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Defining the digital humanities seems to involve wrestling with contradictory methods and motivations. How does quantitative data about literature, human history, and art fit into humanities disciplines without reducing or erasing the unmeasurable aspects of human life? This tension is magnified by the role that private corporate enterprise has played in the development of the digital humanities field in U.S. educational institutions. In “Digital American Studies: An Introduction and Rationale,” Alexander Dunst considers these incongruencies, and ultimately argues that digital methods and tools have the potential to enrich humanities interpretation through the intentional creation of data using verifiable information. 

When data is defined as a given fact, the conclusions to be drawn from it are limited. But thinking critically about the creation of data can create new interpretive opportunities, making the humanities more open and inclusive. Dunst writes that, “if disciplines like American Studies are to retain their interest in the subjectivity of human experience in a digital age, they must find ways to minimize the violence inherent in its reduction to data” (Dunst, 389). I think Dunst’s point here is significant, and offers a helpful perspective on the seemingly contradictory nature of digital humanities. Data is not always fact, and it is not always objective, but data does reflect the methods and intentions through which it was gathered. 

While the humanities is not a science, I’m interested in the connection between the development of the two fields. Thinking about the humanities as an academic discipline brings up the question of which human lives and cultures are typically studied and privileged in the academy. My thinking about the connections between science, the humanities, and the systems of power they can reflect is inspired by Sylvia Wynter’s 2003 essay, “Unsettling the Coloniality of Being/Power/Truth/Freedom: Towards the Human, After Man, Its Overrepresentation—An Argument". 

I think the digital humanities as a method of interpretation has the potential to address the limited ways that human life has been represented, as well as the systems and power dynamics involved. The possible reduction of human life into data in the digital humanities is not a new risk in the humanities. Historical narratives and representation influence which art and literature we study in the humanities, as well as the lens through which we see the art and literature of cultures that are not typically privileged in this space.