This part of the project examines cultural artifacts, which do not necessarily describe, contain or depict digital artifacts. It is – to put it shortly – the relation to the digital, without the digital object present, which is at stake. This is what we call a »Digital Epistemology».
The concept of Digital Epistemology does not primarily »explain» anything: rather it is a construction set out to relate different cultural artifacts to each other, or to other structures. Digital Epistemology, as a concept, could also be seen as an exploration of that part of Digital Humanities that is not primarily concerned with the scanning of texts, the building of databases, and their uses and theoretical implications. Rather my project and RepRecDigit as a whole want to explore the digital as a (or another, since Big Data research also does this) critical concept by which we can reflect upon our humanist and cultural environments.
By examining culture through the lens of Digital Epistemology, then, my project in RepRecDigit (heuristically – the list could surely be expanded) intends to propose three intersecting approaches to Digital Epistemology:
1) Reading history in the light of digital culture.
That is: Are there certain relations that could be established if we look at history from a digital point of view? And is there a digital materiality to history that could affect how we look at things?
2) Relating literary texts and artworks to digital history.
That is: to see cultural artifacts in the light of the communicational and organizational logic that has been put forward – in different ways – by digital technology since the 1950’s.
3) Reading literary texts and artworks as if they were electronic texts.
That is: analyzing for example a print novel in terms of embodiment, processes, performativity, materiality and even »software». Not what an artwork mean but what it does.
Contact: jonas.ingvarsson@his.se