1. @roopikarisam #dhpoco
Breaking or Building?: The
Curious Case of Postcolonial
Digital Humanities
Roopika Risam
Salem State University

2. @roopikarisam #dhpoco
#dhpoco 101

3. @roopikarisam #dhpoco
#dhpoco 101
• Emerging field of study
• Situated at the intersections of
postcolonial studies and digital
humanities

4. @roopikarisam #dhpoco
#dhpoco 101
• Brings together the making,
building, and creating ethos of
the digital humanities and global
analyses of knowledge and
power from postcolonial studies

5. @roopikarisam #dhpoco
#dhpoco 101
• Advocates for an anticolonial
approach to digital humanities by
interrogating digital cultures and
objects, including code and
platform.

6. @roopikarisam #dhpoco
#dhpoco 101
• Urges critical engagement with
progress-oriented approaches to
technology, incorporating a global
lens

7. @roopikarisam #dhpoco
#dhpoco 101
• Builds community of scholars
interrogating global dimensions of
power and technology, grounded
in methodologies of digital
humanities and humanities
computing

8. @roopikarisam #dhpoco
Building in DH
• “Digital Humanities is about building
things. I‟m willing to entertain highly
expansive definitions of what it
means to build something.” –
Stephen Ramsay, “Who‟s In and
Who‟s Out”

9. @roopikarisam #dhpoco
Building in DH
• “The promise of the digital is…. in
the way the digital reshapes the
representation, sharing, and
discussion of knowledge.” –Mark
Sample, “The Digital Humanities Is
Not About Building, It‟s About
Sharing”

10. @roopikarisam #dhpoco
Building in DH
• “Building is, for us, a new kind of
hermeneutic – one that is quite a bit
more radical than taking the
traditional methods of humanistic
inquiry and applying them to digital
objects.” –Stephen Ramsay, “On
Building”

11. @roopikarisam #dhpoco
Building in DH
• “The „radical‟ potential of the digital
humanities that Ramsay envisions is
that building and interpreting is a
lapidary process: slicing facets of
the same gem.” –Brian Croxall and
Kathi Inman Berens

12. @roopikarisam #dhpoco
Breaking in DH
• “I‟ve also been thinking about a
complementary mode of learning
and research that is precisely the
opposite of building things. It is
destroying things.” –Mark Sample,
“Notes towards a Deformed
Humanities”

13. @roopikarisam #dhpoco
Breaking in DH
• “The digital brings different
playgrounds and new kinds of
interaction, and we must incessantly
ask questions of it, disturbing the
edge upon which we find ourselves
so precariously perched.” –Jesse
Stommel

14. @roopikarisam #dhpoco
Breaking and Building in
#dhpoco

15. @roopikarisam #dhpoco
Breaking and Building in
#dhpoco
• Operates through dialectical
relationships between breaking and
building, between digital humanities
and postcolonial studies

16. @roopikarisam #dhpoco
Breaking and Building in
#dhpoco
• Integrates breaking and building as
digital humanities praxis through
theoretical and multimodal
approaches

17. @roopikarisam #dhpoco
Breaking and Building in
#dhpoco
• Theoretical approaches stress
dismantling of implicit, unequal
power structures subtending
technology on a global scale and
building frameworks for analysis

18. @roopikarisam #dhpoco
Breaking and Building in
#dhpoco
• Multimodal approaches stress
importance of building community,
archives, and avenues for
pedagogy, while breaking down
barriers to sharing knowledge
through digital spaces

19. @roopikarisam #dhpoco
#dhpoco as Breaking
• Critiquing language and cultural
imperialism in digital humanities
• Unearthing assumptions about
networks and networked
knowledge

20. @roopikarisam #dhpoco
#dhpoco as Breaking
• Deconstructing role of material
culture and practices within digital
humanities
• Uncovering imperial and colonial
silences within digital humanities

21. @roopikarisam #dhpoco
#dhpoco as Building
• Embracing technological
strategies for counter-discourse
• Intervening in archival silences
through digital humanities

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#dhpoco as Building
• Cultivating frameworks for
representing and analyzing
multivocality in digital spaces
• Foregrounding identity-oriented
approaches to technology

23. @roopikarisam #dhpoco
Works Cited
Croxall, Brian and Kathi Inman Berens (2011). “Building Digital
Humanities in the Undergraduate Classroom.”
http://www.briancroxall.net/buildingDH/
Ramsay, Stephen (2011). “On Building.”
http://stephenramsay.us/text/2011/01/11/on-building/
Ramsay, Stephen (2011). “Who‟s In and Who‟s Out.”
http://stephenramsay.us/text/2011/01/08/whos-in-and-whos-out/
Sample, Mark (2011). “The Digital Humanities Is Not About Building, It‟s
About Sharing.” http://www.samplereality.com/2011/05/25/the-digitalhumanities-is-not-about-building-its-about-sharing/

24. @roopikarisam #dhpoco
Works Cited
Sample, Mark (2012). “Notes towards a Deformed
Humanities.”http://www.samplereality.com/2012/05/02/notes-towards-adeformed-humanities/
Stommel, Jesse (2013). “The Digital Humanities Is About Breaking
Stuff.” http://www.hybridpedagogy.com/journal/the-digital-humanities-isabout-breaking-stuff/