The Problem of Quantitative Reduction
The relatively new field or discipline of the digital humanities has not been without criticism, both externally and within the discipline itself. These critiques are wide-ranging and include multiple aspects of the digital humanities. Some scholars have raised concerns about the quantifying aspects of computational tools applied to the humanities, or “assigning numbers” to traditional objects of humanistic scholarship. It is felt that such practices instrumentalize and monetize these objects, and that statistical analyses on complex artifacts are reductive (Drucker & Bishop, 2019). British art historian Clair Bishop of the City University of New York states: “Statistics are an important part of this banality, but are not the whole story. …it’s all number crunching, and there’s no verbal persuasion” (C. Bishop, in Drucker & Bishop, 2019). For instance, computational techniques applied to art history, such as digital 3D reconstructions of architecture, works of art, and cultural artifacts although useful as supplementary techniques, have been described as problematic because of “…insufficient attention to art history’s own conventions, to biases within the canon, and to social and political contexts… Plus, it can be extremely boring and formulaic” (C. Bishop, in Drucker & Bishop, 2019).
Visual theorist and social commentator Johanna Drucker of the University of California, Los Angeles, points out that some computational techniques employed in the digital humanities process digital files that are already greatly remediated by digital methods, and therefore claims about large corpora processed in this way must be approached cautiously. She notes that in the newer humanities fields and subfields that are characterized by their reliance on digital approaches, such as distant reading and cultural analytics, some scholars in these fields hold uncritical views of the computational processing performed on their data (J. Drucker, in Drucker & Bishop, 2019).
Furthermore, as mentioned in the section on close and distant reading, the concept of distant reading, one of the key paradigms in the digital humanities, has been criticized for oversimplifying texts, and may diminish the capacity for critical thinking, leading scholars to inadvertently adopt biased literary viewpoints that are intended to be objective (Ascari, 2014).