Proceedings of the 10th International Conference on Social Sciences, Humanities and Education
Year: 2024
DOI:
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From Humanities to Digital Humanities: Promises and Provocations in India
Dr. Vivek Singh
ABSTRACT:
With the long-standing debate on Humanities being in real crisis, Digital Humanities has emerged as a potential alternative in the field of learning, teaching, publishing, and research. Digital Humanities finds its origin back in the late 1940’s in the pioneering work of Robert Busa and his female employee. This systematic and organized way of using digital resources in the domain of Humanities is based on the assertion that print and/or the oral world is no longer the only mediums for the dissemination of knowledge. The present paper would critically analyze the dominant assumptions about the nature and form of Digital Humanities. Certain questions inevitably come in here. What is “digital” and what is “Humanities” in the first place? Drawing from Pierre Macherey’ s idea of mediation in art, can we classify Digital Humanities as acts of remediation? Under the present technological framework of Indian educational system, up to what extent are we prepared to embrace this medium of knowledge circulation? Has the digital merely facilitated easy accessibility and quantitative rise in the existing body of knowledge or has it got much more to it? Since Digital Humanities moves beyond the limitations of Humanities, how is it serving its role in breaking the shackles of human barriers- of caste, of class, of ‘ability’? It is to interrogate and engage with questions such as these the paper would look deep into the terrains of Digital Humanities.
keywords: Digital Humanities, Mediatisation, India, Oral Literature, Boundaries