The Barb of the Digital

The digital humanities like to see themselves as a disruptive incursion into the field of hermeneutics. The traditional humanities, on the other hand, in the German-speaking world gathered under the banner of the Geisteswissenschaften, often accuse the digital humanities of seeking to colonise their art of interpretation through scientific methodologies. However, both of these perspectives fail to recognise the extent to which the forms of digitality are prefigured in the traditional cultural techniques of literacy. Academic practices possessed an embryonic digitality long before the first computers were deployed. Viewed in this way, the contemporary digital humanities can be figured as a valuable extension of the field of the traditional humanities. But for this to happen, the self-conception of the humanities needs to be redefined. To this end, Sybille Krämer outlines twelve, somewhat polemical theses.