Himalayan Economics and Business Management

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Revisiting Determinism in Postcolonial Digital Humanities: Decentering scientific technology in the Knowledge Economy of Literary Discourse

Alfred Ndi University of Bamenda, North Western Cameroon Abstract: This paper set out to investigate limitations of the current emphasis of *Corresponding Author Postcolonial Digital Humanities on the metanarrative of scientific knowledge. Drawing Alfred Ndi from structuralist and post-structuralist insights in qualitative research, the paper argues that scientific knowledge inscribed in the digital humanities cannot claim a universalist, Article History neutralist and ahistorical character because it is a kind of ideological knowledge and is Received: 11.04.2021 therefore susceptible to discursivity. Therefore, there is a need for a historicizing model of Accepted: 22.04.2021 knowledge economy that is premised on the digital, but at the same time, exposes Published: 10.05.2021 knowledge as ‗interested‘, active, lively and creative in the realm of society rather than as mute, indifferent and disembedded from economic narratives. Citations: Alfred Ndi. (2021); Revisiting Keywords: Determinism of science, ICTs, knowledge economy, new historicism, literary Determinism in Postcolonial discourse. Digital Humanities: Decentering scientific technology in the Knowledge Economy of Literary Discourse. Hmlyan Jr Eco Bus Mgn; 2(3) 9-20

INTRODUCTION humanities and the literary or discursive field. Digital humanities prioritize quantitative over qualitative The field of Postcolonial Digital Humanities has methods or the rationally explicit over tacit been projected as the potential for online platforms of understandings such as text analysis, text encoding, the knowledge economy such as e-commerce (or digital digital editions and archives, online reading tools and capital) to deliver on the postcolonial maxim: ‗a better resources to practise scholarship with Google Books world is possible‘. However, the imperial metanarrative and occasional Digital Humanities Research Awards. of the knowledge economy and digital capitalism often Digital humanities practices play more of an ends up in crisis because of its deterministic treatment instrumental than a qualitative role to the humanities of knowledge. Postcolonial Digital Humanities is an (Flanders 2009). inter-disciplinary field of inquiry but its practitioners http://digitalhumanities.org/dhq/vol/3/3/000055/000055 prioritize digital determinism, that is, the power of .html.)? metanarratives of praxis in virtual/digital capitalism over the humanities as is the usual case in universities This paper upholds the view that this kind of techno- with archival projects described in scientific journals. determinism is a severe blockage on the road to the Postcolonial digital humanists are chiefly concerned field‘s growth. For example, as evidenced by Pascale with praxis, that is, with generating smarter protocols, Casanova‘s The World Republic of Letters and Franco standards, templates, schema and databases of platforms Moretti‘s Graphs, Maps, Trees, digital technologies and with polishing their relationships with funding have become the new ‗sociology‘ of literature that bodies, universities, and other mediating agencies such frame out the way literature should be investigated. as the World Bank, IMF and capitalist institutions World literature, for example, also adopted a corporate charged with overseeing projects, big data analytics and or system-scale analysis which combined Marxist their flexible efficiency. Through digital libraries, sociology (with Immanuel Wallerstein‘s ―core versus editions and e-commerce archives, digital humanities periphery‖ type of investigation), Braudelian have become a smokescreen for Frederick Taylor‘s historiography and literary comparatism. The practical scientific content management system and data and tools, the databases, corpora and distributed entrepreneurship. This has led to a proliferation of repositories, became a new form of culturomics, a type programmes, jobs, grants, panels, and publications in of quantitative analysis of Google Books to which the digital humanities with a deterministic focus on literature was subjected. These scholars deployed Web science and the appropriation of knowledge rationalism 1.0, which is a text-based internet culture to create new and labour by scientific and technological methods. sites of knowledge. These sites identified new sub- This, then, has created an uneasiness within the fields like postcolonial science and technology, exposed emerging new world order between technology, the

Alfred Ndi; Hmlyan Jr Eco Bus Mgn; Vol-2, Iss- 3 (May-Jun, 2021): 9-20 postcolonial theorists such as Aijaz Ahmad, Ella digital humanities covers a broader history of contact Shohat, Arif Dirlik, Sandra Harding and Benita Parry, between the digital milieu and postcolonial criticism. and defined key terms and the stakes for postcolonial studies through US based academic Journals like This paper addresses itself to the potentialities but Jouvert. With publication of these projects, new also the crisis and the perspectives at the confluence of technological and digital changes provided rich this imperial project within the discipline of opportunities for the application and analysis of Postcolonial digital humanities and the knowledge postcolonial studies by interrogating how postcolonial economy of literary studies. Although the knowledge studies could evolve via different stages of the internet economy of ICTs was configured differently from the culture. These stages include the original postcolonial post-industrial era of the 1960s as a new frontier for websites of Web 1.0, the ‗transmedia shift‘ starting communication and information and as a democratizing from the mid-2000s - as Lisa Nakamura and Peter space for the propagation of new knowledge embedded Chow-White refer to it- the move to Web 2.0 and the in states and nations all over the world, the internet‘s rise of social media cultures. The digital practices from tremendous potential for development of the digital the mid-2000s transmedia shift started to change cultural record is also embedding huge limitations and because there was an elision of boundaries between perspectives. Based on the ethics of net neutrality, open media producers, scholars and consumers. These shifts access and freedom of information and communication, started to raise new questions about the possibility that it has offered infrastructural power in Marxist terms to there may be no epistemological differences in the the imperial assumptions behind postcolonial digital articulation of identities in digital spaces. From the humanities and its scholarship. But as we will illustrate 1990s, postcolonial scholars clinched on to the in Foucauldian terms, the potentials of that power also affordances of digital media in order to construct carry inherent weaknesses that need to be addressed and knowledge about the field. Postcolonial thinking redesigned. Figured variously as a new frontier for engaged with science and technology studies via what is information and a democratizing space for the referred to as ―postcolonial computing,‖ which is a proliferation of new communities and knowledge, the critical evaluation of the development discourse in the internet offers both hope and tremendous potential for designing of technology (Merritt and Bardzell 2011). developing the digital cultural record. Digital Another term ―decolonial computing‖ embedded humanities scholarship has proliferated in this digital postcolonial computing and critical race theory (Ali milieu, guided by an ethics of freedom of information, 2016). Even postcolonial scholars deployed new media open access, and net neutrality. And yet the internet is by exploring networks of capital, digital subalternity riddled with divides, inequalities, uneven access, and and communication, as well as the power that arbitrates governmental control over flows of information. As between global communities. Postcolonial scholars controversies over net neutrality demonstrate, the within the digital humanities, are now generating digital internet is not a space that is apolitical or immune to the scholarship in the form of archival, cultural heritage and vicissitudes of capitalism (Risam 2019). mapping projects. THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK When in 2014, the MLA Convention met and set up the first panel on postcolonial digital humanities, the As theoretical frameworks of the humanities, line of inquiry that emerged consisted in seeking out a structuralism and post-structuralism suggest that dialogue between, on the one hand, knowledge whether in linguistics, sociology, anthropology or production in the global spaces in postcolonial studies literature, elements of human culture (such as the ICT and, on the other hand, the field of the digital infrastructure) should be understood in terms of their humanities, which is praxis-driven (Risam 2016). It is relationship to a broader, overarching (post)structure or against this understanding that a number of topics were system. The structures that underpin all the issues that adopted such as: digital archival silences, decolonizing humans perceive, do, think and feel in the humanities digital humanities, postcolonial game studies, fields can be uncovered. As defined by Simon construction of global scholarly networks, the Blackburn (Blackburn 2008), structuralism is a belief postcolonial digital human, and so forth (Caswell and that assumes that all phenomena of human life are not Mallick 2014, Murray 2018). The motivation was also intelligible unless they are considered through to show that a range of conversations have been interrelationships. These interrelationships constitute a flourishing at the confluence of postcolonial studies and structure and underpinning any local variations in the digital humanities. The issues addressed included the surface phenomena, are constant laws of abstract postcolonial digital human, digital archival silences, structure. It was in the early 1900s of Europe and decolonizing digital humanities, postcolonial game chiefly in France and Russia that structuralism studies, and the construction of global scholarly developed, particularly thanks to Ferdinand de networks. Thus, there is an increasing range of Saussure‘s structural linguistics and the Prague, conversations taking place at the confluences of Moscow and Copenhagen Schools of linguistics postcolonial studies and digital humanities. Postcolonial (Deleuze 2002, Taormina 2004). In the 1950s and 1960s, when structural linguistics was confronted with challenges from Noam Chomsky, some scholars in the 10

Alfred Ndi; Hmlyan Jr Eco Bus Mgn; Vol-2, Iss- 3 (May-Jun, 2021): 9-20 humanities deployed Saussure's ideas in their fields of doctrine, because there is no structure without a investigation. Claude Lévi-Strauss applied the construction, genetic or abstract (Piaget 1968). structuralist mode of thinking to anthropology. Other Although Louis Althusser‘s structural social analysis scholars like the linguist Roman Jakobson, and the engendered "structural Marxism", Althusser himself psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan applied the theory in was not persuaded in that light because he associated sociology, psychology, literary criticism, economics 'structuralism' with ambiguity. Marx was interpreted as and architecture. As an intellectual progression, a 'structuralist' but with ambiguity, and ideology structuralism was thought to replace existentialism (Althusser and Balibar 1970). The feminist theorist (Mambrol 2016). Nevertheless, from the 1960s, Alison Assiter elaborated four ideas in structuralism, structuralism's basic tenets were assaulted by Michel namely, that a structure determines the position of each Foucault, Jacques Derrida, Louis Althusser and Roland element of a whole; every system has a structure, Barthes. Although their writings carry elements of structural laws deal with co-existence rather than structuralism, they were referred to as post- change and structures are the "real things" that lie structuralists. In the 1970s, structuralism was criticized beneath the surface or the appearance of meaning for its ahistoricism and rigidity. Nonetheless, many of (Assiter 1984). its proponents like Lacan continued to influence continental philosophy because the basic assumptions In de Saussure‘s Course in General Linguistics, the of post-structuralism are a continuation of structuralism analysis focuses not on the use of language (named as (Sturrock 1979). The term structuralism influenced the "parole", or speech), but rather on the underlying structural Marxism of Nicos Poulantzas. system of language (called "langue"). This approach considers language elements in terms of how they relate Ferdinand de Saussure‘s writings on linguistics, and to each other in the current period and synchronically the linguistics of the Prague and Moscow Schools laid rather than diachronically. Saussure maintained that the foundation for the theory. Structural linguistics linguistic signs are comprised of two major parts, propounded three ideas. Saussure maintained that there namely, a "signifier" (the "sound pattern" of a word, is a distinction between langue (that is, an ideal either in mental projection—as when one silently abstraction of language grammar) and parole (that is, recites signage lines, a poem to one's self or in actual, grammar as actually employed in daily life). He argued any kind of text, physical realization as part of a speech that the "sign" is comprised of both a "signified", an act, a "signified" (the idea or meaning of the word). The abstract idea and a "signifier", which is the perceived previous approach focused on the relationship between sound or visual image. Since different languages words and things in the world that they designated. possess varying words to refer to the same objects or Structural linguistics integrates other paradigms, concepts, therefore there is no intrinsic reason why a namely, the syntagm and values such as "idealism" particular sign is employed to articulate a given which is a class of linguistic units (lexemes, morphemes signifier. The signifier is thus "arbitrary". In this way, or even constructions) that are possible in a certain signs gain their meaning from their relationships and position in a given linguistic environment (like a contrasts with other signs. According to Ferdinand de sentence). The different functional roles of each of Saussure: "in language, there are only differences these members of the paradigm is named as "value". 'without positive terms.'" (de Saussure, Cours de linguistique gĕnĕrale, 1916). The English translation of Ferdinand de Saussure's Course impacted on this important book was effected by Wade Baskin different linguists during World War I and II. Leonard (1959). Structuralist proponents maintain that a specific Bloomfield developed structural linguistics in the US, domain of culture may be understood by means of a Louis Hjelmslev did same in Denmark, Alf Sommerfelt structure which is modelled on language and that is in Norway, Antoine Meillet in France and Émile distinct both from the organizations of reality and Benveniste, and Prague School linguistics like Roman the organizations of ideas or the imagination, which is Jakobson and Nikolai Trubetzkoy did experimental the "Third Order" (Deleuze 2002, Taormina 2004). In research that was captivating. Nevertheless, during the Jacques Lacan's theory of psychoanalysis, for instance, 1950s, de Saussure's linguistic ideas were beginning to the structuralist order of "the Symbolic" is distinguished be criticized and ignored. Literary critics use signifiers both from "the Real" and "the Imaginary". In the same and signifieds, with little reference to Chomsky fashion, in Louis Althusser's Marxist theory, the (Holland 1992). But Prague School structuralism used structuralist order of the capitalist mode of production is phonemics rather than a compiled listing of which different both from the actual, real agents involved in its sounds occur in a given language, and how they were relations and from the ideological forms in which those related. It determined that sounds inventory in a relations are comprehended. When one blends Sigmund language should be investigated in terms of a series of Freud and Ferdinand de Saussure, he emerges with the contrasts. For example, in English, /p/ and /b/ represent model of the French (post)structuralist Jacques Lacan, distinct phonemes because there are cases (minimal who applied structuralism to psychoanalysis. Jean pairs) where the contrast between the two is the only Piaget applied structuralism as constructivism, and difference between two distinct words (e.g. 'pat' and considers structuralism as "a method rather than as a 'bat'). By investigating sounds in the light of contrastive

Alfred Ndi; Hmlyan Jr Eco Bus Mgn; Vol-2, Iss- 3 (May-Jun, 2021): 9-20 features, a comparative scope is also opened up that Structuralist criticism in literary theory links literary explains the difficulty Nso‘ speakers have texts to a larger structure, such as a genre, intertextual distinguishing /r/ and /l/ in English given that these connections, a universal narrative structure or a sounds are not contrastive in Lamnso‘. Phonology thus recurrent system of patterns or motifs (Barry 2002, became the paradigmatic foundation for structuralism in Evgeny and Pimonov 2018). Structuralist semiotics many different areas of scholarship. contends that a structure exists in every text (Nöth 1995: 312), and this explains why experienced readers Structuralist anthropology and structuralism in interpret a text more than non-experienced ones. social anthropology assume that meaning is engendered Everything written is governed by specific rules, or a and reproduced within a culture via various practices, "grammar of literature", that one learns in educational phenomena and activities that serve as systems of institutions and that are to be unpacked (Selden, signification. Structuralism investigates activities as Widdowson and Brooker 2005: 76). A potential varied as food-preparation, religious rites, rituals, problematic of structuralist interpretation is its games, literary and non-literary texts, and entertainment reductionism: "the structuralist danger of collapsing all to discern the deep structures by which meaning is difference." (Belsey 1983: 17–27). An example of such generated and reproduced within a culture. In the a reading might be if a student concludes that the 1950s, Lévi-Strauss studied cultural phenomena such as authors of West Side Story did not write anything kinship (the alliance theory and the incest taboo), myths "really" new, because their work has the same structure and food preparation. He enforced Saussure's as Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. In both texts a girl distinction between langue and parole in his search for and a boy fall in love (a "formula" with a symbolic the basic structures of the human mind, contending that operator between them would be "Boy + Girl") despite the structures that form the "deep grammar" of society the fact that they belong to two competing groups that originate in the mind and function in people hate each other ("Boy's Group - Girl's Group" or unconsciously (Dosse 1997: 24). In structural "Opposing forces") and conflict is resolved by their anthropology, the Prague School of linguists like death. Structuralist readings focus on how the structures Roman Jakobson investigated sounds based on the of the single text resolve inherent narrative tensions. If a presence or absence of certain features (e.g. voiceless structuralist reading focuses on multiple texts, there vs. voiced). Lévi-Strauss integrated this in his notion of must be some way in which those texts unify the universal structures of the mind, based on pairs of themselves into a coherent system. The versatility of binary oppositions such as hot-cold, male-female, structuralism is such that a literary critic could make the culture-nature, cooked-raw, or marriageable vs. tabooed same claim about a story of two friendly families women. Marcel Mauss (1872–1950), who published on ("Boy's Family + Girl's Family") that arrange a gift-exchange systems, was deployed by Lévi-Strauss to marriage between their children despite the fact that the contend that kinship systems are founded on women children hate each other ("Boy - Girl") and then the exchange between groups (a position known as 'alliance children commit suicide to escape the arranged theory') in contradiction to the 'descent'-based theory marriage; the justification is that the second story's portrayed by Edward Evans-Pritchard and Meyer structure is an 'inversion' of the first story's structure: Fortes. Lévi-Strauss's writings became widely popular the relationship between the values of love and the two in the 1960s and 1970s and they engendered the term pairs of parties involved have been reversed. "structuralism" itself. Scholars like the British Rodney Structuralist literary criticism maintains that the Needham, Edmund Leach, and the French Maurice "literary banter of a text" resides chiefly in a new Godelier and Emmanuel Terray merged Marxism with structure and not in the particularities of structural anthropology. The American Marshall characterization development and voice in which that Sahlins and James Boon deployed structuralism to structure is expressed. Vladimir Propp, Algirdas Julien analyse human society. But structural anthropology was Greimas, and Claude Lévi-Strauss considered basic confronted with a number of problems because in the deep elements in stories, myths, and anecdotes 1980s, it was not possible to verify assumptions about combined in various ways to engender multiple the universal structures of the human mind. Political versions of the ur-story or ur-myth. Structural literary economy and colonial rule were suggested by Eric Wolf theory and Northrop Frye's archetypal criticism, is also as signifieds that should be prioritized in anthropology. indebted to the anthropological study of myths. Some Pierre Bourdieu argued that cultural and social critics have also tried to apply the theory to individual structures are changed by human agency and practice in works, but the effort to find unique structures in Sherry Ortner‘s 'practice theory'. However, the individual literary works runs counter to the biogenetic structuralism group maintained that there is a structuralist program and has an affinity with New structural foundation for culture as all humans inherit a Criticism. similar system of brain structures. Neuroanthropology laid the foundations for cultural similarity and variation.

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The 1940s and 1950s were marked by existentialism theme, and he argued that, contrary to what propounded by Jean-Paul Sartre. But structuralism rose structuralists advocate, language—and symbolic to prominence in France in the wake of existentialism, systems in general—cannot be reduced to logical particularly in the 1960s. The initial popularity of organizations on the basis of the binary logic of structuralism in France led to its spread across the oppositions (Castoriadis 1997: 3–18). Critical theorist globe. Structuralism objected to the idea of human Jürgen Habermas (1985) accused (post)structuralists, freedom and choice and focused instead on the way that such as Foucault, of being positivists; he remarked that human experience and thus, behaviour, is determined while Foucault is not an ordinary positivist, he by various structures. The most important initial work nevertheless paradoxically uses the tools of science to on this score was Claude Lévi-Strauss's 1949 volume criticize science (Habermas 1990: 276). The sociologist The Elementary Structures of Kinship. Elementary Anthony Giddens (1993) drew on a range of Structures considered as kinship systems from a structuralist themes in his theorizing, by dismissing the structural point of view and it demonstrated how structuralist view that the reproduction of social apparently different social organizations were in fact systems is merely "a mechanical outcome" (Giddens different permutations of a few basic kinship structures. 1993: 121). In the late 1950s he published Structural Anthropology, a collection of essays outlining his program for FINDINGS structuralism. In the 1960s, structuralism adopted a A very significant dimension of Postcolonial digital single unified approach to human life that embraced all humanities is rethinking the role of representation in disciplines. The writings of Roland Barthes, Jacques digital platform archives and the design methods Derrida, Lévi-Strauss, Lacan and Foucault (Moore, subtending them. Digital archives have been embraced Margaret. "LibGuides: Literary Theory: 1910-2010: for their promise of openness and access to theorized Post-Structuralism". arthumref.libguides.com.) knowledge, and they seem to offer possibilities for constituted the points where structuralism intersected democratizing collections and expanding the digital with post-structuralism and deconstruction because cultural record. This is particularly the case as new structuralism was criticized for being ahistorical and open-source tools and technologies facilitate deterministic as opposed to the ability of people to act collaboration between archivists, librarians, museum evidenced by the political turbulence of the 1960s and workers, students, and community members. In direct 1970s, the student uprisings of May 1968, their impact contrast to the well-understood link between material on academia, questions of power and political struggle platform archives and colonial power, digital platform (Marshall 2004). In the 1980s, deconstruction and its archives are often heralded prematurely for their emphasis on the ambiguity of language as opposed to a contributions to the historical and intellectual. (Risam logical structure, became popular. By 2000, 2019). As digital humanities have gained traction over structuralism was considered as a historically important the last decade, the question of its geography has gained School of thought, but the movements that it spawned, increasing attention. At stake in this matter is the rather than structuralism itself, commanded attention following: who has control over world making in digital (Alan and Valentine 2002: 8). Structuralism was humanities, establishing the shape and boundaries of the criticized by the French hermeneutic philosopher Paul global landscape of digital humanities, which in turn Ricœur (1969) and criticized Lévi-Strauss for influences the practices that are integral to developing constantly overstepping the limits of validity of the the digital cultural record. The Alliance of Digital structuralist approach, ending up in what Ricœur Humanities Organizations (ADHO), the umbrella described as "a Kantianism without a transcendental professional organization for the digital humanities, has subject". (Ricœur 2004: 49, 78). The anthropologist positioned itself as an international body, but it has been Adam Kuper (1973) maintained that "'structuralism' overdetermined by the influence of scholars from the came to have something of the momentum of a Global North—namely, the United States (Risam, R. millennial movement and some of its adherents felt that (2019). Remaking the Global Worlds of Digital they formed a secret society of the seeing in a world of Humanities. http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv7tq4hg.7). the blind. Conversion was not just a matter of accepting a new paradigm; it was, almost, a question of While the global dimensions of digital humanities salvation." (Kuper 1973: 206.). Philip Noel Pettit shape its practices, so too does the important task of (1975) called for an abandoning of "the positivist dream introducing students to the transformative possibilities which Lévi-Strauss dreamed for semiology" arguing facilitated by digital humanities methods. This is not an that semiology is not to be placed among the natural easy endeavour, given its pedagogical and ethical sciences (Pettit 1975: 117.). challenges. At the confluence of digital humanities and postcolonial studies, however, there is great potential Post-structuralism started to emerge when scholars for engaging students in interpreting the intersection of like Cornelius Castoriadis (1975) criticized power politics that shapes knowledge production and structuralism for failing to explain symbolic mediation teaching them how to become critical producers of in the social world (Castoriadis 1987: 116 - 117). discourse, thereby preparing them to engage in the task Structuralism was seen as a variation on the "logicist" of intervening in the digital and cultural record. Both

Alfred Ndi; Hmlyan Jr Eco Bus Mgn; Vol-2, Iss- 3 (May-Jun, 2021): 9-20 postcolonial studies and digital humanities can be transcode the sphere of the humanities into an challenging to teach from this light (Risam 2019. emancipative narrative is now in the sphere of the Postcolonial Digital Pedagogy, Derridian diffĕrance, a site of deferment and impasse. http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv7tq4hg.8). This new imperial technology, which is a signified Discussions on the positive values of knowledge metanarrative based on rationalization of praxis is now theories in the humanities and literature are slim and uncoupling from the signifiers of knowledge theory and those that are aligned to the digital technology are rare. production in the humanities and discourse and Literature is ‗tacit‘ (as opposed to explicit) knowledge generating a Foucauldian power/knowledge dynamics of the humanities and functions not only to teach (that that is alienating and compromising its long term knowledge) but also to entertain, that is, to sustainability. Although the archival platform is open communicate knowledge in delightful ways. Besides, to, for example, medieval English poetry, annotated on the determinism of power in Postcolonial Digital the website www.Genius.com in order to protect skills Humanities, digital praxis is a highly structured of ‗close reading‘, and digital-mapping projects of metanarrative of imperial capitalism, the Internet, ICTs knowledge are being utilized to increase students‘ and platforms. The strength of the signified of comprehension of the complexities of segregation and technology transcodes into weaknesses in the context of racism, the staging of the power/knowledge dialectics in knowledge of the humanities and discourses because of the field is represented more as a new institutionalist issues such as definitional inadequacies, uncertainties and capitalist investment than as a humanistic and about the value and meaning of data stored, as well as discursive project. In addition, this investment in virtual ‗freezing‘ and ‗fossilization‘ of knowledge in website technology itself is often equated with a new form of archives without any particular programmatic outcomes knowledge (Risam 2019, Postcolonial Digital to their exploitation, any more than in the colonial past Pedagogy, http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv7tq4hg.8). when print technology was invented, and the writing The institutionalization of investments in ICTs (e- system was deployed very inefficiently for the same commerce platform, Internet, digital channels and purpose of archiving content in libraries and with the websites) is only related to the potential to document same effects (Weiskott 2017). knowledge theory; yet, this signified of digital capital is often made to appear as though it has the power to DISCUSSION replace the signifiers of knowledge theory in the humanities. But this eventuality is deferred because one The crisis in digital archiving praxis started can be in full possession of the praxis of ICTs, e- centuries ago with crisis in the print technology in terms commerce platforms, Internet and websites without of its inability to claim signification of critical theory or assimilating the contours of knowledge theory in the knowledge. When William Caxton introduced the print humanities and literary discourse. For example, technology in the late 1470s in England, the intention universities and colleges are co-opting digitized was to bring ideas efficiently to new, subaltern teaching and research but for the wrong purposes. It is readerships (Tonry 2005); however, the print medium therefore worrying that the digital humanities are plunged into a crisis of power because it impacted in creating a framework for lucrative tech deals in very limited ways by concentrating the literary culture classrooms by promising a vast automation of teaching. of knowledge around a restricted group of well- Higher education researchers are deploying digital established men at the English royal court such as techniques in their disciplines as a category ‗mistake‘ Bacon, Marlowe, Wyatt, Raleigh, Shakespeare, Surrey, because the challenge with lucrative tech deals is the Spenser and Sidney. The writing tradition could not lucre and not the tech. So, in the formulation: ‗the ‗reach‘ the ordinary masses in order to emancipate them digital humanities‘, the impression given is that the new and this created a class and social divide. In today‘s imperial investment of capital encapsulated in ICTs, neo-imperial era, the digital media are being put out platforms, Internet and websites can be equated with again and are in a crisis already because they are at the generation of a new form of knowledge by itself, which service of only a few corporate establishments with is and cannot be the case. The signified of ICTs, platforms and websites, like Facebook, Google, Twitter, Internet and e-commerce platform archives, with their Instagram, LinkedIn, etc, as well as the elites of coda in technology, is not necessarily the same thing as educated intelligentsia groups, university research the signifiers of theory in the humanities and literary institutions, etc, where projects, teaching and discourse. However, although the field of digital scholarship generate and emphasize profit, hence humanities is being signified as a practice of corporatist capital, to the detriment of humanistic benefits that restructuring of the humanities in universities and could have come to the ordinary public and masses, and schools in such a way as to transcode higher education this has resulted to what is now called the ‗digital into an intellectual movement of the e-learning divide‘ particularly in nation states of the developing knowledge economy, it is also being deconstructed as world. Just like the print media, the digital technology an objectionable form of academic politics that is has potential to assist humanists to answer new suspect as a social movement with capitalist undertones questions that they are already invested in; however, the determined to redefine the human civilization of the power of this technology of capitalist imperialism to 14

Alfred Ndi; Hmlyan Jr Eco Bus Mgn; Vol-2, Iss- 3 (May-Jun, 2021): 9-20 future along the tenets of the neoliberal ideology of the enough, during these years in which a plethora of net free market capitalism. In this way, there is a marked critics, provocateur artists, hacktivists, poststructuralist contrast between ‗the digital humanities‘ with emphasis theorists, post-1960s media theorists, tactical media on prowess of technology and ‗the digital humanities‘ theorists and political critics went into full action, the with emphasis on traditional forms of painstaking digital humanities (i.e. ‗humanities computing‘ as it was erudition, research and individual scholarship known then) failed to show any interest and were prioritizing the generation of theoretical knowledge indeed ‗missing in action‘ on the scene of critical forms with less immediate profit or economic culture (Jerome McGann‘s A Critique of Modern application for benefits. Textual Criticism and ―The Rationale of Hypertext‖, Matthew Kirschenbaum‘s invocation of D. F. On the other hand, the determinism of theory in the McKenzie‘s Bibliography and the Sociology of Texts). humanities and discourse (the ‗humanities‘ for short) is While digital humanists were developing various also in a deep crisis. For example, the humanities instruments, tools, data, and metadata and discussing played a major role in the ‗toxification‘ of institutional questions about the use of computers for truth finding in politics in nation states and in international diplomacy the humanities, how to order the hierarchy of content when, in the Nineteenth and early Twentieth centuries, objects, ‗deformance‘ issues, etc, no attempt was made they were practised chiefly by Middle-class, wealthy, to expand their discussions to integrate issues in the European men, who provided the intellectual register of culture, society, politics, history, law, justification and rationale for capitalist projects like the anthropology or the economy (Susan Schreibma 2002, slave trade, colonial rule, internationalism and ―Rethinking Textuality‖). In digital humanities globalization. Even today, the outcomes of mismanaged associations, journals, conferences, projects, etc, there capitalist projects such as the First and Second World is no interest shown in how the digital humanities are Wars, nationalist genocides against Muslims and channeling, advancing, resisting or otherwise the minorities in Eastern Europe and elsewhere, etc, are neoliberal, postindustrial, corporate, and globalization justified in humanities terms like nationalist, fascist, flows of capital as ideological signifiers (information- (post)Hitlerian Europe (e.g. the superiority of the Aryan cum-capitalism): consequently, emerging questions race), apartheid in South Africa (white superiority over such as the ‗digital divide‘, privacy, copyright, black people), civil war in 1994 Rwanda (e.g. calls for surveillance, digital labour, mistrust of information, elimination of Hutu ‗cockroaches‘ and cutting down of defamation, hate speech, fake news, and so forth are Tutsi ‗tall trees‘ in Radio ‗Mille Collines‘), ethnic and swept under the carpet of power whereas they expose religious breakups in Yugoslavia, Boko Haram and ISIS the virtual technology to discourses of indetermination. in Africa and elsewhere (based on purification of space), corruption in Africa and other nation states Any review of Postcolonial digital humanities around the world (e.g. proverbialised by the saying that whether on the deterministic perspective of technology when one‘s ethnic brother is on a plum tree, he has to or the deterministic grounds of humanities and the receive the ripest/darkest fruits), and so forth. So the literary is therefore very challenging indeed because determinism of the humanities has also been both at the level of praxis and of theory, one has to undergoing a crisis leading to a cultural, nationalistic emerge with an equilibrated techno-politically impasse with long term prospects of a possible acceptable history of this trans-disciplinary field of civilizational shutdown. The privileging of narratives of studies. Today, the real anxiety over postcolonial digital knowledge such as philology in the early Twentieth humanities also resides in the crisis of the humanities century also characterized the ephemerality of the itself in universities. This crisis is reinforced by the fact humanities. that the Twenty first century University and society have restructured themselves on the model of capital After the epoch of the May 1968 student riots in that the corporate world of neoliberalism imposed. As a France, the humanities emerged triumphantly in the result, the way institutional energies were being form of a cultural criticism that had lost its edge in the managed in the humanities during the Nineteenth and past. Following from that movement, in the 1970s and early Twentieth centuries can be considered now as 1980s, a Zeitgeist manifest by cyber-libertarianism ‗obsolete‘ when compared with the contemporary emerged in combination with activities of social-justice deanification, adjunctification and corporatization of concerns. For example, the Association named as universities and with the current projectification of Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility everything in society. So, when universities adopt (CPSR), which went operational in the US Silicon digital scholarship, and society witnesses a ‗digital Valley area in 1981 articulated preoccupations about divide‘, humanists do not take it as a new cross- the military deployment of computer systems, and disciplinary field, but rather as an existential threat to subsequently, these concerns were extended to their specialty. incorporate other social justice concerns connected to the computer. In the 1990s, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) championed the call for digital rights for the benefit of the public interest. But curiously

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The determinism in the praxis/theory divide which they were haunted by the prospect of the Other, ‗darker‘ marks the field of Postcolonial Digital Humanities is people‘s identities repeating the French revolutionary not necessarily an epistemological problematic, because mob narrative. As a result, ‗close reading‘ came into the pragmaticism of academic institutions and the dominance with the New Criticism scholarship that knowledge they pursue have always stood in a battled against the prior age of cultural criticism with symbiotic but incommensurate relationship in history. its own methods of ‗distant reading‘. New Criticism One may know the world differently (through digital scholars managed to displace this historismus, while at technology, for example) but this does not, in itself, the same time urging an equivalent project of change the world. One may generate knowledge with modernization reclamation based on unfalsifiability, value even in appalling institutional circumstances; but, self-reflexion, self-containment and ahistoricism. By as well, it does not become ‗knowledge‘ until it is rejecting historismus and the intellectual practice of exposed to the world through communicative Geistesgeschicte, and adopting the scientific discourse technology. This then raises the content/form related to mass media information, New Criticism dialectical issue. ended up defending the sensitivity of the human being as rooted in an organic culture (particularly, the There is also a deep tension in the digital humanities yeoman, small-farm culture romanticized in the ‗betrayed‘ by some of its commitments to Leftist Southern agrarian phase) against the Northern Other‘s politics and poststructuralist theories of identity of the modern mass industrial society (Liu power/knowledge. One of the challenges is for the 2011. http://blog.humlab.umu.se/?p=3366.). megacorporations to endorse the kind of intellectual Consequently, literary scholarship could not really turn work that is valued for imagining and obtaining a better its attention to cultural texts beyond the traditional world, and to even facilitate that work. The digital readings of literature as theorized and practised in New humanities is considered as a field that is ruining the Criticism scholarship. representation of knowledge by deploying chiefly quantitative methods (e.g. distant reading of Franco The month of May 1968 marked the era of Moretti‘s Stanford Literary Laboratory) which are homecoming of the ‗repressed‘ beyond the modernism against the methods that humanists value such as of New Criticism, namely, a poststructuralist gush in qualitative interpretation in literature, critique, the slow the postmodernist, postMarxist and postcolonialist turn and close reading of texts, re-reading, thinking against that identified the human being as a systemic as well as the grain or against prevailing norms and the a collective existence. With this flourishing of scholarship that is openly critical of existing social discursivity theories of culture, a new decentralized relations. Critique itself of meaning, and therefore, of ideology of the human existence emerged marked by theory and/or language and literature, is the reason why what has been referred to as wolf packs, Mongol the humanities exist. From this epistemological light, hordes, and schizos, that is, by forces completely digital technology cannot be signified as ‗knowledge in alienated from the Nineteenth-century Geist, as the humanities‘ but rather as ‗power in the service of theorized by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari (Duarte the humanities‘, just as print technology could not 2012, Blum 2016, Fuller and Malina 2005.). absorb orality so that the two become indistinguishable. Humanity‘s existence became epistemic, identity-group There is evidence that orature is being disputed because based (racial, ethnic and gendered), structural and class ‗writing‘ and ‗orality‘ cannot share the ‗same bed‘ oriiented. Distant reading became the cultural and comfortably; besides, Ngugi wa Thiongo‘o has drawn critical method for this revolution that extended to our attention to this issue sufficiently enough (Balogun earlier than May 1968 as pointed out. Franco Moretti 1997. Ngugi wa Thiong'o 2009 and Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o and Matthew Jockers captured this spirit of distant 1981); so, it is unnecessary to dwell much on that point. reading by drawing from Marxist literary sociology with Georg Lukács‘s method of the mode, Braudelian Consequently, the absence of cultural criticism historiography of the Annales, genre theory and New within the digital humanities has become a major Criticism, and started the Stanford Literary Lab on obstacle for it to become a full partner of the quantitative stylistics research (Moretti 2005). This was humanities. From the literary perspective, the intrinsic one of the most important contexts that benchmarked method which proximates the digital humanities to introduction of the field of the digital humanities. This ‗close reading‘ and alienates ‗distant reading‘ signified a symbolic moment when the digital associated with the post–May 1968 cultural criticism, humanities became a practising partner of distant had its antecedent in literary history (Katherine reading. Hayles‘s ―How We Read: Close, Hyper, Machine‖). During the Nineteenth-century, which was marked by However, this moment spotlights the fact that digital the broad-based religious, philosophical, moral, humanities practice started to emerge at a destabilizing historicist, and philological reading, the culling of moment of the post-May 1968 epoch when New documents from archives to synthesize a Geist (―spirit‖) Criticism and postmodern critical methods après 1968 of the times, was marked by a resistance of Western positioned themselves in readiness for a ‗cold war‘. The peoples, nations, and languages, because they felt that Generation of 1968, to which cultural critics belonged,

Alfred Ndi; Hmlyan Jr Eco Bus Mgn; Vol-2, Iss- 3 (May-Jun, 2021): 9-20 stood again on the high ground of ‗theory‘. New corporate trends, dominated by the ideology of shifting Criticism continued to ground itself in pedagogy and knowledge value away from the academy and the arts close reading practices, while deconstruction, new and humanities that depend on public funding, the historicism, and microhistory of anecdotes emerged humanities in universities were now in peril of outside this disciplinary boundary. The expectation was systematic de-funding. In addition, there was a that the digital humanities would constitute a continuous breakdown in the ability of universities to ‗demilitarized zone‘ between close reading and distant communicate with the public followed by a decline of or culturally-critical reading. In a sense, the digital the university ‗public intellectual‘ in the Twentieth humanities have attempted to break this ‗cold war‘ century and the rise of the thought leader or détente through methods, programmes and metadata motivational, entrepreneurial speaker. Web 2.0 schema, but not through a practice that is reminiscent of changed the idea of efficient public communication by tacit, close reading methodologies. For example, transforming the relationship between ‗experts‘ and the Moretti and his laboratory collaborators explore what is public, which used to take value from expertise reports referred to as ‗the great unread‘ of huge volumes of and responded with fee payments, voting in institutions, literature thanks to data mining, text analysis, pattern and so forth in order to encourage the expert recognition, topic modeling, and visualization methods; professions, consultancies and their institutions. With however, the difference is that these methods are Wikipedia, which is a networked public creating its practised at the beginning and not simply at the own groups of expertise via refereeing, governance, theoretical or interpretative end of literary study credentialing, and so on, the academia were now facing (Allison 2011, huge challenges to adapt to the institutional practices, http://litlab.stanford.edu/LiteraryLabPamphlet1.pdf). protocols and technologies capable of negotiating new So, the contrast between the digital humanities and forms of knowledge between expert and the public. For close reading was so bare that it was transforming the example,‘ peer review‘ is now in high competition with conception of what was referred to as a ‗text‘. The ‗crowdsourcing‘ while the humanities are facing a ‗text‘ was no longer the New Critical novel, play or communicational impasse of expertise. Although the poem, but rather the corpus, archive, network, etc. Even general public desires expert knowledge from STEM quotations dropped out of perception because the focus disciplines, they have less patience for focused was now on features of micro-level linguistics like word knowledge in the humanities, and this is often left in the frequencies that were prioritized over macro-level hands of the autodidact. So, at a time when the realities like nationalities and genres of plays. Hypertext humanities needs to communicate their idea of theorists, inspired by Roland Barthes, used ‗lexia‘ or humanity and value to the public, the digital humanities modular chunks in larger networks (Landow 1992). The are not helping to ease this process. The leadership role data visualizations of large text patterns created by expected of the digital humanities in alliance with social Moretti (2005) and Jockers, replaced block quotations. scientists, social activists, etc, is not materializing in Consequently, one could now ‗close read‘ diagrams and terms of innovative deployment of new media and graphs with same cognitive weight and even visual size advocacy through, for example, Open Journal Systems, on a page as block quotations with a different mode of the Public Knowledge Project, reading tools, search and ―meaningfulness‖ of the visualizations. So, what was aggregation tools, Simile Exhibit and Timeline widgets emphasized was the breadth of the field rather than its capable of generating poster, brochure, video, and other emplacement or depth. high-impact knowledge forms that can impact on and change public consciousness. But, in all of these projects, the picture of the digital humanists was missing in terms of critical thinking Beyond the instrumental role, the Digital humanities about metadata, power, finance, and other governance field has failed to expand the very notion of humanities, protocols. The digital humanities were playing a thereby creating a field that is too instrumentalized, ‗servant‘ role in the humanities instead of a ‗leadership dominated by mainly technological preoccupations of role‘ by advocacy for the humanities and through execution and a focus on technological orthodoxy and commitment to cultural criticism. The challenge was standards with the absence of the spirit of innovation not just to add cultural criticism in the mode of and the ethos of building (Ramsay 2011, 2011). This followers but rather to become full partners by adopting dichotomous apportioning of roles, namely, the one on a leadership role with the requisite competencies. The instrumentality and rationality of technology and the service function of the digital humanities which consists other on provision of critical skills necessary for life in running the servers was not able to go beyond and work, needs to change because the humanities are facilitating research in the academy. presented as though they were non-instrumental and almost useless. In the post-May 1968 epoch, the With the commencement of the Great Recession of humanities was presented reductively as being only 2007 that caused universities and governments to interpretive, skeptical, politically marginal, reflective, squeeze funding for the arts and humanities in favour of or nihilistic and therefore as being un-realpolitik (Reid the STEM (science, technology, engineering, 2011, Liu 2009). mathematics) disciplines, postindustrial and neoliberal

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Contemporary society is uncomfortable with human interest and its claim to corresponding to reality technological determination for its own sake, and its as absolute. From this light, simply showing how ideas instrumentalization, as against a Kulturgeschichte originated and evolved, minimizes their claim to (cultural history or history of civilization) where man is naturalizatioin of self-evident truth. confronted with the forces of determination and free will stemming from psychological, historical, natural Over the last decade, it has been accepted by many and social contexts and the will to be Geist or whole commentators (Collinge and Staines 2009) that the from a Humanistic viewpoint, Thus, beyond the service economy is moving into a new phase of development industries, and corporate culture, there is the free spirit based particularly on knowledge production and of innovation and laissez-faire entrepreneurship; consumption. And although the 'knowledge-based beyond tools, paradigms, and ideas about digital economy (KBE) thesis' may have been overstated, it is technologies, there is the need to rethink the notion of difficult to deny that important changes have been instrumentality, to critically rethink metadata, SEO, as occurring in the ways that economies work, and that well as power, finance and marketing strategies, and these changes do indeed revolve in part around the other governance protocols of the technology. There is creation, transfer and use of knowledge. Since the a need to rethink instrumentality as a whole because, 1980s we have, for example, witnessed the expansion of whether in text encoding, text analysis, pattern ICT and the internet, and the emergence of knowledge- discovery in the humanities, e-commerce marketplaces, intensive business services, as well as a significant ICT for development, online platforms for politics, e- deepening of R&D inputs into manufacturing industry. dating channels, the creation of digital archives in e- Unfortunately, however, the KBE thesis is also learning or in platforms for entertainment and games, it associated with an excessive emphasis on the last of is the narrowly technological and purposive that reigns. these changes — on the role of science and technology The ideal of service to Humanity requires incorporating in manufacturing — an emphasis that has led to the of the cultural, entering into fuller dialogue with the neglect of other economically relevant forms of archeologies of other fields to expand the knowledge. Here we examine this emphasis and its instrumentalization of the technologies in new consequences, and we suggest that policy research culturally and historically sustainable directions and should be rebalanced to produce a more interesting and promote dialogue with their tacit meanings that can realistic assessment of the ways in which knowledge enrich the discussion of tools, building, and now contributes to economic development (Collinge instrumentality through new understandings of the way and Staines, "Rethinking the knowledge-based researchers, technicians, processes, communication economy, 2009). media, and literal instruments come together in what Andrew Pickering calls the ―mangle of practice‖ that is Critical thinking is very important in the new inextricably linked to society and culture (Pickering knowledge economy. The global knowledge economy 2010.). Bruno Latour, for example, is canonical in his is driven by information and technology. One has to be assumptions when he stresses upon the history of able to deal with changes quickly and effectively. The changing ideals of ―objectivity‖ through his ―actor- new economy places increasing demands on flexible network theory, that is, his melding of the notions of intellectual skills, and the ability to analyse information machine instrumentality and human agency. and integrate diverse sources of knowledge in solving Postcolonial digital humanitis should not embrace problems. Good critical thinking promotes such interstitiality and the hypertext as a methodology of thinking skills, and is very important in the fast- productivity. changing workplace.

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In New Digital Worlds: Postcolonial Digital Humanities with research interests in Digital Digital Humanities in Theory, Praxis, and Pedagogy Marketing of Continental Literatures and Knowledge (2019, pp. 65-88). Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern Economy. He is an advocate for a hypertextual model of the University Press. Retrieved from knowledge economy in e-learning, e-couching, e-dating, e- http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv7tq4hg.7 commerce and e-development. He is also an advocate for the 61. Risam, R. (2016). Breaking and building The case of development of Africa and the Third World through e- postcolonial. The Postcolonial World. Singh, Jyotsna G., commerce and digital games adapted for youths in terms of and David D. Kim, eds. The Postcolonial World. Taylor relevance of morality, cultural landscapes, themes, etc. & Francis, 2016., 4:345 62. Risam, R. (2019). Colonial Violence and the Postcolonial He has published more than fifty articles in international and Digital Archive. In New Digital Worlds: Postcolonial national scientific journals and books. He lectures in Digital Humanities in Theory, Praxis, and Pedagogy University of Bamenda in Republic of Cameroon (2019, pp. 47-64). EVANSTON, ILLINOIS: .