Center for Uncertainty Studies Blog

© Tessa Gengnagel / CCeH

In past Uncertainty Talks, Miriam Posner (UCLA) talked about data and uncertainty in the humanities, and David Tuckett (London) presented ambivalence as a way forward in decision-making theories. In her Uncertainty Talk on "The Ambivalence of Humanistic Knowledge Production in Times of Digital Upheaval," Tessa Gengnagel draws strong connections to these previous talks and expands questions to her own field of research, which revolves around the theory of digital humanities and digital editions. More than once, digital editions serve as examples to illustrate challenges in digital humanities dealing with uncertainty. The researcher, who works in the management of the influential Cologne Center for eHumanities (CCeH), dives deep into the controversies surrounding digital humanities as a field, reaching far back to the late 1950s, when the discussions about "two cultures" (C. P. Snow) started and humanities computing (with researchers like Roberto Busa) first emerged. Questions of contradictions within the field and the lack of a foundational theory lead Gengnagel to explore topics of knowledge production, reproduction, representation, and retrieval.

She therefore references newer approaches like those of Bernard Dionysius Geoghegan: "This means present struggles over cultural analytics cannot be addressed in terms of two cultures or simplified oppositions between data and theory. Rather, the problem of cultural theory is immanent to digital humanities; conversely, digitization and communication theory structure cultural theory and its notion of signifying systems." (Code: From Information Theory to French Theory (2023), p. 175)

Gengnagel ends her Uncertainty Talk by stating the role digital humanities might have to play in the trust economy of our times. At the forefront, she sees efforts to order complexity while reflecting on the limited ability of representation: we can acknowledge that there always will be blind spots and uncertainty will remain. The lively discussion between the speaker, CeUS members, and external guests following the talk brought up further challenges, as well as questions about how the digital humanities can teach society (within certain limits) about modeling, standardization, and transparency.

The conversation continues with the next Uncertainty Talk on July 8th featuring Maida Kosatica (Duisburg-Essen) and "Wounds that don’t heal easily: Profiling the Language of Uncertainty." More information can be found on the CeUS website.