“We are sometimes the square pegs that expose the unacknowledged round holes”
Moya Z. Bailey, “All the Digital Humanists Are White, All the Nerds Are Men, but Some of Us Are Brave“, Journal of Digital Humanities, 2011
It’s a simple metaphor, but a resonating one, mostly because of my personal background. As someone who never had much of a background in art and design, I feel like I have a newcomers perspective to the humanities, even more so the “digital humanities”. The first thing I thought after the first presentation in class was. “What about the other side of the continent? What about the other side of the world?” Bailey claims that these unanswered questions come from “racialized and gendered aspects of [the humanities]”
I’m sure I’m not the first person to think that, especially because this is digital humanities we are talking about. The very nature of digital humanities is to explore and visualize new parts of history. Given that, I wonder what parts of history go unnoticed in the humanities world. Based on the first two days of class, the answer certainly isn’t Rome or Greece.
I believe Bailey was referring to “we” as people from the non-western world. Looking at a few digital humanities projects, it seems the bulk of them cover Europe, the Middle East, or Northern Africa. But if we want to explore beyond that, having greater representation and diverse ideas can help us explore beyond the borders of the old Roman Empire. For example, Native Hawaiian history before the mid-1800’s is very muddled and based on rough estimates, whereas Roman and Greek records can be precisely dated and traced from thousands of years ago. Representation isn’t the ‘end all be all’ of expanding the breadth of digital humanities, but it can definitely help.
Finally, this term, I want to look into the path the Polynesian ships took to reach the Hawaiian islands. Even though Hawaiian record-keeping was passed through “word of mouth” over clear documentation, I still think a rough estimate of their sailing path can be produced.
4 thoughts on “Week 1 Blogpost (Tripp Tokioka)”
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(Arlo Cornell)
You make many good points, Tripp! Bailey’s metaphor that you quoted is certainly concise and powerful, and I think it’s a valuable addition that it resonated with your personal experiences. Her article definitely looked for more effective ways of diversifying the field, and I agree that it’s a necessity. I also think your specific project idea about Polynesian ships is a great way to bring a non-European story into the Digital Humanities discipline.
There’s something extremely relatable about this quote to me. But in bigger terms, nobody has an unbiased perspective and a lot of people dont realize the bubble they’re in until they leave it. Also, an unspoken part of the metaphor is even people who are round pegs can’t go into square holes. IDK, food for thought.
I love your choice of quote and interpretation. There’s definitely a lot that goes unnoticed, and even some forced erasure that I also hope to dig into through my time in this course!
I love your choice of quote and interpretation. Your questioning of DH across oceans, made me think of the patterns of migration and tools of travel that must have been used in many parts of the world that have gone unnoticed. There’s definitely a lot that goes unnoticed, and even some forced erasure that I also hope to dig into through my time in this course!