both are pulling on the same brittle levers that have made the contemporary social, economic, and political environment so lawless.
As public historians, what are we to do about this? There are a lot of issues highlighted here, but let’s start at the most basic. It takes nothing to delete the record. The fragility of materials online is both a danger, and an opportunity, for us. Some scholars have “gone rogue” in trying to deal with this problem. That is to say, they neither sought nor obtained permission. They just scoped out a process, and did it.
I initially called this class ‘guerrilla public digital history’ partly tongue in cheek. I imagined us doing some augmented reality type projects in public spaces. Reprogramming those public spaces. Using digital techs to surface hidden histories, and insert them into spaces where they didn’t ‘belong’. Counterprogramming. That was the ‘guerrilla’ bit.
I still want to do all that. But I think we’re going to have to do a bit more. Digital Public Historians have a role to play I suspect in countering the information power asymmetry. These ways are impromptu, without authorization. Rogue. Improvised.
What is a ‘guerrilla digital public history’?
I’m still not sure- but let’s find out together.
The Question
[…a guerrilla narrative is the] interrupting [of] mainstream organized narratives through counter hegemonic storytelling, and the sabotage of toxic narratives … particularly those which reproduce or silence injustice… Methodologically, adopting a guerrilla narrative approach implies a commitment towards the co-design and co-production of knowledge and the recognition of storytelling as a fundamental tool in this process. - Iengo, Ilenia and Armiero, M. The politicization of ill bodies in Campania, Italy. Journal of Political Ecology 24 (2017) http://jpe.library.arizona.edu/volume_24/Iengoarmiero.pdf
Guerrilla narrative can also be considered an expansion of the oral history methodology to include word-based memoirs, images, videos, audio recordings, and different forms of art among the different storytelling tools. Moreover, the expression guerrilla narrative implies the exercise of storytelling as a deliberate counter-hegemonic strategy, with an explicit political aim. - Ilenia Iengo and Marco Armiero “Toxic Bios: A guerrilla narrative project mapping contamination, illness and resistance” 3 Nov 2017 https://entitleblog.org/2017/11/03/toxic-bios-a-guerrilla-narrative-project-mapping-contamination-illness-and-resistance/
What are the stories in Ottawa that require a guerrilla digital public history?
What do you need to know in order to tell such a story?
In this course, we will develop a guerrilla digital public history cookbook and perhaps even put some of it into practice.
Warning
This is a studio course. We will spend very little time in class on readings, as such; when we do discuss such things, it will be to provide context for what we are doing. I’m inspired very much by the work of historian Bill Turkle, who says to his own students in a similar kind of studio-led course,
Most of your in-class time will be devoted to experimenting with various kinds of technologies and learning how to apply them. It is playful and open-ended, and most of the drive has to come from you. I provide tools and equipment, I can show you how it works and suggest ways you might use it, and if you get stuck I can help you figure out a way forward.
That goes for us too.
This can be disappointing if you are expecting a more traditional arrangement. If you want to learn how to do computational analysis of historical texts, I’d suggest the self-directed version of Crafting Digital History would be more appropriate for you. But in this class, we’re doing something very different.
If you have questions or concerns, get in touch right away.
Whether or not you use your own name in any part of your username is up to you - you can be pseudonymous.
Join our class collaborative web annotation group here. If you’ve not used Hypothesis before, here is some help. Hypothesis is a tool for collaborative open annotation and you will get out of it what you put in.
Do I need to be ‘techy’?
What does that mean, ‘techy’? It’s worth pondering. Short answer: no. If you can write an email, there’s nothing we’ll do in this course that is beyond you.
But what happens if something doesn’t work?
That is, in many ways, part of the point. Things will break. It’s when things break that we discover how best they can serve the broader goal. You will keep track of what you do, what you’re thinking, as you experiment and push yourself.
Glorious Failure is as valuable as Glorious Success
An ambitious project that succeeds is just as important to me as an ambitious project that fails spectacularly: both earn high grades! Document everything, and swing for the bleachers. That is the recipe for success. You’re welcome to play it safe, but know that playing it safe leads to lower grades.
Credits
Shawn Graham
I’m Associate Professor of Digital Humanities in the Department of History at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada.
No one is more surprised by this than me.
Interests
Computational Creativity for History & Archaeology
