“Against the Cultural Singularity: Digital Humanities and Critical Infrastructure Studies.” Workshop on “Frontiers of DH: Humanities Systems Infrastructure,” University of Canterbury. 12 November 2015. (Lecture delivered as part of a series in New Zealand during Fulbright Specialist residency at U. Canterbury, October-November, 2015.)

  • Abstract: Following up on the question asked in the title of his 2012 essay “Where is Cultural Criticism in the Digital Humanities?”, Alan Liu will present drafts from a book that imagines modes of cultural criticism–in particular, critical infrastructure studies–appropriate and native to the digital humanities. His talk focuses on the role of technology infrastructure in (and between) neoliberalism’s major “knowledge work” institutions (including higher education). Can digital humanities research and development be redirected from being primarily instruments of institution work to becoming also ways to act on institutions and their wider social impact, in part through intelligent and ethical interventions in infrastructure? How do specifically digital humanities research and teaching infrastructures fit in that enterprise, which resembles but differs from “enterprise technology systems”?
  • Video Video of the lecture. (55 min.)