Revolutionaries and Underdogs

This book utilises oral history as an approach to meaning making which is not focused on what happened in the past (or at least not only what happened in the past). Rather, we utilise it in the manner suggested by Portelli (above) as a collaborative process by which the narrator and interviewer combine in the present to make sense of the past and their lives and experiences. The use of oral history methodologies (both in interviews and their subsequent interpretation) towards the production of histories of DH offers the tantalising possibility of revealing hidden histories and filling archival gaps with individual narratives. Furthermore, by taking the interviews together as a group that is, in turn, a subset of the more broad and loose DH community, they can be used to identify and analyse the shared narratives, silences and misremberings, community motifs and foundation myths that are essential to the binding of a community. Shared narratives and ways of understanding can be both inclusive and exclusive and help to determine a community’s relationship with the present and future as much as with the past. The identification of narrative tropes and motifs, the importance of story-telling, and the interaction and interplay between individual memories and collective myths and stories are all, as this final chapter will argue, essential components in this process (Abrams 2010). Ever since the publication of Myths We Live By (Samuels and Thompson 1990), and indeed before that under the influence of Passerini (1979) and Portelli (1981), oral history has been recognised as a valuable tool for exploring individual and collective narratives and stories, how they give meaning to the past in the present and how they can play a powerful function in articulating shared identity. We argue below that this seems especially true of an academic community such as DH which perceives itself to be misunderstood and the recipient of hostility and antagonism but is, nevertheless, in the process of establishing itself in the academic mainstream.

Within such conditions, Taylor, who looked at the role of ‘heroic myths’ in the discipline of Geography, has argued that their function is to create an ‘overall purpose and cohesion to the very obvious disparate researches of members of the geography community’ (Taylor 1976, p. 131).

Considering the nature of DH, which is very much characterised by such ‘disparate researches’, it is plausible to expect that stories should play an important cohesive function for it too. However, the stories that Digital Humanists tell about their discipline, and the labels that they apply to it have received little critical analysis (with the exception of McCarty who has critiqued the applicability of established metaphors like ‘Tree’ and ‘Turf’ to DH and argued for others such as ‘archipelago’ and ‘Phoenician trader’, as outlined in Chap. 1).

Taking the work of Passerini (1979) and Portelli (1981) as a theoretical backdrop, this chapter will describe, contextualise and interpret a narrative (or ‘story’) that was recalled in a number, but not all, of the oral history interviews. This narrative concerns interviewees’ experiences of having been ignored, undermined or marginalised by the mainstream academic community. For the purposes of discussion, we refer to this as the ‘motif of the underdog’. We will complement this analysis of the oral history interviews by looking to the scholarly literature of the field and examining a narrative that often occurs there, namely DH’s supposedly revolutionary status (referred to below as the ‘motif of the revolutionary’).

Though we will explore some fundamental contradictions that cross cut the motifs of the revolutionary and underdog our aim is not to invalidate or ridicule them or the significance of their telling. Indeed, it is possible to be both an underdog and a revolutionary – many, if not most revolutionaries are by definition in the minority and spend much of their time being pursued by hostile forces. For much of this time they might act as a vanguard for change but their inability to influence or affect that change would have them characterised as underdogs. Our analysis will raise the question of how DH managed to move from the margins towards the mainstream while continuing to portray itself as both underdog and revolutionary? Drawing on literature from social psychology, the history of disciplinarity and the wider backdrop of oral history, we will argue that the motifs discussed here can be better understood in terms of their function rather than their internal coherence.

A review of the main DH journals (namely Literary and Linguistic Computing; Digital Humanities Quarterly; and CHum) shows that ‘revolution’ is a term that preoccupies the field. In the discussion below we focus mostly on scholarly articles that contain the term ‘revolution’ and its associated forms. Space has not allowed us to follow up what appear to be related terms or movements, for example, hacktivism or more indirect allusions to revolution.

Such comparisons can serve to provide a relatively new discipline such as DH with a genealogy that connects it with a distinguished past in addition to foretelling an auspicious future: ‘these new technologies will have a major role to play because they are the culmination of the revolution that started with the invention of printing’ (Schneider and Bennion 1982, p. 35)

The relationship of DH to such revolutions is variously construed. Sometimes, the revolution is seen as external to the field but capable of transforming its ways of working. Bolton, for example, wrote that the ‘October Revolution’, which saw the arrival of the IBM personal computer, redressed some of the ‘strange couplings’ that came about in a time when Humanities Computing was bound to the mainframe and Computer Scientist (1991, p. 431). Some portray DH as a bridge to the digital revolution: ‘Academics wishing to join the ‘digital revolution’ may have an introduction to the field of Digital Humanities through the discipline of textual markup’ (Terras et al. 2009, p. 298). Others view the revolution as a potential threat. A proposal for teaching computers in the liberal arts curriculum warns: ‘we can ill afford to sit back as spectators while the computer revolution takes its course’ (Cramer and Taylor 1973, p. 418). Indeed, McCarty has addressed the fear of computing that can be noticed in the professional literature of DH and the Humanities more generally (2013).

Sometimes individual scholars are portrayed as revolutionaries. Burton wrote how Busa had ‘revolutionized the fields of concordance-making and of computer applications’(Burton 1981, p. 4). Sands characterises Meserole as one who would become a ‘prominent figure in the vanguard of this new revolution’ (Sands 1967, p. 113).

Sometimes the field as a whole is characterised as having revolutionary intent: ‘So, when does the Humanities Computing Revolution Start?’ asks Brink who proceeds to lament its continuing peripheral position (1990, p. 105). Clubb advises DH to avoid repeating the mistakes of other disciplines ‘in their own revolution’ (Anon 1971, p. 61) Bosak’s closing talk to TEI 10 mapped out the communities role in the ‘revolution’ (1999).

Considering the above it is surprising that explanations of and concensus on what the revolution will entail are difficult to find in the main DH journals (and one notices a parallel here with ongoing debates about how DH is to be defined). An exception is the work of Berry who discusses the DH revolution in terms of a Kuhnian paradigm shift (Porsdam 2013). More often, however, the nature and scope of the ‘revolution’ must be inferred.

In a number of discussions the use of the term revolution evokes the determined overthrow of existing approaches and the drawing of lines between the traditional and emergent. Regarding authorship attribution, for example, it is argued that the work of Mosteller and Wallace ‘combined with the late twentieth-century revolution in computing, inaugurated a new era for “non-traditional” statistically based studies of authorship’ (Holmes et al. 2001, p. 315). For others the revolution is happening in epistemology (Beacham and Denard 2003). Discussing analytical modelling (a methodology that is fundamental to DH), McCarty argues: ‘It’s great and revolutionary success for the humanities is to force the epistemological question—how is it that we know what we somehow know—and to give us an instrument for exploring it’ (2008, p. 256).

It is not only research problems that are in range. The revolution can result in new genres of computer-mediated conversations (Potter 1996). It can also be about professional processes, as in Ott’s discussion (1979) of preparing classical editions, where he states that he believes the revolution will result in editors being able to access areas that were otherwise blocked to them, such as typesetting. Discussing ‘instructional materials’ DeBloois warns that ‘Old structures must yield to the pressure of the technology revolution’ (1984, p. 192). Prescott does not use the term revolutionary but draws approvingly on Badmington’s desire to see ‘the destruction of this cold, grey building. I wish for the dissolution of the departments that lie within its walls. I wish, finally, that from the rubble would arise the Posthumanities’ (Prescott 2012b). Spiro does not use the word either but the title of her article certainly evokes it: ‘“This Is Why We Fight”: Defining the Values of the Digital Humanities’ (2012). The Digital Humanities manifesto 2.0 situates the activities of DH within the aims of the Humanities yet it frames its ‘inaugural role’ as being both distinct from and a challenge to the ways that Humanities is now done. It asserts that ‘the [DH] revolution promotes a fundamental reshaping of the research and teaching landscape’ (Presner et al. 2009, p. 8) and also contrasts ‘our [i.e. DH’s] response’ with ‘the traditionalists response’ (Idem, p. 6). Of the manifesto, Fish wrote ‘[t]he rhetoric of these statements (which could easily be multiplied) is not one of reform, but of revolution’ (2012).

However, a certain contradiction in such uses of the term can occasionally be detected. The technologies used in the DH revolution may be ‘the culmination of the revolution that started with the invention of printing’ (Schneider and Bennion 1982), yet in some formulations it is the medium and culture of print technology that is to be challenged. For example, discussing hypermedia, Bolton argues that ‘the idea of a snapshot, fixing the state of a discipline in time through the medium of print, is one of the things that hypermedia are rapidly revolutionizing out of existence’ (1996, p. 81). Other understandings of ‘revolutionary’ are apparent too, Jessop for example, equates it with something that is ‘lacking in rigorous scholarly value’ (Jessop 2008, p. 281).

In addition to the apparent disagreement about the results of the revolution a number of articles also disagree with or critique its appropriateness as an aim. The problematic nature of such ‘revolutionary’ rhetoric for the perception of the field is occasionally discussed (see, for example, Goldfield 1993). Some argue that revolution is not an appropriate goal (Byerly 1978) and that the computer may offer other important possibilities that are not necessarily revolutionary, like new creative affordances (Beatie 1967). Others believe that in any case the computer is ‘unlikely to spread into those areas of history in which investigators lack or reject the habit of putting part of their work into quantitative form, [and] the prospects that the computer will revolutionize historical analysis as a whole in the near future are slight indeed’ (Tilly 1973, p. 327). Others remark on the various expected revolutions that didn’t come off (see, for example, Lawrence et al. 1986, p. 121; Byerly 1978). Indeed, a degree of frustration with the unimaginative use that some scholars (Raben 1991) and some students (Ess 2000) have made of the fruits of the computer revolution is also to be encountered.

In summary, the term ‘revolution’ and associated forms occur frequently in the literature of the field but detailed discussions of what it might require or achieve, and how this might shape the research agenda of the field are difficult to find. Furthermore, there is not a consensus that an appropriate aim for the field is to foment revolution or even on whether the revolution is ongoing or still in planning.

Two interrelated questions arise from this summary: what influenced the take up of the term revolutionary in the field of DH and why does it continue to be used in what is often such an imprecise way?

Space will not allow a detailed exploration of the issues that helped to give rise to the field’s preoccupation with the term ‘revolution’; instead, we here outline two of many possible influences before going on to discuss in detail the context lent by the oral history interviews. The most obvious is, of course, the wider context of technology and computing which so frequently promises and is analysed in terms of revolutionary changes. As Mahoney remarked, ‘… [C]omputers and computing … have always been surrounded by hype (it was – and may still be – the only way to sell them)’ (2005, p. 120). Relevant too must be influential developments and debates in wider academia such as the publication of Kuhn’s highly influential The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (published in 1962, with subsequent editions appearing in 1969 and 2012). This book argued against Whiggish or Positivist interpretations of the History of Science, which view it as a process of constant progress. It argues that periods of normal Science, when Scientists share a common paradigm (or shared opinions and practices about a field’s theories, methods, problems and achievements) are broken by sporadic revolutions that interrupt such periods of normal Science and push it forward.

The interviews we have carried out suggest a further way of examining and contextualising the revolutionary rhetoric of DH. At first glance, the role of underdog and revolutionary may seem rather removed from one another but as commented earlier, the view of revolutionaries as vanguardist minorities bring these motifs together. As with the motif of the underdog, certain tensions can be noted once the surface of the motif of the revolutionary is scratched.

The more obvious way that the metaphor is inadequate is in its sketchy definition. As we have seen above, despite many references to DH’s revolutionary nature or potential there is little agreement about the form the revolution should take or what exactly is to be transformed. Furthermore, the metaphor has a number of unfortunate historical associations. As history shows, revolutionaries can, in time, become oppressors. Did Digital Humanists consider themselves immune from such processes? This is an issue that we will return to below. Also, as argued elsewhere (Nyhan 2016), it is notable that despite the revolutionary claims of some individuals, the transactions of the inaugural year of Humanist (1987) indicate that acceptance from the mainstream Humanities, or the Academy more generally, was a dominant concern of DH. In summary, then, the question arises of why such a problematic and ill-defined metaphor was used so often in the writings of the field?

Whilst noting the previously discussed irony of oral history practitioners often also adopting the motifs of underdogs and revolutionaries bent on transforming history and systems of knowledge production more generally, we will now argue that oral history opens the possibility of interpreting these motifs in a less literal way by considering them not in terms of their veracity but rather in terms of their potential function and symbolism for the group that wielded them. Above we asked how DH was able to move from the margins to the mainstream while espousing a narrative of both underdog and revolutionary. We will now argue that this process can be better understood when such motifs are not viewed as literally true (or necessarily internally coherent) but instead viewed as powerful labels, or shared expressions of identity, around which DH proceeded to rally and bind itself.

As discussed in Chap. 1, not only are definitions of the term discipline contested but the question of whether DH can best be categorised as a discipline, an interdiscipline, a community of practice, and so on, continues to be debated. So too, for a good deal of the period under discussion, Humanities Computing was in the process of becoming more established and then ‘transforming’ into DH. For such reasons, we thought it important to consider the motifs discussed here in more universal terms by drawing on the social psychology concept of group processes. Indeed, the literature on group processes provides an intriguing framework to explore some of the dynamics that may be at stake.

According to Brown ‘a group exists when two or more people define themselves as members of it and when its existence is recognized by at least one other’ (2001, p. 3). He examines a number of elementary processes of groups, the first being ‘changes in self-concept’: ‘our social identity – our sense of who we are and what we are worth – is ultimately bound up with our group memberships’ (Idem, p. 28). Considered in this context one possible way of interpreting the interplay of the motifs of the underdog and revolutionary becomes clear. It must have been painful and disquieting to have one’s academic competence (and, to some extent, social identity) questioned at the individual and group level in the way that a number of interviewees recalled. One wonders whether the motif of the revolutionary might (also) have been developed and evoked as a shield and form of redress against such attacks? Given the prevalence of the motif it is also plausible to argue that it functioned as a kind of ‘common goal’ (or ‘task interdependence’ (see Idem 37–40)) around which the group could organise itself. As mentioned by McCarty (see Chap. 3), the exact nature of the contribution that computing has made to the Humanities is not agreed upon. Perhaps the aim of securing (albeit rather vague) revolutionary changes can be seen as providing a common cause for the group to rally around while undertaking a deeper analysis of the changes the discipline might ultimately herald. This brings an added dimension to the criticism of the use of this motif by some in the group: failure to attain the expected revolutionary changes could conceivably have the effect of undermining the very rationale of the group’s existence.

The second elementary process that Brown discusses is that of ‘initiation into the group’, a ritual that tends to take place especially in ‘established or formal groups and organizations’ (Idem, p. 30). Such initiations can vary widely and range from a positive experience where certain benefits are conferred on new member (like financial and other employee benefits that some organisations give new members) to ‘a distinctly unpleasant (not to say painful) experience in which the newcomer is mocked, embarrassed or even physically assaulted’ (Idem, p. 30–31). From the literature that Brown cites it seems that such initiation ceremonies are invariably conducted by existing members of a given group. Thus, the motif of the underdog cannot be seen as an initiation ceremony because all interviewees report that the resistance they encountered emanated from outside the field of DH. Yet, given the regularity with which the motif is recalled, one wonders whether it may have taken on a form that was akin to that of a ‘right of passage’ in that one marker of becoming a Digital Humanist was the endurance of such vicissitudes?

In the extract above, Watson can be read as symbolising the power and success of IBM as he sits behind his desk, slightly aloof, one imagines. Busa, a Jesuit priest, of all things, ventures into the hive of capitalism and ambition (as Jones wrote, ‘Priest walks into CEO’s office: it sounds like the beginning of a joke’ (cited in Jones forthcoming)). Though Busa emphasises his canniness with his observation that ‘IBM always loved slogans’, the attention he draws to the waiting room, and the small poster that he acquired there, serve to underline the asymmetrical power relations that he implies to be at play. Although Busa describes how he emerged victorious due to his wit and the grace of his god, he again emphasises his underdog status by describing how his order could not provide the funds that were so essential to the project (and that only IBM could bestow). In this regard, Jones’ finding that the meeting between them was not even recorded in Watson’s formal datebook is all the more telling (Ibid).

That negative ‘initiation’ experiences can be used to the advantage of a group is suggested by Arson and Mills who drew on the theory of Cognitive Dissonance to argue that ‘the more severe the initiation, the more attractive the group would appear [to the initiate]’ (cited in Brown 2001, p. 32). One wonders whether the frequent recalling and citing of the motif of the underdog evokes a similar process as interviewees use it not only to underscore what they perceive to the attractiveness of the group but also to underline their resilience in embracing insults and reutilising them as a mechanism for fostering cohesion?

Space has not allowed us to consider other related questions about the relationship of the individual to the group or about the intergroup relationship between DH and the wider Humanities. For now, we will point out that as groups also define themselves through a process of differentiation (see Crozier 2001 for a discussion of this in academic disciplines) the motifs discussed here serve an important function in differentiating DH from the mainstream Humanities, thus reinforcing DH’s status as a group and as a functioning, supportive community.

Above we asked how DH has been able to move from the margins to the mainstream while portraying itself as at once a group of underdogs and revolutionaries. We have argued that this process can better be understood when such motifs are interpreted on a utilitarian rather than literal level. In this reading, the motifs of the revolutionary and underdog are not only self-sustaining and interdependent, they also play important social functions in the way that they have contributed to DH’s sense of purpose and unity. This seems all the more important in an area such as DH which is especially characterised by the ‘disparate researches’ of its members. Thus, we propose that the motifs of the underdog and revolutionary have played an important role in the development of DH as a discipline and in its movement from the margins towards the mainstream.

Notwithstanding this, we believe that DH must now reflect on the centrality that such motifs continue to be given when retelling its history and to ask whether new motifs are needed as the discipline moves forward. Three arguments can be put forward in support of this claim. The first is the disquiet of some of its members at the way the field continues to trade in outmoded and inaccurate metaphors. As Rockwell put it: ‘What concerns me … is that within digital humanities we are still trading stories, we’re still acting as if we’re the underdog and we’re not’ (2011). Thus, there is a discord between how the field portrays its situation and the realities of that situation. Our second and third arguments are framed in terms of the complications that we hold to arise from this.

Above we demonstrated that the revolutionary motif occurs often in the literature of the field but that it is poorly defined. Our second argument is that the motif is also an inadequate means of communicating the aims of the discipline to other researchers and members of the public. This is evidenced by the way that DH is portrayed (or sometimes vilified in the mainstream media). Since 2012, a rush of essays and opinion pieces have appeared in publications like, inter alia, the New Republic (Kirsch 2014), the Los Angeles Review of Books (Marche 2012), the New York Times (Leroi 2015) and Inside Higher Ed (Straumsheim 2014). These essays are mostly written by non-specialists in the area of DH and the publications they appear in have far greater readerships than the typical academic journal. In them the field’s revolutionary intent is often emphasised and accorded a degree of destructive import that it does not usually have in the DH literature. Kirsch, for example, argues that DH poses an existential threat to Humanities and that its revolutionary rhetoric has an ‘undertone of menace, the threat of historical illegitimacy and obsolescence’ (2014).

The reaction often made to such essays by the DH community is that their writers do not seem to understand DH or what it aims to do. This is a reasonable response. However, the more important question of how and why such egregious misunderstandings and misrepresentations arise seems to go unasked. Numerous texts have appeared that seek to define DH (see, for example, Terras et al. 2013). Yet, while Kirsch and others have failed to grasp the basics of what the field does they certainly have not failed to grasp its supposedly revolutionary nature. As it continues to move from the margins towards the mainstream DH must pay more careful attention to how it is communicated to the public and to those outside of its immediate frame of reference. A crucial prerequisite of such a development is a critical analysis of the usefulness of the revolutionary rhetoric that it often uses to describe and project itself.

The third argument that we will put forward also pertains to the future of the field. Above we argued that the motif of the revolutionary offered DH a way of discovering its raison d’etre and a means of coalescing around a common goal (if even to reject that goal, as we have seen in some of the articles cited above). Yet, looking at the scholarly areas that DH has been criticised for not engaging with, one wonders whether the motif of the revolutionary has paradoxically proven to be one that shut down truly radical thinking? After all, if one is assured of their revolutionary status what need is there to reflect critically on the agenda and research trajectory of the discipline? We might go further and say that in such circumstances it is not even necessary for a “revolutionary” discipline to articulate what makes it revolutionary. As discussed in Chap. 1, the field has been convincingly criticised for its paucity of engagement with issues that are at the heart of the unfolding encounter between human and machine, for example, cultural criticism, gender issues, postcolonialism and posthumanism (and, we would add, emerging modes and structures of knowledge production and digital epistemology). Though some progress in relation to such lacunae can be noted of late, we propose that responding to such ‘grand challenges’ will involve not only new research agenda but a wider reflection on the ways that the field perceives and projects itself, and how this may be advance or stifle its progress. The shaking off of its revolutionary mantle may well be important in this regard.

In conclusion, then, as DH becomes more institutionalised and mainstream, we ask whether it can and should maintain its revolutionary and radical discourse about its origins? Whereas once such rhetoric may have fostered ‘an overall purpose and cohesion’ (Taylor 1976) we ask whether it is still performing such a service today? Does creating a sense of purpose and cohesion have the same importance and weight that it once did? Indeed, could the means of achieving this have also served to circumscribe the intellectual agenda of the field? We believe that it is important that the community pays closer and more critical attention to the stories, metaphors and labels that it uses to describe itself and to the impact this has not only on how those outside DH perceive it but also on how DH understands its frame of reference. Is it time to become more aware of the stories that are told and to ask whether new stories and foundation myths and, most of all, new and more critical histories of DH are needed? We propose that in this way a better understanding of the history of computing in the Humanities has the potential to contribute to conversations that are as relevant to the present and the future as they are to the past.