Digital Humanities and Transdisciplinary Practice: Towards a Rigorous Conversation

Abstract

The digital humanities is frequently and casually associated with supradisciplinarity; either as multidisciplinarity, interdisciplinarity  or  transdisciplinarity.  This  paper  endeavors to put digital humanities into  a  more  rigorous and critical conversation with the three  forms. Two broad approaches to distinguishing the three supradisciplinary forms are represented, namely, the definitional and theoretical approaches; with the latter emphasized as providing more analytical traction for a critical conversation with the digital humanities. In this regard, the Nicolescuian and Zurich schools of thought on supradisciplinary practice are elaborated with an emphasis on trans- disciplinarity and are identified with a priori and a posteriori theorization, respectively. Digital humanities and its ancestor, humanities computing, are analytically distinguished because the shift in name represents something substantive and consequential for the conversation. Overall, transdisciplinarity is amplified as of particular value for situating and theorizing the activities associated with the digital humanities as part of a new knowledge condition