Sylvia Wynter's Dream

Hey, Jordan here. Jordan Leslie. I’m a student of the Humanities and Education department at the University of The West Indies Mona campus and I’m currently in my final year majoring in Writing, Literature and Publishing. Aside from the fact that Creative Non-Fiction and Digital Media is a mandatory class in completing my degree, I have interests in music, video editing, writing and digital media in general that I am excited to explore in my assignments for this class. I believe even if the class wasn’t mandatory for my degree, I would have still tried to take this course to utilize and grow my skills in digital media which I have been doing since highschool. I’m looking forward to this course and hope to accomplish or, in other words, come out with improved skills and greater knowledge in digital media and other types of writing as an aspiring writer who primarily does fiction. 

After reading Amy Earhart’s article ‘Can Information Be Unfettered? Race and the New Digital Humanities Canon’, I wanted to comment on and further expand her thoughts and the thoughts of others cited throughout the article by giving my thoughts. I specifically want to address the thoughts about inequality in the digital humanities space. 

The article introduces the term ‘digital humanities’ to those who were not familiar with it. This is the intersection of the disciplines of humanities and digital technologies. The article speaks to how traditional canon or hierarchy has been disrupted via the World Wide Web which has allowed for the voices of the minority populations such as people of colour, the queer community and women to be heard whether past or present. There has been a lot of digital recovery of lost text by and about these minority groups that have been brought to scholarly & public attention as well as new work posted by the same groups.

However, Earhart addresses the issue that although these minority groups have this platform for their voices and experiences to be heard and acknowledged, there is an issue with editors and other digital publishing houses such as E-Text Centres, Digital Humanity Centres, Museums & Libraries that dictate what is appropriate to be published with the affiliation of these big institute names which favor traditional voices.

I have to agree that the world wide web has provided an opportunity to minority communities to have a voice and be able to express their thoughts or talk about their experiences. Everyone knows that anyone can pick up a phone, tablet, laptop etc. and type up something and post it within a matter of minutes. As it relates to having institutional affiliation, editors or other digital publishing houses backing these minority groups, it is unfortunate that I think that inequality will always be an issue. Society will always put the rich white straight man at the top of the chain even in the digital humanities space. Whether it be money, respectability, among other things, that rich white straight man will always be prioritize over a person of colour, a woman, a member of the queer community and somebody on the poorer side of the spectrum simply because of the pedestal that society has put that man on above everyone else. Many of the males that fit in that demographic also are not aware that they do have this privilege which is part of the problem of inequality because they refuse to acknowledge it.

What are your thoughts on this conversation and the topic at hand? Do you still think there’s an inequality in digital hummanities?

Until next time!