1.1 From Digital Humanities to Speculative Computing - UCLA ...

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eading intervened. Adopting their theories of probability and potentiality, we shifted from mechanistic models of text to quantum ones. We conceptualized a “text” not as a discrete and static entity, but a coded provocation for reading, a field of potentialities. Constrained by those codes, thus not open to any and all possibilities, but it is formed anew as an act of interpretative intervention. Here again the echoes of deconstruction are perceptible, but with the difference that these are shifted into problems of modeling and representing such activities within an electronic space. The n-dimensionality of texts, to use McGann’s term again, also engages their social production and the associational matrix through which meaning is produced in a heteroglossic network, combining the dialogic method of Mikhail Bakhtin with influence from the thick readings of a generation of French textual theorists. xxxviii But speculative computing is not a rehash of poststructuralist theory, nor an advanced version of either dialogic or dialectical approaches. Speculative computing is grounded in a serious critique of the mechanistic, entity-driven approaches to knowledge that is based on a distinction between subject and object. By contrast, speculative computing proposes a generative, not merely critical, attitude towards knowledge. My approach to graphical knowledge production came from the semiotic studies of Jacques Bertin and the history of visual languages of form, work by MacEachren, and an extensive and systematic reading of materials in information visualization, psychology and physiology of vision, and cultural history of visual epistemology. xxxix This latter is an enormously underdeveloped field, one that calls for serious study now in particular, when visualization is becoming so ubiquitous within digital environments. Finally, our reading of Charles Peirce provided a method of interpretation based in abduction as well as a tri- 1.1 History / 3/2008 / 45
partite theory of signification (a sign stands for something to someone, and does not operate merely in the formal signifier/signified structure outlined by Ferdinand de Saussure). xl This theoretical foundation provided a platform on which to elaborate a theory of enunciation and subjectivity. Within our definition of the concept of subjectivity, we considered both structural and inflected modes. McGann’s reference for the structural approach is Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s idea of “the inner standing point.” xli This idea posits subjectivity in a structural way, as the inscription of point of view within the field of interpretation. xlii This maps readily onto linguistic theories of enunciation, and the contrast of speaking and spoken subjects within a discursive field. xliii The second aspect of subjectivity is that of inflection, the marked presence of affect and specificity or difference that inheres in material expressions. This crucial feature of subjectivity is registered as the trace of difference. I once referred to this as the “aesthetic massage co-efficient of form.” Though this was a deliberately wry and overwrought phrase, its compact density contains a real description. The term “massage” refers to inflection, differential traces, as a “coefficient” or property of “forms” i.e. material expressions. Associating this with aesthetics links the concept to perception, or the idea of knowledge as experience. All of these concepts became working keywords for us, shorthand to our elaborate conversations: subjectivity, the inner standing point, inflection, graphical knowledge production, aesthetics, and experiential rather than totalized approaches. I’ve referred to this attitude as “post- Cartesian” to indicate the leap from subject/object distinctions and mind/body split to a re-conceptualization beyond such binarisms. In a post-Cartesian frame, subjectivity is not in opposition to objectivity. Subjectivity describes the co-dependent condition of situated 1.1 History / 3/2008 / 46
Page 1 and 2: 1.0 Speculative Computing 1.1 From
Page 3 and 4: Digital humanists, however, were no
Page 5 and 6: iographical portrait? A memoir and
Page 7 and 8: the lessons of deconstruction and p
Page 9 and 10: Early digital humanities is general
Page 11 and 12: creation of concordances, word list
Page 13 and 14: writers we are habituated to langua
Page 15 and 16: But the italics used for a title an
Page 17 and 18: Returning to the original example a
Page 19 and 20: has a database under it, you might
Page 21 and 22: While every model embodies interpre
Page 23 and 24: cultures, when the scale at which t
Page 25: knowledge is always interpretation,
Page 29 and 30: common parlance), in step-by-step p
Page 31 and 32: Electronic communication approaches
Page 33 and 34: 5. Discrete representations 5. Hete
Page 35 and 36: econceptualization of premises and
Page 37 and 38: and reception histories of the text
Page 39 and 40: epistemological inquiry. It posits
Page 41 and 42: Critical Art Ensemble, www.critical
Page 43 and 44: xxiv For a recent summary and overv
Page 45 and 46: P. (Eds), The invented Reality: How
Page 47 and 48: ongoing) and Schreibman, Siemens, U
Page 49: lvi McGann, ibid, cites George Spen

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