Ghosting, or something else?

via GIPHY

Katherine Bode’s The Equivalence of “Close” and “Distant” Reading; or, Toward a New Object for Data-Rich Literary History has been causing a stir. It is a worthy stir – certainly better than heading down to the “what is DH?” stage, made to dance to a series of definitional acts with a sum total feeling not unlike being stuck in an academic Hotel California sans pink champagne on ice and the smell of colitas. Thank goodness for purgatory busting colleagues like Sarah Stanley. There are better worlds – Andrew Piper and Matthew Lincoln’s responses to Bode demonstrate that. In that spirit I offer a general observation on how data tend to be discussed by disciplinary scholars in the Humanities. I close with a question that I hope will spark productive conversations.

Arguments about data tend to exhibit the following features:

  1. Binding and Typifying – things (e.g. items, objects, texts, images) are conceptually bound and referred to as an archive, an archives, a collection, a library – basically many things become a thing
  2. Problematization – the thing and its parts are problematized at different scales
  3. Follow the Scholarly Gaze – the reader is called to follow the scholarly gaze as it narrates problematization of the thing
  4. Passivity of The Thing – the thing is passive, to be examined, acted upon
  5. Ghosting, or something else? – the thing is argued about without reference to the people who manage it, preserve it, and make it accessible (e.g. librarians, archivists)

On the question of whether librarians and archivists are being ghosted out of these discussions, I challenge you to find more than a few references to librarian rather than library, archivist rather than archive in the places that disciplinary scholars tend to publish. What gives? Why are the people who manage, curate, preserve, and make the data accessible so often absent from critical discussions about the data? I can’t help but think that arguments about data would be significantly enriched by a less inviolate scholarly gaze – something diversified by an equal collaboration with a librarian or an archivist rather than defaulting their contribution into an acknowledgements section, rendered as a purveyor of goods.

Matthew Lincoln alludes to the promise of Alison Langmead et al’s work which in of itself represents a kind of interdisciplinary and interprofessional ideal – librarians and disciplinary scholars doing awesome work together. I applaud the example but contend that it remains the exception. I’ve tallied some of my own collaborations in this vein over the years and I can recount a handful of others like them. I would love to hear of more examples – what worked, what didn’t work. We only learn when we discuss these issues honestly and openly – moments of success are only leavened by admissions of failure. 

But back to the title – are librarians and archivists being ghosted, or is it something else? To what extent can lack of representation be attributed to disciplinary culture? To what extent can lack of representation be attributed to the professional cultures librarians and archivists inhabit?  As with any question, pursuit of an answer only matters insofar as it moves us closer to understanding the dynamics that foster and sustain root causes. By resolving tensions motivating ghosting acts we may find a better way – a way of doing things that enriches our interactions, our arguments, and our relationships with each other. 

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