reading. These revolutionary programs help engage the reader into a different format. I wonder if that is the key to technogenesis and the discourse surrounding it is the exciting unfamiliarity that surrounds it. Currently, the task of humanists is to elucidate texts and imagine future programs. It's exciting to study the Digital Humanities and how much different it is than Humanities Computing. The world opens up with these three styles of reading and contributes to an exciting future for the humanities.
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