Hi Gang,

I wanted to share some of my notes of our discussion of the strengths of what we discerned in the methods Moretti advocates in the work we read. It seemed to fall under a selection of neatly (and perhaps forced) alliterative headings—and I’d like to hear folk’s take on them, if I’ve missed something crucial and whether you have a different characterization

Corroborations: We identified that the patterns turned over can corroborate hunches (or what people out the humanities might call hunches) and arguments developed in the absence of these methods. I am reminded of structural models that offset and decenter human subjectivity that have previously been invested in general movement of history and culture

Collaboration: Moretti seems to make an argument that these new methods promises to be more collaborative than previous work, affording us opportunity to build on works of our peers or at least use their data. I think here the issue of commensurability is too quickly sidestepped. It also occludes the intensive labors (and laborers) that these methods involve. It appears here that the work tends towards the traditional sciences. Had we not in the Humanities also collaborate before this turn? Here I have a serious concern with the claim. First I might suggest that we might think of collaborations as being organized end-to-end versus collaborations that are nested. My feeling is that, in fact, we do build on the work of other humanists, often “nesting” or “radiating” our contributions from the approaches that compels us. The various extrapolation of say Foucault’s genealogies in other terrains of human culture seems like work that is radiates or nests within the humanities. Or Braverman’s or Jameson’s efforts to reorient Marxism to new economic relationships. The other argument that I would make is that our collaboration is not based on consensus, but highly productive and democratic dissensus (here alluding to Ranciere). Disagreement and incommensurability seem like important features of the humanities—maybe even our most potent slogans.

Communication—Echoing a theme that Liu began our class, it appears these methods also promise vital ways of communicating what we do—to those outside our discipline. Here I would also collapse the pedagogic uses that we elaborated. Even among our community, visualization appears as a powerful form of rhetoric. I wonder whether it is in fact a democratic form, whether it can spoken back to. I don’t think the answer is no, necessarily. The art of George Legardy that Liu shared seemed to suggest otherwise, even though the discourse had to be policed and the algorithm pre-set.

Creativity—Perhaps the most compelling feature of the methods is the promise for play. Many of us pointed to the ludic qualities of the work, offering us inspiration. Here we might also place the kinds of defamiliarizations that these methods work over on the objects under scrutiny. The quality of pleasure seeks to key on the work of interpretation as well, which seems to return us to how “homed” these methods are in the humanities.