Ontologies and Epistemologies

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July 30, 2015

¶ 1 Leave a comment on paragraph 1 0 Below are a list of questions and suggestions to consider when developing digital humanities projects. These questions address issues of ontology and epistemology, with the understanding that the provisional categories articulated here are imperfect and overlapping.

¶ 2 Leave a comment on paragraph 2 0 Does the project support singular story or history?

• ¶ 3 Leave a comment on paragraph 3 0
• Who is the guardian of this history?
• Does the project rehearse colonial hierarchies of knowledge?
• Learn more about “The Danger of a Single Story” from Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s TED talk.
• Consider the mission statement and founding principles of Postcolonial Digital Humanities and their relationship to knowledge production in your project.

¶ 4 Leave a comment on paragraph 4 0 Which epistemologies are being privileged, sanctioned, or valorized in the project? 

• ¶ 5 Leave a comment on paragraph 5 0
• Whose voices does that authorize?
• Whose voices are disenfranchised?
• Check out the work of #transformDH for perspectives on these issues.
• Tara McPherson’s talk Feminist in a Software Lab discusses feminist approaches to software development.

¶ 6 Leave a comment on paragraph 6 0 Which ontologies are privileged through the project?

• ¶ 7 Leave a comment on paragraph 7 0
• Situate the ontologies that shape the project.
• Identify the ontologies implied in the tools used for research.
• Consider Scalar’s use of flat ontology and its implications for knowledge production.

¶ 8 Leave a comment on paragraph 8 0 Which archives does the project use?

• ¶ 9 Leave a comment on paragraph 9 0
• What are the power dynamics subtending these archives?
• Does the project reproduce these dynamics by engaging with this archive?
• Whose voices are absent from these archives?
• How does the project address these absences?
  

¶ 10 Leave a comment on paragraph 10 0 Who has the power and privilege to ask the questions raised here in the Creative and Critical Precepts for Digital Humanities Projects?

• ¶ 11 Leave a comment on paragraph 11 0
• Who is and isn’t authorized to ask these questions publicly?
• Are digital humanities methods being used to deconstruct privilege and subject positions or to circumscribe them?
• Consider Peggy McIntosh’s work on white privilege and its applicability to other relatively privileged axes of identity.