Klein proposes the viewpoint that digital humanities requires one to sit back and analyze the extent to which we are knowledgeable about certain information. A deeper analysis of Jefferson’s slave James Emmings whose true identity is no fully known leads her to issue a call to action for digital humanity practitioners to go out into the world and uncover the information that has yet to be found. She believes that no longer can we be satisfied with knowing, but now we must also ponder how we know things to be true, their origins.
While Klein does bring up a very good point, I believe that one must question the completeness of her claims. Why is now the time for digital humanities to theorize their claims? Yes we have more technology that can aid in deeper research of how we know information, but if this practice was as necessary as she deems it to be, would it not have begun earlier? We are able to find out trivial things, such as Hemmings being educated, but this does not do much to help mankind as a whole in the future.
I would agree to the statement that digital humanities will reveal much information, but I cannot help but wonder how that information will be put to use. If we as of now do not fully “know” certain subjects well, when will we get to that point as a collective society? Is it worth it to swim in unclear waters in search of how we know information if we do not know what fully “knowing” consists of? It seems somewhat pointless that Klein would state our inability to fully have understanding of a certain subject, without defining full understanding. Eventually a limit on how much we know will be set, but until that time, the concrete purpose and usefulness of digital humanities will remain incomplete.
Klein, Laura.”The Image of Absence: Archival Silence, Data Visualization, and James Hemings.” Duke University Press, 2013.Print
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I believe when Klein is calling for digital humanities to theorize their claims, she is asking them to consider organizing a database in a way that allows for exposure of a humanities issue. As Klein shows through a search of Hemings name, use of the Jefferson Papers database presents Hemings as if he barely existed. However, from reading the letters we find that this is not the case. A disconnect has occurred between the organization of the data and what information is present in the letters.
Klein is calling for digital humanists to consider the stories databases may be accidentally hiding because of the way a database is framed. What she asks for is a more thoughtful “re-framing” of information that will allow these stories to have a greater presence in the overall picture the data presents. By doing this, digital humanists do more than leave the data for interpretation, but instead “employ their tools and methods so as to produce humanities critique.”
In Hemings case, Klein has reframed the data contained in the Jefferson Papers database into an arc diagram that exposes more about Jefferson’s daily contacts that has otherwise been overlooked by the database and history itself. She has reframed this data into a critique of the database’s historical record of slavery in this era.
Further analysis of a database is sometimes less about what knowledge can be gained, but more about how this knowledge has been framed. “Knowing” the information in a database is sometimes skewed by the framing of the information, so we must consider how this information has been presented to fully know what we can learn about the subject.
You ask a good question here (“Why is now the time…”). The answer is complicated, but essentially, Klein is referring to a scholarly conversation that goes back several years. In this conversation, critics have accused people who use visualizations and “pretty” graphics as not contributing substantively to our understanding of history. Klein wants to say, “Wait a minute, such visualization *can* do exactly that.”Reference