Tussen de regels. Representatie-kritiek in de Digital Humanities

Samenvatting

Traditionally, the critique of literary representation hinges on ‘symptomatic’ forms of reading in which textual elements are regarded as expressive of deeper ideological issues. In the Digital Humanities, textual approaches are operationalised that target measurable elements on the textual surface. For a digitally oriented critique of representation, this creates a tension between the text’s surface and its ‘hidden’ depths that reside between the lines. In this contribution, the merits and pitfalls of a Digital Humanities critique of representation are considered by focusing on character representation in literature. It is argued that symptomatic and surface reading are not mutually exclusive, but can potentially enhance one another, provided that one stays clear from problem solving rhetoric and neopositivist assumptions.