Wai Chee Dimock, Feb. 6: Digital Media Discussion Questions I

Here's a placeholder entry for the upcoming Using Theory lunch on digitization, to be led by Wai Chee Dimock (Wednesday, Feb. 6, 12:30, LC 319). Colin and I (AG) thought we would post a few of our broad questions...The discussion can begin here, continue at the lunch, and then resume here afterwards, when we'll also post minutes.

And by the way--it's instructive to look at Folsom and Price's Whitman archive and McGann's NINES, both discussed in the reading.

Having read the packet, two big questions hovered for me:

(1) What is the status of reading in digital media? Even if we accept that networked, digital forms allow the presentation of texts in a way that is truer to their complexity (multiple versions, rich contexts, continuous re-editing) than any printed text can be--how are we to think about the fact that such electronic forms are more or less unreadable? That is, they serve scholars and students well for specific kinds of research, but they pose a challenge to the kind of sustained reading that I am used to doing with a printed book containing more or less a single version of a text. What will the status of "texts for reading" then be?

(2) I found Stallybrass' challenge to the values of originality and thinking truly provocative, but found him frustratingly vague on alternatives. What values could actually replace them in intellectual work? How would we have to redefine individual creativity and accomplishment in an age of massively distributed, massively networked inquiry--since presumably we're still going to distribute resources, jobs, etc. to some people and not others?

CG will post his questions soon. More to follow...