In the readings for our first two overview weeks, I was most interested in the ways in which power and privilege both have structured and are evident in systems of classification and in representation and misrepresentation. For my response, I will consider the discussion of these themes in our readings by Safiya Umoja Noble and Roopika Risam.<\/p>\n
In Safiya Umoja Noble\u2019s chapter, \u201cThe Future of Knowledge in the Public,\u201d Noble discusses how the Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH) have reflected and reinforced the history of characterizing certain individuals as \u201cproblem people\u201d based on aspects of their identity or their position within a group (2). In addition to reflecting the attitudes of those involved in developing such systems of classification, information systems such as the LCSH and the Internet continue to shape how certain individuals and groups are characterized and perceived in the present by authoritatively identifying them and locating related material under subject headings and search results that participate in \u201c\u2018legitimizing the ideology of dominant groups\u2019 to the detriment of people of color\u201d (2). Noble\u2019s discussion of the movement led by students at Dartmouth College and supported by campus librarians and the American Libraries Association to have the Library of Congress replace the term \u201cillegal aliens\u201d with terms preferred by undocumented immigrants and their advocates provides an example of the importance of self-representation and the adoption of preferred terms in consultation with the individuals and groups to whom those terms and classifications refer, particularly in systems that have been structured by power and privilege. Near the end of the chapter, Noble notes a commitment to \u201censure that traditionally underrepresented ideas and perspectives are included in the shaping of the field\u2014to surface counternarratives,\u201d which Roopika Risam emphasizes as being central to the development of a postcolonial digital humanities (14)<\/p>\n
In Roopika Risam\u2019s essay, \u201cDecolonizing the Digital Humanities in Theory and Practice,\u201d Risam characterizes a postcolonial digital humanities as one that centers intersectional engagement with various \u201caxes of identity\u201d that shape the production of knowledge, in contrast to colonial and neo-colonial information institutions and systems that situate the colonizer at the center and privilege certain Western perspectives and forms of knowledge (78). Risam describes postcolonial approaches to digital humanities as those that center and affirm local and indigenous forms of knowledge and knowledge production while questioning and seeking to dismantle the imposition of colonial and neo-colonial perspectives. For me, Risam\u2019s essay recalls Safiya Umoja Noble\u2019s discussion of the LCSH and the student-led and librarian-supported movement to involve, if not center, those to whom the subject headings refer in replacing existing terminology with preferred terms.<\/p>\n
The readings for our first two overview weeks, represented here by Noble\u2019s chapter and Risam\u2019s essay, encouraged me to think critically about the ways in which information institutions and systems construct and present information and the accumulation of that information as knowledge. I am thinking here of two of my courses from last semester, Cultural Identities in Medieval Europe and History and Ethics of Collecting and Collections, in which we discussed how individual, social, and cultural biases have informed Western scholarly narratives of the history of art, including representations and misrepresentations of the individuals, societies, and cultures involved in the production of works of art and other cultural objects.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In the readings for our first two overview weeks, I was most interested in the ways in which power and privilege both have structured and are evident in systems of classification and in representation and misrepresentation. For my response, I will consider the discussion of these themes in our readings by Safiya Umoja Noble and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1081","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-unit-1b"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.haa.pitt.edu\/digitalcriticalmethods\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1081","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.haa.pitt.edu\/digitalcriticalmethods\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.haa.pitt.edu\/digitalcriticalmethods\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.haa.pitt.edu\/digitalcriticalmethods\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.haa.pitt.edu\/digitalcriticalmethods\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1081"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sites.haa.pitt.edu\/digitalcriticalmethods\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1081\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.haa.pitt.edu\/digitalcriticalmethods\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1081"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.haa.pitt.edu\/digitalcriticalmethods\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1081"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.haa.pitt.edu\/digitalcriticalmethods\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1081"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}