What is (or are) the “digital humanities,” aka “humanities computing”? It’s tempting to say that whoever asks the question has not gone looking very hard for an answer. “What is digital humanities?” essays like this one are already genre pieces.
Matthew G. Kirschenbaum, « What Is Digital Humanities and What’s It Doing in English Departments? », dans ADE Bulletin, no 150 (2010), p. 55.
Melissa Terras, Julianne Nyhan & Edward VanHoutte (dir.), Defining Digital Humanities. A Reader, Surrey, Ashgate, 2013.
Les humanités numériques, c'est une affaire de lettreux qui jouent aux geeks.
Dominique Vinck, Humanités Numériques. La culture face aux nouvelles technologies, Le Cavalier Bleu éditions, 2016, p. 47.Digital Humanities is the discipline born from the intersection between humanities scholarship and computational technologies. It aims at investigating how digital methodologies can be used to enhance research in disciplines such as History, Literature, Languages, Art History, Music, Cultural Studies and many others. Digital Humanities holds a very strong practical component as it includes the concrete creation of digital resources for the study of specific disciplines.
Elena Pierazzo, « Digital humanities: a definition ». En ligne : http://epierazzo.blogspot.co.uk/2011/01/digital‐humanities‐definition.html[O]ne of the many things you can do with computers is something that I would call humanities computing, in which the computer is used as a tool for modeling humanities data and our understanding of it, and that activity is entirely distinct from using the computer when it models the typewriter, or the telephone, or the phonograph, or any of the many other things it can be.
John Unsworth, « What is Humanities Computing and What is Not? », dans Jahrbuch für Computerphilologie, no 4 (2002), p. 71.Digital Humanities est le terme courant qualifiant les efforts multiples et divers de l'adaptation à la culture numérique du monde savant.
Milad Douehei, Pour un humanisme numérique, Seuil, 2011, p. 22.If digital humanities is to concern itself with the full sweep of our collective past then it must, like a Klein bottle, also come to terms with the born-digital objects and artifacts that characterize cultural production in all areas of human endeavour in the decades since the advent of general-purpose computers.
Matthew G. Kirschenbaum, « Ancient evenings : Retrocomputing in the Digital Humanities », dans Susan Schreibman et al. (dir.), A New Companion to Digital Humanities, Wiley-Blackwell, 2e édition, 2016, p. 188.Nowadays, the term can mean anything from media studies to electronic art, from data mining to edutech, from scholarly editing to anarchic blogging, while inviting code junkies, digital artists, standards wonks, transhumanists, game theorists, free culture advocates, archivists, librarians, and edupunks under its capacious canvas.
Stephen Ramsay, « Who's in and Who's Out », dans Melissa Terras, Julianne Nyhan & Edward VanHoutte (dir.), Defining Digital Humanities. A Reader, Surrey, Ashgate, 2013, p. 239-243.Do you have to know how to code [to be a digital humanist]? I’m a tenured professor of digital humanities and I say “yes”. [...] Personally, I think Digital Humanities is about building things. I’m willing to entertain highly expansive definitions of what it means to build something […] but if you are not making anything, you are not […] a digital humanist. You might be something else that is good and worthy – maybe you’re a scholar of new media, or maybe a game theorist, or maybe a classicist with a blog (the latter being a very good thing indeed) – but if you aren’t building, you are not engaged in the “methodologization” of the humanities, which, to me, is the hallmark of the discipline that was already decades old when I came to it.
Stephen Ramsay, « Who's in and Who's Out ». 8 janvier 2011. http://stephenramsay.us/ text/2011/01/08/whos-in-and-whos-out.html.Process is the new god; not product . Anything that stands in the way of the perpetual mash-up and remix stands in the way of the digital revolution. Digital Humanities means iterative scholarship, mobilized collaborations, and networks of research. It honors the quality of results; but it also honors the steps by means of which results are obtained as a form of publication of comparable value. Untapped gold mines of knowledge are to be found in the realm of process.
Digital Humanities=Co‐creation. Because of the complexity of Big Humanities projects,teamwork, specialized roles within teams,and “production” standards that imply specialization become defining features of the digital turn in the human sciences. Large scale,distributed models of scholarship represent one of the transformative features of the Digital Humanities.
Drucker, Johanna, Peter Lunenfeld, Todd Presner, Jeffrey Schnapp et al., « The Digital Humanities Manifesto 2.0 », 22 juin 2009.L’Académie canadienne-française, dont plusieurs écrivains désiraient depuis quelques années l’institution a été récemment fondée à Montréal. Cette institution est une réplique, quoique sur une base plus modeste, de la célèbre Académie Française qui depuis plus de 300 ans est un des critères du bon goût littéraire en France..
Verrons-nous des écrivains, tel l’auteur de la Henriade, se moquer, d’un sourire voltairien, des vingt-quatre académiciens, mais dès qu’ils ne sont plus que vingt-trois, se radoucir afin de prendre un moelleux fauteuil parmi eux? Y en aura-t-il d’aussi constants et d’aussi sages que Louis Racine pour présenter et retirer tour à tour leur candidature jusque sur leur lit de mort? Entendrons-nous des chansons sur la lenteur académicienne, des rimes, des boutades à la Piron qui, quoi qu’il en ait écrit, fut un soir académicien? Apprendrons-nous que tel auteur, à l’instar de Molière, préféra la comédie à l’Académie? L’Académie aura-t-elle sa vie secrète, ses "prudents" et ses "agréables à la Cour?"
Comme ses parrains de France, elle aura, elle aussi, son Institut. Mais… il y a un mais. Que faire pour « dénicher » les mécènes? Lancer un appel, un S.O.S. à la Gestapo…C’est une idée… de poids. Audaces fortuna juvat.