Digital humanities needs space to experiment and explore, but as David Graeber’s recent study reminds us university bureaucracies often make it hard to create or maintain that sort of sustained creative space (Graeber, The Utopia of Rules: On Technology, Stupidity, and the Secret Joys of Bureaucracy). That means that to pursue digital humanities we need to understand bureaucracy and think about how to subvert it. In this session, I propose we use Graeber’s book as a starting point and brainstorm about ways to create successful spaces for experimentation, by carving out areas within the bureaucracy’s domain, by working at its margins, or acting outside its range.
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Nice to pair this with Christine Borgman’s new article on making space available for DH: www.digitalhumanities.org/dhq/vol/3/4/000077/000077.html.
As a related point, might we talk about how other folks have convinced bureaucracies (within the university but also outside it) about the exigence of their DH projects and initiatives?
Hear, hear! I am excited to be able to discuss Graeber’s book, which left me so very productively unsettled, for how we open creative, exploratory, and experimental spaces within our shared and local bureaucracies. I’m interested to see how we can all collaborate together on counter- and subversive activities and practices as part of the digital humanities.