For our digital humanities project, we would like to make an open access database which centers around the body politic. Jan Radway discusses the body politic in her essay “The Body Project of Girl Zines,” stating, “When thought of as things material and substantive, human and animal bodies seem to begin and end at the surface of the skin. When used metaphorically to refer to the essential part of some thing — the body of a text or the body of the book — that thing itself is understood to be bounded in some identifiable way. Corporate and collective bodies, however, are harder to delineate. What is the body politic? How do we locate it? Where? Who is included and who is not? In this usage, defining the border may be elusive, but that doesn’t make it any less essential to the concept of the body” (224). Radway questions the boundaries and borders of bodies and physical text by thinking through zines fragmenting and restructuring the form of books in hands of riot grrrls. We will expand these ideas from material textuality to the digital realm, specifically the disruption of language and identity through poetry. Our title “Digital Skin” takes from Radway’s line of thinking to reassess the boundaries of identity as well as the boundless borders of digital databases.
Poetry is a place where the fractured self can amalgamate into complicated bodies, creating intense juxtaposition and questioning the categories we implement upon the self. As co-presidents of the disability student organization, we want to have a forum in which people can learn and discuss about the ways people generate power around the body and how the body is normativized. Our project will work to collect various poetry projects, including online journals, relevant poetic articles and essays, and visual digital works, in order to generate a space for conversation around these forms. And so, our collection will feature poetry centered around body politics with a strong focus on disability, its intersection with race, gender, and sexuality, and a focus on the power dynamics inherent in these classifications.
There has recently been much discussion in academic circles about the silences present within the archive. For instance, the most recent issue of Social Text is devoted to thinking about the silences of the archive and recovery. In “Post-Archive: The Humanities, the Archive, and the Database,” Tara McPherson states “From Michel Foucault’s framing of the archive as a space of enunciation, as the site for what can be said and known, to Jacques Derrida’s fragmentary and feverish archive, scholars have delineated the archive as a complex and contradictory site of power, ideology, and control. The scholarship of the archive is rich and far-reaching if also multi-vocal and sometimes abstract. We have learned of the archive’s deep complicity with empire and the colonial (Stoler 2010; Richards 1993), of its many erasures (Steedman 2002; Hastie 2007)” (McPherson 485). Through the Digital Skin database, we hope to engage in an ongoing conversation around body politics in poetry, particularly focused on disability, race, gender, and sexuality. We hope to approach this collection with a countercultural approach to notions of power, identity, and ideology presented in multi-vocal poetry and ultimately work through the complications of representation and visibility.
We want to both represent and trouble taxonomized identity categories, which
becomes increasingly complicated as databases require metadata in order to make the items searchable as we saw with the exercise for class on Omeka.com. However, as queer theory rightfully critiques taxonomies of identity based on its often violent and pathologizing histories, how do we both inhabit these categories as a means of political and social activism, while simultaneously critiquing the power and potential reductiveness of these identity categories? Poetry is a vehicle for reassembling identity and working within these structural restraints. Collecting poetry that focuses on the body in an online database will hopefully enable and enliven discussions around identity politics and the categories that we are bound to inhabit in the world.
In furthering our aims to broaden the conversation around taxonomized identity, we want to have a way for users to contribute to our site and its workings, in order to approach poetry as an ongoing dialogue. In essence, we will create an online poetry community which can also be accessed and influenced by a multidisciplinary perspective, as well as those outside academic spaces. We hope to learn, as we discuss the ways people are using DH outside of academia in the weeks to come, how others are creating online poetry projects/works, especially unique representations of radical politics. In disability, the digital spaces are important in forming communities for those with restrictions (both physical and mental) that prohibit “showing up” in the physical world. And, when it comes to race and sexuality, and creating these countercultural spheres of influence, physical safety becomes a concern for participation in movements around these politics. So, online spaces are important in the expansion of and participation in identity-forming, generating important resources for those working in these multi-dimensional frames. We want to include these voices in our initial product, while also granting them (and others like them) ways to add to our vision.
Some questions we have:
- We would like to have images included on the site, and not just hyperlinks. How can we structure this so that we can have more of an interactive digital landscape as part of our database?
- We want to think about how this fits in, how it doesn’t fit in, and in what ways it subverts/challenges/etc. literary canonicity. For example, Virginia Woolf’s work can be viewed through the lens of disability, even though it wasn’t necessarily contextualized as that at the time. We are working with very contemporary models, but we wanted ideas on how to pull from these past spaces, and potentially investigate the laid-out frameworks of these works.
- What website should we use to create our project? We’re thinking WordPress so we can use images, but does anyone have any alternate suggestions? Because we also want others to be able to contribute, and just be able to approve their additions on our end.
here’s the link to the manifestos archive. the archive makes an argument for manifestos as politically and culturally driven and often confined within a specific timeframe/epoch/temporal context. I thought it might be relevant as such.
http://www.digitalmanifesto.net/about/
also, if you are considering accepting original submissions, submittable has a free account option (I think they still do, at least) that might be useful!
A suggestion I might have in response to addressing your concern of not wanting to replicate normative structures / sanitized academic language would be to look into the language of manifestos (there are archives of them available online, too). Not suggesting that you use the language of manifestos wholesale, but exploring them might help you think through how you wish to represent/contextualize yourselves and your project.
Also wishing there’d been a bit more visible notations on some of the limitations around the project, your specific identities (and body politics) as editors/curators, as well as a conversation with other projects by disabled writers, writers of color that are currently already in existent.
Another note on “digital skin”: When I think of “skin” in the context of marginalization I can’t not think of Fanon. A nod to that (and other connotations by other disabled writers/writers of color) maybe?
Hey Grace,
I think the manifesto model will allow us to be more specific about our aims, and our positionality. Thank you for sending. I’ve been looking through the Digital Manifesto Archive, and the language they use manages to be precise and delineated, while simultaneously encompassing a breadth of ideas. Seems really useful to pull from, in terms of our project.
On Keiran’s comment, I talked about our conversation concerning Jeremy and I’s positionality, making that apparent, and the problematic, colonizing nature of us categorizing identity for others. As you pointed out, ownership over labels, and how one chooses to determine oneself, seems really important, in order to avoid gatekeeping. Maybe we could have a page for everyone who submits, almost like a profile, where individuals talk about how they identify, and include other interactive data like the art/poetry/writers/models of thinking that influence them. This could be in conversation with their own work, and entirely composed by those who submit to our site. And this way, our metadata wouldn’t put people into categorizes, but instead allow exploration without prescription. We could also include a profile for Jeremy and I, in order to point out our own specific identity politics. This would highlight our position, as well as put us on a similar level to contributors. If you have any thoughts/criticisms/additions, would love to hear.
At your suggestion, I’m looking into talking with those who have done projects in a similar vein, in order to see how they chose to work through the submission process. Like Alex said on his post, this project would ideally function with a panel which included writers of color. As things move forward, at the very least we will discuss with writers of color how best to frame and mold our site, in order to be responsible and aware of the larger power dynamics at play (especially concerning Jeremy and I’s stance as white grad students in academic spaces).
And, in terms of the word “skin”, and the theories which deal with that, we definitely have to include thinkers who identify as intersecting, diverse bodies, i.e. writers of color, disabled persons, etc. To frame such a site without these inclusions/awareness is, as you said, irresponsible. If you have any more suggestions, along with your one about Fanon, we would really appreciate it (if you have the inclination/time!). Again, thanks for having these conversations with me, and holding us accountable.
This is a great idea. I especially like the idea of pairing (otherwise previously unrelated?) images with poems. I think it would be helpful for y’all to maybe start this crowd-sourcing with a couple of your own pairings (here the poems about bodies in Toomer’s “Cane” come to mind as a possible site of inquiry) to set a template for users.
As for how you’ll display your images, this project seems like it might benefit from something interactive for its aesthetics. Since you are dealing with works across a large timespan, maybe a timeline plugin would be cool. I think something like that would provide both some structural organization for your database, and also some accessibility for contributors. I know Omeka has the plugins you would need for both a timeline (http://omeka.org/add-ons/plugins/neatlinetime/) and for contributions (http://omeka.org/add-ons/plugins/contribution/); and other sites (like WordPress) offer similar extensions.
This is a great idea! A few things that come to mind:
1) I really love your idea for an inclusive, collaborative database that addresses a blind spot in the canon/popular imagination. I also understand your reasoning for avoiding identity politics. But all of that has put you in the position of being “editors” of a database/publication platform that’s based on a pretty big, abstract theme (“poetry centered around body politics with a strong focus on disability, its intersection with race, gender, and sexuality, and a focus on the power dynamics inherent in these classifications.”) How can you be inclusive while keeping your selections topical? How often do you imagine rejecting a submission, and on what grounds? When building your initial set of poetry/images, how will you decide what to include? This seems much more challenging (and probably more rewarding) than building a database of, say, poetry by disabled writers.
2) It might be interesting to try to pair up images with poems. These could be either suggestions or submissions from your community. Users could submit their own images to pair with, say, a Woolf text, which would allow them to “interact” with and possibly take some ownership of a canonical work. Similarly, users could suggest existing artwork to pair with an original poem. Using a voting system might make users who don’t submit content feel like part of the creative community.
Kieran,
Funny that you mention this because this is the exact discussion Shannon and I have been having about this project… and we still don’t really have a clear idea, but since we are both categorizing our database through metadata while also complicating the way these categories are imposed on bodies, we are trying to navigate this carefully. Shannon brought up a great example, which maybe she can elaborate on more thoroughly, called Luna Luna, which she found and we included on our Mulimodal Occult Omeka site earlier in the semester. It has an interesting focus on bodies, while simultaneously attempting to represent non-normative bodies. Again, Shannon can speak more to this, but I do remember that as an example she brought up about this conundrum while we were talking. This becomes part of the trickiness of both inclusion and multiplicity, right? We’re both trying to enable discussion around intersectional identities without privileging one over another, but this bind becomes increasingly harder to navigate when attempting to select what pieces to include, so ultimately, what I’m saying is that I totally agree, and this will become more and more apparent and an ongoing dialogue with the database.
I feel like you’re reading our minds! This is actually how this project began, but we were wary about having to time to create something alone these lines after discussing it for a while. We started this with thinking about how visuals and poetry could speak to each other, which we would still like to explore, but then as we have been discussing this idea throughout the semester, we came to the conclusion that we are more interested in focusing on body politics, which doesn’t mean that it couldn’t include a visual component, but we are also trying to be cognizant of how much we can really accomplish in one semester. However, I love this idea of users interacting with canonical texts as a way to make it their own…. Shannon, what do you think about this? This might be extremely useful and definitely a political approach to thinking about literary databases and canonicity.
Hey Keiran,
I don’t think we want to avoid identity politics. We want to think about how those categories are organized, and the history behind that categorization. And, how people are using those categories, both today and in the past, to construct their sense of self in a muti-faceted, entangled world.
Grace addressed some of your points in a conversation I had with her today, which dealt with the problems in constructing such a site. This categorization we’re implementing can be problematic in terms of a colonising, westernized narrative: us taking these identity labels and placing them on those we decide to include in our database. And placing them on those who submit, who might not identify with how we construct our site’s markers/metadata. There needs to be a level of ownership over one’s own distinct identification, for those we have as part of our ongoing dialogue. Maybe we could have a description of how people identify – as complicated bodies – as part of the submission? This could be creative, illustrative, interactive, etc.: as broad or specific as those who are part of our site choose. And then, those who submit can construct individualized profiles around themselves and their submission, instead of us putting them into systematic categories? This way, these identity pieces would be part of the composition of the site, and part of its process of inclusion, without us being the arbitrators.
Grace pointed out the limitations for Jeremy and I, as white grad students in academia, to assess the inclusions of these diverse bodies working in diverse spaces. And, what it means for us to be talking about a body politic through the traditionally white field of the digital humanities, from our specific perspective. Our questions should include how we might address this limitation, and in what ways can we create a comprehensive database without becoming entitled gatekeepers; how can we be responsible and aware of our positionality, while also acknowledging/including these intersecting identities and their connection to disability? Jeremy and I will talk more about this, and the potential for individualized pages, as we continue our planning process. But if anyone else has ideas, we would love to hear.
And yes, I think the interactive landscape is a great idea. If we do have individual pages for each person, it could be interesting to have pictures, and multimedia interaction as part of how people are constructing identity. And, how they feel their work, and sense of self, is influenced by other writers, poets, etc. This could include canonical writers, and how people are re-interpreting them through their own specific practice. I think this could be a really cool combination of ideas, and a way for people to illustrate their poetic process, as well as how this poetic process is linked to these larger conversations/histories.
I really like this idea of bodies and challenging identities and labels. It makes me think of a work that Hayles talks about in My Mother Was a Computer. It’s a narrative rather than a poem, but perhaps this is something that you would enjoy regardless since it fits so well with your focus. The story is Patchwork Girl by Shelly Jackson (http://www.eastgate.com/catalog/PatchworkGirl.html), which is a re-telling of Frankenstein, if Mary Shelley had created the female companion for Frankenstein’s creature. But, this piece is a hypertext so it challenges definitions of literature, sexuality, the body, sharing bodies, what it means to have a body (exactly what you want to explore in your project). Also, in My Mother Was a Computer, she talks about a couple of other interesting short stories (so again not really poems) but they deal with the physical body and attaching that body to the digital and what that means for us.
Also, I like the idea of users contributing to your site! Caroline and I want a similar plug for our site, particularly images as well! We are still working this out, but I was wondering if we could even create a Pinterest page or a Tumblr channel or page that users could easily work in and be a part of and then incorporate this into our interfaces. Still working that out. Let me know what you decide for crowd sourcing!
Heather,
Thanks so much! This is definitely in the vein of how Shannon and I are thinking of our project. We have toyed with the idea of incorporating visual and digital poetry into the database, as well. I remember Lauren mentioning that Lara Glenum has some online digital poetry projects that we might also try and put on there, especially as her work thinks a lot about bodies.
Patchwork Girl looks great! I’m definitely going to look more into that. Hayles is definitely a great example of how we are thinking of approaching this project, particularly as we are getting very meta with our theoretical frame and even attempting to question metadata itself and the categories that bodies often get lumped into in these kinds of databases. Not that this is always a bad things, but something we are trying to draw into question.
I love the idea of an additional social media component to this. I think that would add a great dimension to it that might not fully be captured by just a database. Will do! We should stay in contact about this, as well, since it sounds we are definitely approaching our projects similarly.
Just wanted to let you know that you can set up a WordPress site so that anyone can contribute and submit it for your review. On your general settings page you’d check the box to allow anyone to register and then change the new user default role to contributor. One problem you might have is spam accounts, which I don’t have an immediate answer for.
Thanks, Sarah! This is what Shannon and I were thinking with WordPress since it seems to be easy enough to do for class. Good to know!