The Digital Text and the Choice of Digital Humanities

Abstract

A part from the fact that the humanities are studied within a mixed ecology between print and digital, and where the latter is tending to prevail, the article questions how much the change of scope leads the humanities to the threshold of a new paradigm, or whether the concepts, methods and ideas that have traditionally been the humanities are still valid even in this new environment. To answer this question, the article attempts to address the topic of the text and its possible practical and theoretical variations from digitization. The text plays a major role within the humanities because it is at the same time, the primary object of study, knowledge production and dissemination. The article argues that although digitalization requires us to redefine our notion of 'text' because it has changed its nature and has opened an intense discussion about what this is, is not broken either theoretically or practically with the paradigm of what is printed. Theories of digital text developed by Dino Buzzetti, Manfred Thaller, Jerom McGann and Paul Caton as well as the very concept of coding SGML / XML / TEI, which will be analyzed in this article, preserve residues on the traditional concept of the text, which show how little the humanities have become detached from notions of print technology.