Comparative literature in the age of digital humanities on possible futures for a discipline todd presner

1. Comparative Literature in the
Age of Digital Humanities: On
Possible Futures for a Discipline
- Todd Presner

2. Bhavyang Asari
Nidhi Jethava

3. Abstract:-
After five hundred years of print and the massive
transformations in society and culture that it unleashed,
we are in the midst of another watershed moment in
human history that is on par with the invention of the
printing press or perhaps the discovery of the New World.
This article focuses on the questions like it is essential
that humanists assert and insert themselves into the
twenty - first century cultural wars, which are largely being
defined, fought, and won by corporate interests.

4. Why, for example, were humanists, foundations, and universities
conspicuously – even scandalously – silent when Google won its
book search lawsuit and, effectively, won the right to transfer
copyright of orphaned books to itself? Why were they silent when
the likes of Sony and Disney essentially engineered the Digital
Millennium Copyright Act, radically restricting intellectual
property, copyright, and sharing? The Manifesto is a call to
Humanists for a much deeper engagement with digital culture
production, publishing, access, and ownership. If new
technologies are dominated and controlled by corporate and
entertainment inter ests, how will our cultural legacy be rendered
in new media formats? By whom and for whom?

5. Key Arguments:-
Nicholas Negroponte once asserted in his wildly optimistic book
Being Digital (Negroponte, 1995 ), for they always have an
underbelly: mobile phones, social networking technologies, and
perhaps even the hundred - dollar computer, will not only be used
to enhance education, spread democracy, and enable global
communication but will likely be used to perpetrate violence and
even orchestrate genocide in much the same way that the radio
and the railway did in the last century (despite the belief that both
would somehow liberate humanity and join us all together in a
happy, interconnected world that never existed before)
(Presner, 2007 ).

6. Paul Gilroy analyzed in his study of “ the fatal
junction of the concept of nationality with the
concept of culture ” along the “ Black Atlantic, ”
voyages of discovery, enlightenment, and
progress also meant, at every moment, voyages
of conquest, enslavement, and destruction.
Indeed, this is why iany discussion of
technology cannot be separated from a
discussion about formations of power and
instrumentalized authority.

7. N. Katherine Hayles, I find myself wondering – as we
ponder various possible futures for Comparative
Literature in the second decade of the twenty - first
century – how to rouse ourselves from the “ somnolence
[of] five hundred years of print ” (Hayles, 2002 : p. 29).
Of course, there is nothing neutral, objective, or
necessary about the medium of print; rather it is a
medium that has a long and complex history connected
to the formation of academic disciplines, institutions,
epistemologies, and ideologies, not to mention
conceptions of authorship and scholarly research.

8. Darnton ’s assessment seriously that we are now in
the fifth decade of the fourth information age in the
history of humankind, it seems to me that we ought
to try to understand not only the contours of the
discipline of Comparative Literature – and for that
matter, the Humanities as a whole – from the
perspective of an information - and media - specific
analysis, but that we also ought to come to terms
with the epistemic disjunction between our digital
age and everything that came before it.

9. Walter Benjamin did in The Arcades Project
(1928 – 40; 1999), it is necessary, I believe, to
interrogate both the media and methodologies
for the study of literature, culture, and society.
The “ problem ” of Comparative Literature is to
figure out how to take seriously the range of
new authoring, annotation, and sharing
platforms that have transformed global cultural
production.

10. Key points :-
➔Comparative Media Studies
➔Comparative Data Studies
➔Comparative Authorship and Platform Studies

11. ➔ Comparative Media Studies
For Nelson, a hypertext is a:-
Body of written or pictorial material interconnected in such
a complex way that it could not conveniently be presented
or represented on paper [ … ] Such a system could grow
indefinitely, gradually including more and more of the world
’ s written knowledge. (Nelson, 2004: pp. 134 – 145)

12. Comparative Data Studies:-
➢ Lev Manovich and Noah Wardrip - Fruin, the field of “
cultural analytics ” has emerged over the past five years to
bring the tools of high - end computational analysis and data
visualization to dissect large - scale cultural datasets.
➢ Jerome McGann argues with regard to the first in his
elegant analysis of “ radiant textuality, ” the differences
between the codex and the electronic versions of the Oxford
English Dictionary.

13. ➢ Comparative Authorship and Platform Studies
➔ James Boyle points out, there are many corporate entities eager to
regulate the public domain and control the “ commons of the mind.
” 10 For Boyle, the real danger is not unauthorized file sharing but
“ failed sharing ” due to enclosures and strictures placed upon the
world of the creative commons (Boyle, 2008 : p. 182).
➔ Scholars such as McKenzie Wark and Kathleen Fitzpatrick have
even “ published ” early versions of their entire books on
Commentpress.

14. Conclusion:-
This article mainly focuses on this twenty-first century in terms of digital
humanities how we are doing comparative studies. After discussing various
arguments, we come to know that to date, it has more than three million content
pages, more than three hundred million edits, over ten million registered users,
and articles in forty - seven languages (Wikipedia Statistics). This is a massive
achievement for eight years of work. Wikipedia represents a dynamic, flexible,
and open - ended network for knowledge creation and distribution that
underscores process, collaboration, access, interactivity, and creativity, with an
editing model and versioning system that documents every contingent decision
made by every contributing author. At this moment in its short life, Wikipedia is
already the most comprehensive, representative, and pervasive participatory
platform for knowledge production ever created by humankind. In my opinion,
that is worth some pause and reflection, perhaps even by scholars in a future
disciplinary incarnation of Comparative Literature.