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Claire Taylor (University of Liverpool)
- 1. Digital Culture and Re- thinking Modern Languages ClaireTaylor, University of Liverpool
- 2. Digital as object of study •rise of digital forms of communication and dissemination •re-think existing literary and cultural formats •Re-think disciplinary boundaries •Re-think geography and embeddeness •new platforms •transform understanding of what a ‘text’ is
- 3. Broader Re-thinkings of ML • Shared set of assumptions: • Nation-state as (relatively) fixed category • Unity between language and territory • Written word (esp. literature) as representative of culture • “national literature” as reflection of national character • High culture
- 4. Questioning ML… • Cultural studies: questioning primacy of literature • Feminism: questioning the canon • Postcolonial theories: questioning primacy of (European) nation-state • Readers on ‘isms’ (Hispanism; Francophone studies, etc) • Transnational research • Visual turn in Modern Languages • ‘meta’ discourses….
- 5. Questioning… • questioning of the ‘privileged status of literature’ (Martín-Estudillo and Spadaccini) • fading away of ‘loyalties to national languages’ (Castillo & Eggington 2006) • ‘dissolution of the hitherto unquestioned link between language and discipline or culture and discipline’ (Resina 2013) • plurinational reality of state culture’ (Keown 2013) • Area studies is ‘historically marked by the interests of imperial and other forms of transnational and international dominance’ (Mato 2003) • Avelar: Latin Americanism based on exclusionary practices
- 6. ML, Digital, and Place • re-think place-based assumptions • Yet: geopolitical shifts, inequalities of access, material infrastructure, legal differentials, cultural particularities • Digital culture studies: critical lens • re-think issues underpinning ideas of ‘the national’ or ‘the regional’.
- 7. ML, Digital, and Object of Study •conventional literary, filmic, or cultural genres: •‘a novel’…. ‘a film’….
- 8. (New) Hybrid Genres • Twitter-poetry • Electronic ballads • Blog-aphorisms • Hypertext short stories • Blognovel • Collective novel • Hypertext documentaries • Anipoemas • Microrrelatos.....
- 9. Going Beyond our Comfort Zone.. • hypermedia ‘novel’: • text, audio, still and moving images, user interaction… • visual culture, film studies, computer game studies, as much as literary theory…..
- 10. ML, Digital, and the ‘Text’ • Digital requires study of texts and practices • flows, re-circulations, and re-postings just as significant as ‘finished’ object • shifts in our understanding of what a ‘text’ is • Ethical issues, content creators, human subjects…
- 11. Vice-Versa: Contributions of ML • Contest predominantly Anglophone models • linguistically- and culturally- specific cultural studies approaches to digital materials • digital technologies inflected differently in distinct cultural contexts
- 12. ML Digital Culture • Cultural studies fraught with tensions: • interdisciplinary endeavour, drawing from multiple disciplines and methods • perceived attack on high culture • Loss of critical edge • Larsen: increasingly ‘celebratory tone’; ‘less radical than it appears’; ‘danger of a move further to the right’ • Beasley-Murray, ‘decline and banalization of cultural studies’; ‘much of its specific political context and rationale was lost (Beasley-Murray 2010).
- 13. ML Digital Culture • BUT: ML-inflected digital culture studies can preserve critical edge • Trigo ‘Latin American cultural studies also originated as a hermeneutical and critical response to the economic, social, political and cultural transformations of Latin American countries and societies under the impact of transnational finance capitalism and the globalization of culture experienced since the early 1970s’ • Beverley ‘recovering for the discourse of the Left the space of cultural dehierarchization ceded to the market and to neoliberalism’ (Beverley 2011)
- 14. New Avenues? 1. ML and Policy 2.ML and Practice, Co-Design and Creativity 3. ML and Interdisciplinarity 4.ML and Global Challenges
Editor's Notes
- Subsequently, the talk then considers how the emergence of research into digital objects of study can be part of a productive dialogue in a broader trend of rethinking modern languages as a discipline Of course, all of this did not happen in a vacuum, and, since the rise of cultural studies approaches in the 1990s, Modern Languages already been engaged in rethinking itself and its practices. Rather, it’s more a case of this all crystallising at the same time: that at the point at which Modern Languages was already in the process of questioning some of its assumptions (philology, study of high literature, the canon, amongst others), the rise of digital technologies has become another disruptive element that demands a re-formulated genealogy.
- Questioning of assumptions underlying our practice Increasingly: resistance to notion of the nation-state and national cultures
- consists of. We have all been brought up to recognize key genres, understand the rules of those genres, and apply the tools of analysis specific to those genres. But what happens when texts – understood in the broadest sense of ‘cultural’ product’ – cease to exist within their neat generic boundaries? When, for instance, a hypermedia ‘novel’, involving text, audio, still and moving images, and user interaction, may require skills of analysis coming from visual culture, film studies or computer game studies, as much as literary theory about ‘the novel’? It is these new cultural forms that, for many of us, have made us start to think across disciplinary boundaries, and learn to negotiate new tools.
- digital technologies have changed the way in which we engage in our research practice right across the full cycle of the research process: from our objects of study, which may no longer be the traditional print book (as was the basis of our conventional, philological training), but instead may now include genres as diverse as the hypermedia novel, twitter poetry, net art, hacktivism, social media, and many more, through to our tools of analysis, which may now include visualizations, big data approaches, and so on. Modern Languages has – along with many other humanities disciplines – seen its shape change over the past two decades. This has led us to challenge what it means to describe Modern Languages as a discipline, or, at the very least to re-inscribe its boundaries.
- Modern Languages research has since the inception of the discipline engaged with a wide variety of cultural products, and ML is, justifiably, proud of the large range of genres that fall under its remit (literature, film, visual arts, music, and many more). But what has not yet been fully realised is the opportunities that this broad engagement with cultural products has for practice, co-design, and creativity. I see ML has having significant opportunities to develop as regards practice-based and practice-led research, co-design of research, and creativity (this latter including, although not restricted to, creative industries). ML can do more to bring these areas into its own remit, as well as, conversely, influencing ways forward within these areas. As regards practice-based and practice-led research, ML has significant contributions that it can bring that have not been fully realised, these including not only the most obvious areas of translation as practice-based research, but also a much more broader practice involving the whole range of cultural artefacts themselves that ML research studies. This could offer significant new opportunities for ML to bring in as co-investigators the artists, writers and creators that we study, and integrate them into the research as practitioners from its inception. In co-design, what ML can learn and develop is the ways in which our communities – both those based abroad, and heritage language communities in the UK - can become our co-creators. We have a rich resource of communities of study which is not currently put to its full potential in co-designing our research projects. Some pioneering projects include the Hispanic Liverpool project (PI Hooper; Warwick) where communities contribute to the design of the project; through projects such as these, ML benefits whilst also co-design as a practice benefits through the cultural and linguistic enrichment that ML brings. On creativity more broadly (including engagement with the creative industries), what ML research can bring to is a nuanced understanding of the creative process, bringing to bear its insights about cultural and linguistic specificities. Again, this is a two-way process in which ML benefits from the insights of the creative industries sector and this sector, in its turn, benefits from the insights of ML. Ways of helping this forward include closer engagement with the Connected Communities theme, and I am particularly keen to explore how the CC programme can engage more actively with multilingualism.