Transforming Disciplinary Spaces

In the Counter-mapping module, we discussed how geospatial technologies like maps and GIS are being adapted or reclaimed as tools to expose, disrupt, resist, or express disenchantment with unequal systems of power, often leading to political and environmental change. In some cases this still means first learning the tools of those dominant structures, such as colonialism, which brings new questions about the extent to which decolonizing spatial knowledges is possible. Indigenous and feminist scholars, for example, have also put forth remapping and unmapping as more effective approaches to Indigenous (and other anti-colonial) forms of spatial justice.

Geographers and historians are also turning the lens back on their own disciplinary histories to acknowledge and work to repair the harms caused by colonial knowledge production, including associated practices of mapping, collecting, exploration, field research, and extraction. This kind of reckoning has been long overdue; despite being an uncomfortable and slow process, is a necessary form of reflection required to move toward more hopeful futures within and beyond the disciplines. In the digital and spatial humanities, these lessons from the past will help inform approaches of the future, and will provide important context for working through new challenges that arise through increasingly digital landscapes of learning.

What kinds of transformations are both necessary and possible in the digital and spatial humanities to build more equitable and robust scholarship? These are not simple questions to answer, but one can look to the counter-movements occurring within and beyond academic spaces, many of which have mobilized through social media and other online communities.

One example is #TransformDH:

an academic guerrilla movement seeking to (re)define capital-letter Digital Humanities as a force for transformative scholarship by collecting, sharing, and highlighting projects that push at its boundaries and work for social justice, accessibility, and inclusion.” (#transformDH Tumblr)

In calling for transformation of a discipline that demands space for anti-racist, feminist, queer, and anti-colonial scholarship, the people behind movements like #TransformDH (many of whom are students) are also re-spatializing the digital humanities, challenging disciplinary boundaries, histories, and traditions along the way. Many other examples can be found in counter-mapping projects shown throughout the course, as well as academic-led initiatives to acknowledge the “uncomfortable histories” of institutional knowledge production (recall, for example, the “Uncomfortable Oxford” walking tour project).

All of these examples draw on critical approaches that both identify, and work to repair, different forms of injustice. We delve further into this notion of repair below.