GeoHumanities is a subdiscipline that has been evolving even without my knowledge or involvement (ahem), as illustrated in scads of scholarly resources, fascinating projects and even a disciplinary journal (GeoHumanities) launched in 2015. I've discovered a number of articles related to GIS technology use in humanities research and while this is a complex topic in its own right, I no longer have the desire to focus on this for the entirety of my paper. Instead, I've become absorbed by the concepts of space and place and the loss of meaning that can occur between how space is traditionally represented by geographers versus how space is narrated or contextualized by humanities scholars. Cultural geographers such as Henri Lefebvre and Doreen Massey have argued that space is an active agent in our lives, constantly constructed and reconstructed through social practice rather than a passive stage upon which we enact our lives. While a map is meant to convey a message, contemporary maps are almost always created in a digital environment that does not lend itself well to uncertainty or contextualization of social spaces. Historical narratives, on the other hand, have the ability to convey the meaning that is imbued upon space through lived experiences, the places and connections created by those who exist within and between them.
GIS technologies definitely play a significant role in visualizing space and time in specific ways, and I plan to discuss both their utility and limitations in terms of humanities scholarship. More interesting are the proposed alternatives to GIS (such as, for example, comparative media studies, qualitative GIS, and inductive visualization) which aim to address the shortcomings of GIS in humanities research by offering new methodologies to explore the effects of space and time without reducing lived experiences to spatial coordinates and binary categories (Knowles, Westerveld, and Strom 2015, 244).
An example that I find particularly fascinating is a visualization created by Eric Steiner in attempting to map the evacuation route of Holocaust victims from the Auschwitz camp in 1945. Steiner initially produced a conventional map using GIS software and while this served to display the locations and spatial sequences of events, it conveyed little of the victims' experiences. Instead, Steiner disassembled the text of victims' testimonies into individual letters and clustered these aggregated narratives according to the places they referenced, thus revealing how much (or how little) the victims had to say in relation to the places and stages of their traumatic journey (Knowles, Westerveld, and Strom 2015, 244).
I love this - such a simple, brilliant idea with a powerful effect. What I find even more interesting is the lack of narrative occurring between the clusters; not only does this visualization reveal how much the victims have to say about certain places and events, it also reveals their silences.
The idea of exploring further examples such as this one and discussing the effects of contemporary scholars who are struggling to find a way to bridge the gap between the subjectivity of the humanities and the rigidity of digital technologies is an appealing one for me. There are plenty of resources on the topic, some written by digital humanists, some by geographers: I'm hoping I may be able to bring a fresh perspective to the topic by approaching it not from a humanities nor a geography background, but rather as a GIS specialist with experience assisting researchers from many disciplines with 'spatializing' their research.
A related idea (and one that I think could potentially be worked in with the above discussion) involves attempts to cross methodological boundaries between science and humanities research. I discovered a fascinating example of this in the form of a creative writing course designed by architect, author and illustrator Matteo Pericoli. In this class (called "Writers as Architects"), Pericoli asks his students to deconstruct a novel by discarding language and starting with a basic element such as the plot, or subject, or even just a feeling they have about the text. He likens this to removing the 'language' of architecture - walls, ceilings, slabs - until what you are left with is "sheer space" (Pericoli 2013) Writing students are then paired with architecture students to construct 3-D models of their texts, and Pericoli describes this moment as having "an element of magic: two students from very different disciplines coming together, sharing a common language, discussing spatial relationships, repetition, reflection, sequence, transparency, tension, pacing, chronology, and so forth. Any architectural question is answered from a literary point of view; any literary issue is addressed by a spatial idea. There is no room for arbitrary moves" (Pericoli 2013). How cool is that? There are a number of other neat examples of multidisciplinary projects in which scholars are exploring ways in which their traditional disciplinary methods can be combined and/or altered to bring fresh insight and create new ways of learning about the world.
So this is where I'm at. I think the ideas I've discussed here can likely be brought together into a cohesive essay, but I'm also conscious of my tendency to fall down a rabbit hole - there is just so much fascinating work being done. My problem at this point is ensuring that the scope of my essay doesn't get out of hand!
References
Knowles, Anne Kelly, Levi Westerveld, and Laura Strom. "Inductive Visualization: A Humanistic Alternative to GIS." GeoHumanities 1(2) (September 2015): 233-265
Pericoli, Matteo. "Writers as Architects." The New York Times. August 03, 2013. Accessed November 23, 2016. http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/08/03/writers-as-architects/
I think it's such a great experience when you start out with one idea, but then through research your idea morphs and develops into something completely different!
ReplyDeleteI really love the comparison of digital vs. physical and how they convey different experiences. I think it is important for any information technology to convey some sort of lived experience, but the physical does tend to do so more than the digital.
I don't know much about GIS, but I would imagine that digital technologies can lend a hand in creating some interactive data visualizations. However, I might be way off topic here though! I think your example of Steiner's work is really interesting (the silences). Adding more examples like this into your essay would provide a greater understanding of the power of GIS for your argument and reader!