Take care,
Tom

1. Parts of the document were written by Jeffrey Schnapp, Peter Lunenfeld, and myself, while other parts were written (and critiqued) by commenters on the Commentpress blog and still other parts of the manifesto were written by authors who participated in the seminars. This document has the hand and words of about 100 people in it. That, in itself, is quite remarkable. Barbara’s statement above about the three authors is thus a bit misleading.

2. This document explicitly cites and builds on the tradition of the manifesto in avant-garde modernisms, not least of all Blast and the Futurist Manifesto. The genre of the manifesto is a provocation, a stimulation, and thought-piece, with ideas that are rarely fleshed out. Instead, they are crystallized through pithy statements and suggestive formulations. The leitmotiv of the “hand” is critical for this genre — a manifesto is about raising hands and doing things. We think that DH is also about that (curation, creation, generation, making, but also upending, subverting, hacking).

3. The document is a snapshot of a work-in-progress. That’s why it’s been on Commentpress and that’s why we indicated it would continue to go through revisions. Your comments and thoughts are most welcome.

4. There are, of course, plenty of other genres available for making arguments to departmental chairs, administrators, Deans, etc. That’s why we authored a “whitepaper” on DH at UCLA — also available on the digital Humanities website (www.digitalhumanities.ucla.edu). The manifesto is a different genre. It does different things and is meant to be a call to action, especially a wake-up call for humanists to assert and insert themselves into the 21st century cultural wars (which are largely being defined, fought, and won by corporate interests). Why were humanists, foundations, and universities conspicuously — even scandalously — silent when Google won its book search lawsuit and, effectively, won the right to transfer copyright of orphaned books to itself? Why were they silent when Disney essentially engineered the Digital Millennium Copyright Act? The “guerrilla” tactics in the manifesto are, on the one hand, playful and silly but, in another vein, deadly serious, as they call attention to our need for deeper engagement with digital culture production, dissemination, access, and ownership.

5. Finally, the manifesto represents a call for the RELEVANCE and NECESSITY of the Humanities in the 21st century — not for their obsolescence. In a climate of budget cuts, downsizing, and the assertion of the corporate university, the Humanities offer critical modes of reflection, critique, and guidance. Ultimately, the manifesto is a call for vitality, relevance, engagement, and nimble thinking that is, at once, self-reflective (ie, what are the Humanities in the 21st century and what can/should they do) and globally oriented (how can the Humanities engage with and set agendas for the new millennium).

I look forward to your thoughts.

Todd

@barbara Sorry for the misattribution!

I’ll do some research on the history of the manifesto as a genre and post it here. Anybody know something about it?

2 questions I’d like to put on the table: 1) should the document be signed? 2) is a “manifesto” the appropriate genre for this kind of field/discipline/movement/what-have-you document? The genre of the “manifesto” has a very specific history which the authors are overtly playing with/on here. What do we make of this?

Some specific responses:

@Larry Maybe that will be a useful place to start: Is this even a constructive document, and if not, how could it be remade to be?

@Frederic As my response to Larry suggests, all views are welcome–even negative ones. In fact I’m fairly ambivalent about the Manifesto myself.

I’m not sure what there is to say…

Paragraphs 43/44 on curation also dovetail nicely with my proposal for talking about the place of material culture objects in digital history.