An analysis of visual epistemology in the digital humanities, with
attention to the need for interpretive digital tools within humanities
contexts.
In the several decades since humanists have taken up computational
tools, they have borrowed many techniques from other fields, including
visualization methods to create charts, graphs, diagrams, maps, and
other graphic displays of information. But are these visualizations
actually adequate for the interpretive approach that distinguishes much
of the work in the humanities? Information visualization, as practiced
today, lacks the interpretive frameworks required for
humanities-oriented methodologies. In this book, Johanna Drucker
continues her interrogation of visual epistemology in the digital
humanities, reorienting the creation of digital tools within humanities
contexts.
Drucker examines various theoretical understandings of visual images and
their relation to knowledge and how the specifics of the graphical are
to be engaged directly as a primary means of knowledge production for
digital humanities. She draws on work from aesthetics, critical theory,
and formal study of graphical systems, addressing them within the
specific framework of computational and digital activity as they apply
to digital humanities. Finally, she presents a series of standard
problems in visualization for the humanities (including
time/temporality, space/spatial relations, and data analysis), posing
the investigation in terms of innovative graphical systems informed by
probabilistic critical hermeneutics. She concludes with a final brief
sketch of discovery tools as an additional interface into which modeling
can be worked.
