A Brief Analysis of Text and ASCII Code

To verify that the Lexos hierarchical clustering returns an identical dendrogram whether, in text or in ASCII code, I first cleaned Nathaniel Hawthorne's Blithedale Romance leaving the capital letters as is. I then converted each letter into its ASCII equivalent and then wrote the lines to a new file. I then had two files.

The text file looks like this:

I OLD MOODIE The evening before my departure for Blithedale I was returning to my bachelor apartments after attending the wonderful exhibition of the Veiled Lady when an elderly man of rather shabby appearance met me in an obscure part of the street of my story The reader therefore since I have disclosed so much is entitled to this one word more As I write it he will charitably suppose me to blush and turn away my face I I myself was in love with Priscilla

And, the ascii "out-1.txt file looks like this:

073 079076068 077079079068073069 084104101 101118101110105110103 098101102111114101 109121 100101112097114116117114101 102111114 066108105116104101100097108101 073 119097115 114101116117114110105110103 116111 109121 098097099104101108111114 097112097114116109101110116115 097102116101114 097116116101110100105110103 116104101 119111110100101114102117108 101120104105098105116105111110 111102 116104101 086101105108101100 076097100121 119104101110 097110 101108100101114108121 109097110 111102 114097116104101114 097 115104097098098121 097112112101097114097110099101 109101116 109101 105110 097110 111098115099117114101 112097114116 111102 116104101 115116114101101116 111102 109121 115116111114121 084104101 114101097100101114 116104101114101102111114101 115105110099101 073 104097118101 100105115099108111115101100 115111 109117099104 105115 101110116105116108101100 116111 116104105115 111110101 119111114100 109111114101 065115 073 119114105116101 105116 104101 119105108108 099104097114105116097098108121 115117112112111115101 109101 116111 098108117115104 097110100 116117114110 097119097121 109121 102097099101 073 073 109121115101108102 119097115 105110 108111118101 119105116104 080114105115099105108108097

Both files are much longer than the above samples. The resulting dendrogram from the default settings of Lexos's hierarchical clustering looks like the image below. Heuristically the computer program of Lexos interprets each file exactly the same, and yet each file is very different. The slightly obtuse python code that I used to create the ASCII file and the text file is below. I can make it much prettier, but for now, it is what it is.

\#!/usr/bin/env python3
\# -*- coding: utf-8 -*-
"""
Created on Sun Apr  9 08:49:53 2017

@author: ray

"""
\# An alternative to replacing brackets and parentheses by using regex within python
def remove_bracketed_text_by_regex(text):
   import re
\#    text = re.sub("\(.+?\)", " ", text)         # Remove text between parentheses
\#    text = re.sub("\[.+?\]", " ", text)         # Remove text between square brackets
\#    text = re.sub("\s+", "  ", text).strip() # Remove extra white spaces (optional)
   return text

\# A loop subroutine def that will remove nested brackets and parentheses
def remove_text_inside_brackets(text, brackets="()[]"):
   count = [0] * (len(brackets) // 2) # count open/close brackets
   saved_chars = []
   for character in text:
       for i, b in enumerate(brackets):
           if character == b: # found bracket
               kind, is_close = divmod(i, 2)
               count[kind] += (-1)**is_close # `+1`: open, `-1`: close
               if count[kind] < 0: # unbalanced bracket
                   count[kind] = 0
               break
       else: # character is not a bracket
           if not any(count): # outside brackets
               saved_chars.append(character)
   return ''.join(saved_chars)

\# the cleanstring subroutine def below substitutes one character for another or for nothing if the second quote is left empty. Modify as needed
def cleanString(incomingString):
   newstring = incomingString
   newstring = newstring.replace("a","097")
   newstring = newstring.replace("A","065")
   newstring = newstring.replace("b","098")
   newstring = newstring.replace("B","066")
   newstring = newstring.replace("c","099")
   newstring = newstring.replace("C","067")
   newstring = newstring.replace("d","100")
   newstring = newstring.replace("D","068")
   newstring = newstring.replace("e","101")
   newstring = newstring.replace("E","069")
   newstring = newstring.replace("f","102")
   newstring = newstring.replace("F","070")
   newstring = newstring.replace("g","103")
   newstring = newstring.replace("G","071")
   newstring = newstring.replace("h","104")
   newstring = newstring.replace("H","072")
   newstring = newstring.replace("i","105")
   newstring = newstring.replace("I","073")
   newstring = newstring.replace("j","106")
   newstring = newstring.replace("J","074")
   newstring = newstring.replace("k","107")
   newstring = newstring.replace("K","075")
   newstring = newstring.replace("l","108")
   newstring = newstring.replace("L","076")
   newstring = newstring.replace("m","109")
   newstring = newstring.replace("M","077")
   newstring = newstring.replace("n","110")
   newstring = newstring.replace("N","078")
   newstring = newstring.replace("o","111")
   newstring = newstring.replace("O","079")
   newstring = newstring.replace("p","112")
   newstring = newstring.replace("P","080")
   newstring = newstring.replace("q","113")
   newstring = newstring.replace("Q","081")
   newstring = newstring.replace("r","114")
   newstring = newstring.replace("R","082")
   newstring = newstring.replace("s","115")
   newstring = newstring.replace("S","083")
   newstring = newstring.replace("t","116")
   newstring = newstring.replace("T","084")
   newstring = newstring.replace("u","117")
   newstring = newstring.replace("U","085")
   newstring = newstring.replace("v","118")
   newstring = newstring.replace("V","086")
   newstring = newstring.replace("w","119")
   newstring = newstring.replace("W","087")
   newstring = newstring.replace("x","120")
   newstring = newstring.replace("X","088")
   newstring = newstring.replace("y","121")
   newstring = newstring.replace("Y","089")
   newstring = newstring.replace("z","122")
   newstring = newstring.replace("Z","090")
   newstring = newstring.replace('\/',' ')
   newstring = newstring.replace('"',' ')
   newstring = newstring.replace('.', ' ')
   newstring = newstring.replace(',',' ')
\#    newstring = newstring.replace('\\n','')
   return newstring

f2 = open(r'C:\Users\rayst\Documents\525-DH\texts-for-analysis\ascii\output\Hawthorne-blithedale-romance--ascii-out-1.txt', "w") # open a new file to write to.
\#much of the stuff below is commented out and only there for convenience.
\# the following "for loop" runs the above subroutine defs
\# with open('commentarymagazine_humanities_urls.json', 'r', encoding='utf-8') as f:\n
\# on each line of text in the input file
\# When it reaches the end of file it breaks out of loop.
for line in open(r'C:\Users\rayst\Documents\525-DH\texts-for-analysis\ascii\Hawthorne-blithedale-romance-ascii.txt', "r"):
\# Uncomment the following four lines of code to remove from an asterisk to the end of line. Yeah, so, these are line operations.
\#    head, sep, tail = line.partition('*.')
\#    line = (head)
\#    head, sep, tail = line.partition('Lines')
\#    line = (head)
\# The following line of code removes nested brackets/parens within a line
   line = (repr(remove_text_inside_brackets(line)))
\# The commented line below offers an alternative to the above loop by using regex
\#   line = remove_bracketed_text_by_regex(line)
   line = (repr(cleanString(line))) # this calls the above cleanstring sub for each line
   line = line.replace("'"," ") # this gets rid of any remaining apostrophies
   line = line.replace('\\n',' ')
   line = line.replace('\\',' ')
   line = line.replace("\""," ") # this gets rid of any remaining commas
   line = line.replace('!',' ')
   line = line.replace('?',' ')
   line = line.replace('-',' ')
   line = line.replace(';',' ')
   line = remove_bracketed_text_by_regex(line)
   print(line) # this prints the output to the file in the console screen for monitoring
   f2.write(line) # this writes the line to the cleaned output file
\#    f2.write(r"\n") # this appends each line with a newline

f2.close() # this closes the output file

What I'm getting at is the bias in Topic Modeling and other Digital Humanities research. I'd like to develop a blind experiment to establish the extent to which Digital Humanities is objective. I've been thinking about this since objectivity came up in our WE1S Summer Research Camp discussions. I'm thinking about how to prove with hard evidence that DH is a science. I'm thinking about a mathematician, or geneticist, and a digital humanist arriving at the same technical observations of the outputs--the results produced by the DH science. Perhaps this has all been done before, but in any event, I proved to myself with a fun little experiment that the computer doesn't make choices based on what the tokens are. It processes the relationships (maybe not the order but probably the quantity) of the tokens to one another. The experiment verifies that this is so despite the underlying mathematical proof of hierarchical cluster modeling.

Does Hierarchical Clustering produce different results based on the order of the tokens? If I were a mathematician, I might believe it one way or another. But, this test helps me to visualize what is taking place. The numbers refer to the dendrogram and the word file as much as to any equivalent token set, and it doesn't depend on whether the equivalent token file is made from a 1 to 1 exchange of hexadecimal, binary or pictograph equivalents. I guess what is next needed is something like a diagram that expresses the flow of meaning, from our semiotic registers into the 1s and zeros and then back. What is taking place? Yes, an analysis, but where does that analysis lose those to whom we are advocating for the DH? Our entire world is being digitized and even our brains. What are we losing in the process and how can Digital Humanities help lessen the loss?

The same text to ascii test applied with an actual ascii to text online converter and the topic modeling tool for use that we downloaded gave me the following words from Topic 0 when I converted them from the ASCII coded file of Blithdale Romance: window drawing room hotel curtain front windows city extended dove steps All area places houses curtains boarding cat return doors

When I ran the topic modeling tool with the text version file Topic 0 came out as the following: boat wrong river effort borne act bent coffin drift shore shoe emotion sobs dry yonder methinks base tragedy betwixt tuft

Everything was the same, but likely the seed started at a different token. I need to check into that. Otherwise, I'll have to investigate why there is a difference in topic modeling the ASCII encoded equivalent of a text file.

Continuing on, I ran the topic model again with the same exact set of text files (I used Lexos to cut the files above into 9 segments and then downloaded them. Note that the download segemented files on the Lexos || prepare || cut menu did not seem to work for me so I had to download the cut files from the Manage menu), but this time I got the following list of topics for Topic 0: fauntleroy chamber wealth splendor daughter corner glass saloon drink moodie governor liquor wife condition supposed beautiful cocktails gin feeble message

This indicates to me that the topic modeling tool uses a different seed token to generate Topic 0. Because of the different Topic 0s produced whenever a different seed token is used, I have to question the validity of the topic modeling tool or look into what others say about this issue. If topics may relate to themes based on relative coherence then what I would like to see is an average Topic 0 made from the sums of analyses run from all possible seed tokens. I'd like to concentrate on other topic modeling variables instead of having such an open variable as part of my research.

The above tests helped me realize

1. the meanings of the words are equivalencies of human awareness that the world and life exist.
2. the meaning of the words from a novel written almost 200 years ago remains unchanged even when converted to another code. Humanly readable topics were determined after I switched the topic modeling results back from their ASCII codes to text.
3. the meaning of the words may be analyzed by processes outside the scope of the analyst's knowledge.
4. semantic relationships between words result from computer processes. The topics did seem to have a bit of coherence. On other topic models with rubust data sets, topics have suprisingly uncanny coherence.
5. the code being processed by another auxiliary code is the artificial processing of the awareness that the world and life exist.

On Tolkien, Menus, and Claves

On Tolkien, Menus, and Claves

“Tolkien’s Creation of the Impression of Depth” (2014) by Michael D. C. Drout, Namiko Hitotsubashi, Rachel Scavera reminded me of using Lexos to find record keeping sections of texts within medieval guild texts which were distinctly different than the prose and verse of a medieval compendium. Keeping “Tolkien’s Creation” in mind, how then did the record keeping texts give the overall compendium of texts depth? They did two things for us as novice researchers. First, they provided a level of credibility such that our minds realized for certain that this was a real history written by a scribe (as if in an office separated only by the distance of time?). Second, the level of authenticity associated to accounting and money transferred from the record-keeping texts to the romance novels that we were searching. It gave us a sense that the Middle Age words, even though foreign in their spelling and pronunciation, were words written by people that felt what the words meant.

This led me to question how we come to know anything new to us. Do we go into a new job as if it is a building full of mirrors; blank referents without anything except memories of our own to fill? Are we always walking through life with the mirrors of our previous knowledge that fill the spaces around us such that our preconceived ways prevent us from experiencing the new? Is the filling and refilling of referents a process amenable to modification? Can studying literature help us understand how we exchange our quasi-referents for what we will? What is my personal comfortable level between knowing and not knowing anything?

So, I wondered further about a book that I’m reading by Foucault: The Order of Things (1970). He prefaces it with a section that talks about a Borges passage wherein a “‘a certain’” Chinese encyclopedia’” in which it is written that ‘Animals are divided into (a) belonging to the Emperor, (b) embalmed, (c) tame, (d) sucking pigs, (e) sirens, (f) fabulous, (g) stray dogs, (h) included in the present classification, (i) frenzied, (j) innumerable, (k) drawn with very fine camelhair brush, (l) et cetera, (m) having just broken the water pitcher, (n) that from a long way off look like flies’” The classification by enumeration is the only thing that seems to make sense. But, the heterogeneity of the disassociated referents listed produces a “‘loss to what is “common” to place and name” (xix). And further according to the author, “heterotopias [such as this Borges quote] desiccate speech, stop words in their tracks, contest the very possibility of grammar at its source; they dissolve our myths and sterilize the lyricism of our sentences” (xviii).

Whereas, according to the authors of “Tolkien’s Creation,” “[t]raditional referents are thus often efficient ways of solving problems of the interlinking of form and content” (174), the text of Borges appears at first a categorization preventing referents from connecting to one another. Yet there is the reference to a Chinese dictionary that lists things as such. Therefore, the narrator references China as culturally similar to the above categorization. The point that I want to make about reading “Tolkien’s Creation of the Impression of Depth” is that Borges’s quote rests at a value related to how close a referent may be to a traditional referent. In Borges’s case, the referents listed weren’t merely broken, they dissolve or prevent “efficient ways of solving problems of interlinking form and content.” This made me want’ to add the term of anti-referent to the various types of referents. Or, in other words, anti-referents would be referents that have a value of absolute resistance to becoming referents; proportional to the unorderly way the images collate in the mind. To me, then Borges establishes a cultural view of China as a place that is beyond categorization in our western sense of order: it is culturally anti-referent to the way we understand things. As Foucault says, “There would appear to be, then, at the other extremity of the earth we inhabit, a culture entirely devoted to the ordering of space, but one that does not distribute the multiplicity of existing into any of the categories that make it possible for us to name, speak, and think” (xix).

This made me think of the first essay that I read for this week "Against Cleaning" and Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing’s "On Nonscalability." So what can be determined to be scalable, or like the way I’m thinking, put into an automated process such as Lexos? Could a program or Lexos locate within Borges’s texts the heterotopias or for that matter the menus that are nonscalable in “Against Cleaning?” Would these things show up as lexomic claves?
In “Tolkien’s Creation” the authors noted what they determined by typical literary analysis, things such as stylistic differences, poetic interpolation, pseudo-references, broken references, “anaphora, alliteration, rhyme, polysyndeton, parataxis octosyllabic rhyming couplets, and repetition . . . There are passages, short strings of sentences, individual sentences or even single clauses which read as if they were poetry adapted to prose” (184-85). How much of critical literary research may be automated? Were the authors suggesting that the effective use of lexomics and to a large part Digital Humanities is for determining authorship and wildly differing portions of text rather than the subtleties of literary analysis? I know better, but since the authors never mentioned exactly what machine learning could and couldn’t do I became suspect.

Processing massive amounts of texts warrant more specialized programming such as in the “Against Cleaning” menu project, whereas the study conducted in “Tolkien’s Creation” warranted the processing by the Lexos pre-existing software for a single particular purpose. The authors made an appropriate choice of machine learning and standard critical literary analysis. The nuances of style related to a research project, versus the effort to write or find software that could analyze what you are looking for is always a compromise. Without being explicitly programmed, machine learning produced statistical analysis appropriate to the way the authors of “Tolkien’s Creation” achieved their goals. Each DH project must be evaluated according to its needs.

Here is the Dendrogram that shows the accounting/record-keeping in the latter sections of Common Place Books when compared with Canterbury Tales.

Different Ways We Get to Here

S. Ramsay

"Here” is the finished literary article, story, or as in the case of Stephen Ramsay's essay "The Hermeneutics of Screwing Around" (2010), the research--the incentive to search. Ramsay mentions two ways to get here, the first being "some coherent, authoritative path through what is known" (1), and the second, screwing around browsing the web while letting the mind hop connected neuronal link (web page) to neuronal link (web page) to some kind of hyper-realization that this is what I've been looking for. One is pragmatic while the other is anarchic. Each has its benefits. I remember Derrida saying something like (air quotes) he believes formal education is necessary but should be forgotten (air quotes). What I'm getting at is that we need a pragmatic way to establish a base from which to launch our missiles of individuality. The conformity to standards "'a science, a method, a research, a pedagogy'" gives us a way to as the author says, to "understand each path through the vast archive as an important moment in the world's duration--as an invitation to community, relationships, and play" (Ramsay 2010, 9). These "paths" are themes and genres, possibly obscure, but connected streams of information that pass through territories of research materials to supply the common elements and minerals of our analyses. It is the job of [Topic modeling] in the Digital Humanities to first comprise an archive of texts (corpus) and then connect the paths into a map of the topic model to see which themes (topics) we are interested in. With a base built from the topic modeler we have a choice and freedom to go wherever our individuality takes us. Nonetheless, this still leaves us with the aesthetic issue of human creativity which some think may be lost through topic modeling.

S. Marche

Unlike Stephen Marche's essay "Literature Is not Data: Against Digital Humanities" (2012) wherein the author claims that "Literature cannot meaningfully be treated as data," I find the connections in the data that Digital Humanities provides to be of prime importance. Only after reading Lisa Samuels and Jerome McGann's essay "Deformance and Interpretation" (1999), a kind of precursor to Digital Humanities did I feel that I had a somewhat scientific knowledge of what poetry is--that sensation of something more, beyond the hint that language is capable of. In their treatment of poetry the author's state:

L. Samuels

J. McGann

It can be the sound the syllable makes in the spoken version of its written production—the life of its print, the sign of the imperative that the marks of printed language are only one part of a language event also spoken. The syllable of a syllable can also be the letters which are the smallest units of any syllable, the shifting territory between and alongside phonemes and morphemes, as well as phonemes and morphemes themselves. It can also be the idea of the syllable, the Platonic syllable’s “signified.” Stevens’s phrase, as we grope to explain it, to paraphrase it, emerges as an image of something we do not know. The insight into the aesthetic value of the results produced by Digital Humanities never leaves the mind of the researcher. Through "technical" deformance of poems, we as literary students gain a better knowledge of literary forms.

S. Selisker

H. S. Syme

The two critiques of Marche’s essay by Scott Selisker, “The Digital Humanities?,” and Holger Schott Syme, “Imaginary Targets” explain in detail the logical problems with the essay and go on to talk about how Digital Humanities helps solve “literary--historical problems.” To me, Digital Humanities treats data as “facts and statistics collected together for reference or analysis;” collected from texts, as information, as elements--tokens--words separated by spaces,--drawn from digital streams of 1s and 0s to allow us to search at the periphery of what “emerges as an image of something we do not know:” DH allows us to study how meaning manifests and to further examine the reason, as Marche puts it, “why words seem to mean so much more than they mean.” “What Happens When an Algorithm Helps Write Science Fiction” (2017) by Stephen Marche documents an attempt to write a story with words that mean more than they mean. Contrary to the author’s implied claim five years earlier that DH algorithms can’t achieve the status as producer of aesthetic value, within this essay he states he is searching for a “technology that can make [him] better at [his] job [as a writer of science fiction]”--a Digital Humanities technology. And further, he takes his editor’s comment of “‘the fact that it’s [the story written with such technology by him] not that bad is kind of remarkable,’’’ as a compliment.

Obviously, the author had a change of heart after more closely working with Digital Humanities. I think this is what happens to most literary scholars when they delve into DH. First, they have an aversion to it because of the technical barriers, and then they see that the secret they sought in the humanities might be better detailed by using Digital Humanities. Then, they find they are "here," on a map, at the front advocating for Digital Humanities.

Bibliography

.	Marche, Stephen. n.d. “Literature Is Not Data: Against Digital Humanities.” Los Angeles Review of Books. Accessed September 15, 2018. https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/literature-is-not-data-against-digital-humanities/.

.	Ramsay, Stephen. “The Hermeneutics of Screwing Around; or What You Do with a Million Books,” n.d., 9.

.	Samuels, Lisa, and Jerome J. McGann. “Deformance and Interpretation.” New Literary History, vol. 30, no. 1, Feb. 1999, pp. 25–56. Project MUSE, doi:10.1353/nlh.1999.0010.

.	Syme, Holger S., and Scott Selisker. “In Defense of Data: Responses to Stephen Marche’s Literature Is Not Data.’” Los Angeles Review of Books. Accessed September 13, 2018. https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/in-defense-of-data-responses-to-stephen-marches-literature-is-not-data/.

.	“What Happens When an Algorithm Helps Write Science Fiction | WIRED.” Accessed September 13, 2018. https://www.wired.com/2017/12/when-an-algorithm-helps-write-science-fiction/.

A Critique of Kirschenbaum’s Essay Based On What Liu Already Said

Kirschenbaum’s essay, “What is ‘Digital Humanities,’ and Why Are They Saying Such Terrible Things About It?” (2014), speaks as if the Digital Humanities were different, as a construct, as if it were different from any other developing discipline. But, even old disciplines if seen from far enough away allow one to imagine them as constructs or dwellings surrounded by space. His essay attempts to define the Digital Humanities at a particular state during its development (2014) by analyzing the way the term “Digital Humanities” surfaces in speech and writing. To me, this type of critique is vacuous in that it may be either reduced or expanded to the zero point of meaning over time. Except in reference to Liu’s essay, “The Meaning of the Digital Humanities” (2013). He talks about the conception people have rather than explicitly stating that Digital Humanities is a defined discipline. In other words, the author implies that the way that people talk about a discipline can in some way alter the results and methods that that discipline produces. I can say, as a member of the What Every 1 Says project and a former member of many projects at Jet Propulsion Laboratories, that Digital Humanities functions as a discipline.

Digital Humanities produces results, none less than an astrophysics or mechanical engineering department. It is the lack of what the Digital Humanities produces in Kirschenbaum’s essay that I found conspicuous and a detraction to his consistent use of a “construct” (without a center, postmodern) analogy. Digital Humanities produces results such as finding that the frequency of the word “the” may be used to question why “the” appears more in Gothic novels than in other genres. Another result is that books of a specific genre may be found within a compendium of books. And according to Liu, the Digital Humanities utilizes a method of “multimodal, dynamic, and participatory design ”to arrive “pattern understanding;” Science and Technology “is [a] method for knowing meaning in the digital humanities” (Liu 416). Use value and knowledge, of the methods and results, produced by Digital Humanities are what disciplines create.

Liu focuses his “essay on digital literary studies” and how the digital humanities arrives at meaning valued by humanists (Liu 420). The meaning of what the Digital Humanities is is what defines the discipline, and this is what Liu describes in his essay. By explaining how the quantitative results, the numbers crunched by the computer, arrive at semantic meaning which originated in the HTOED, are carried through to the analysis, he shows the reader that themes generated by a computer software program aid in the critique of many volumes of literature. According to Liu,

> Lines of interpretation generated by machine observation--”supported the author's [of the software called the correlator] thesis that the “‘values of conduct and social norms’” in “‘knowable communities’” declined in the face of “‘urbanization, industrialization, and new stages of capitalism’” and “the discovery of precise word cohorts [semantically established through the use of the HTOED] giving genuinely fresh insight into the thesis, enables [the authors] . . . to offer more recognizable normative literary and cultural criticism, touching on action, setting, and character. (413-14)

In this way then Liu reveals that Digital Humanities is a disciplinary identity of the Humanities--Digital Humanities has as its basis the humanities.

Since Liu had already defined the Digital Humanities as a discipline, and since Kirschenbaum references Liu’s essay I found Kirschenbaum a bit disingenuous in his definition of the Digital Humanities as a kind of evolving consensus of discourse about the Digital Humanities. Kirschenbaum even admits so far as to say “of course one should ask questions about any set of disciplinary practices as visible and prodigious as digital humanities” and further: “‘digital humanities’” is, in fact, a diversified set of practices, one whose details and methodologies responsible critique has a responsibility to understand and engage” (Kirschenbaum 14). So, the author of “What is ‘Digital Humanities,’ and Why Are They Saying Such Terrible Things About It?” uses a postmodern construct focused at the edges--discourse about what the digital humanities is-- when it is an already defined (by Liu in 2013, one year before Kirschenbaum’s essay) and growing discipline. The same type of critique concerning language used by people speaking about the intersection of disciplines may be made at any time, but it is especially disheartening to see an author throw mud on a previously defined discipline as it struggles to become more broadly known.

I recognize the value of Kirschenbaum’s critique because it describes ways that people may talk about what Digital Humanities is and how discourse defines a discipline. But, because he speaks as if the dialogue about the Digital Humanities defines the Digital Humanities he misses the point of Liu’s essay which is that the digital humanities is a disciplinary identity of the humanities. Kirschenbaum, in my opinion, would have better stated his title as “At the periphery of the Digital Humanities: How people speak about unknown disciplines.”

                              Works Cited

Kirschenbaum, M. “What Is ‘Digital Humanities,’ and Why Are They Saying Such Terrible Things about It?” Differences 25, no. 1 (January 1, 2014): 46–63. https://doi.org/10.1215/10407391-2419997.

Liu, A. Y. “The Meaning of the Digital Humanities” 128, no. 2 (March 1, 2013): 409–23.                              https://doi.org/10.1632/pmla.2013.128.2.409.

The Brain and Identity: Breaking Down Barriers of Separateness by Teaching Children a New Perspective

I set out to find a method to mitigate social divisiveness and to locate research that supports a pedagogy based on a neurological perspective of who and what we are. In support of such a perspective, I found much reference material, and I found technological reasons for teaching kids neurology.

The question that I ask is not whether identity can be perceived differently to oneself because of physical and mental characteristics that change over time, but rather whether or not a person considers themselves to be the same person over time and what that self that identity has neurologically in common with everyone else. Despite our differences, can equanimity arise naturally out of the realization of our neurological similarities and possibilities? I think so.

To conceive of the neurological perspective that I propose integrating into the current curriculum as part of science which is already taught as early as first grade, I’ve arranged a video that is more telling than I could do with words.

YouTube Video

The brain is a nonlinear dynamical system that changes somewhat chaotically dependent on the input. Our concept of identity to ourselves and others is malleable. Even though people look different and act differently, others may not be who or what we think of them at the time we are making our judgments. And, they may be different (due to the brain's emergent property) now and in the future both from our perspective and from theirs. It is time to teach grade schoolers our neurological similarities because all of us are the results of our brain's activity.

Final Paper 14 May 2018

The Brain and Identity: Breaking Down Barriers

of Separateness by Teaching Children a New Perspective

According to Jacques Lacan, children become aware of themselves as an object during the mirror phase from approximately the age of 6-18 months (Lacan 503). Our sense of identity develops further through friends, associates, and affiliations. Then come the mid-life crises followed by a search for what it is that we missed and will find in challenging experiences most suited to our personalities. Along the way, through postcolonialism and various literary theories, we are taught to embrace our language and our culture. These critical and valid theories help create "a positive ethnic identity [that] is associated with higher self-esteem and better grades, as well as better relations with family and friends" (The Gale Group). However, a perception of our differences as members of races and as members of cultures becomes accentuated in political discourse known as identity-politics which is meant constructively for consciousness-awareness. The further heightening of our differences along racial lines occurs through the exploitation by political parties and through corporate media that seeks to divide cultures and peoples from one another along partisan lines. How can we maintain stable psychology and be of benefit to those around us when we are isolated and alienated from our attempts at achieving social justice?

Many solutions to the problem of divisiveness in the present may be applied, but as a means to resolve divisiveness over the long term, I propose that we begin teaching grade schoolers what it means from a neurological perspective to be human. An instilled neurological attitude that makes apparent that identity results as a consequence of our brain activity may be relied upon during times of psychological stress, and it may keep projections of our non-integrated identities from falling to the perils of political propaganda and collectivism. If we learn to understand what we are and are not, at an early age, as we grow older, we will be prepared to accept who we are in the present and embrace what neuroscience will bring to our future experiences. The question that I ask is not whether identity is perceived differently to oneself because of physical and mental characteristics that change over time, or whether a person's identity and sense of achievement benefits from cultural identification or not, but rather what does the identity who realizes that they are the same person over time have neurologically in common with everyone else. Despite our differences, I argue that equanimity may arise naturally out of the realization of our neurological similarities and possibilities: if our neurological identities are really who and what we are, then our biological bodies and cultural identification should not encumber our potential achievements.

In support of teaching first graders that the brain is a part of a sensory system of body organs, the article "Young Children's Changing Conceptualizations of Brain Function: Implications for Teaching Neuroscience in Early Elementary Settings" (2010) by Peter Marshall and Christina Comalli details two experiments which suggest that classroom intervention about the brain acts as an "important part of early foundational learning about biology, an area that is currently neglected in early educational curricula" (Marshall 4). The first study suggested that "in the elementary school years children have a relatively limited view of the brain's involvement in sensory activities and feeling states" (Marshall 5). With educational intervention "first-grade children were better able to confirm that the brain is involved in activities such as seeing and smelling" (Marshall 19). No assumption [could] be made about whether the children were able to conceptualize things such as the brain and nose "work[ing] together to carry out a given activity" without further testing. Although, it is reasonable to conclude this is the case (Marshall 19). And, contrary to the author's expectations, the children did not realize that brain function is somewhat dependent on the nature of one's body.

Ethical reasons given by the authors for conducting the two experiments and further "more intensive approaches" were stated as: "If carried out consistently and reinforced by adult conversation and supervision, exposing young children to information about the brain and its wider involvement in sensation and bodily functioning could have a number of implications," such as, "[i]f young children understand that the brain has essential links to all bodily functions, they may realize that it must be protected from harm through (for example) wearing a helmet when riding a bicycle, eating a healthy diet, or avoiding drug use" (Marshall 20). And, "[l]earning about the brain may also help children to understand better and accept those people in their lives who are affected by neurological disorders" (Marshall 20). The authors conclude the claims of their study: "early exposure to the basic concepts about the "'insides'" of the body may provide a useful foundation for when children encounter more in-depth material on human and animal biology in the middle school years" (Marshall 21).

So, it is not outside of reason to conclude that children, if taught and reinforced by adult conversation and supervision, who have identities not dependent on their bodies, will begin to conceive of themselves and others as being results of their neural activity rather than results of their race or culture. The following heartfelt examples are but a few of many that may emotionally solidify the facts of neurology and identity such that grade schoolers will carry these concepts with them into adulthood. One such example is that of 29-year-old Juliano Pinto, a Brazilian man who is paralyzed from the waist down who took the first kick of the 2014 World Cup soccer tournament just by thinking. Pinto afterward commented that his robotic exoskeleton also allowed him to feel the kick (Nicolelis). As many as 36 exoskeleton companies testify to the explosive growth following Pinto's symbolic kick. And, businesses such "as Ekso Bionics and SuitX are beginning to offer lightweight passive designs using metal and carbon-fiber frames that attach to the body or exterior scaffolding for construction and logistics workers" (Coren). Not only are paraplegics able to utilize robotic exoskeletons to replace their natural biological counterparts, but healthy workers use the exoskeletons to temporarily extend their bodies' physical limitations.

Another example is that of Amanda Kitts a daycare owner/operator who lost her left arm in a car crash while driving to one of three daycare centers that she founded. Her robotic arm and hand gave her back the ability to clap while playing with children. That simple act made possible the realization of her identity when the rationalizations for opening the daycare centers culminated in the sound of clapping hands in which she and the children participated. The meaning of the symbolic event took place within Amanda's and the children's' minds even though only one of Amanda's biological hands created the clapping sound/gesture. It was as if she realized herself as being a whole person despite having a robotic arm. (Kuiken).

In the case of Jason Barnes, a below-the-elbow amputee drummer who now uses a prosthetic robotic arm which uses machine learning to enhance human abilities, the question arises whether or not there will come a time when amputee privilege (since Jason is now a more capable drummer because of his prosthetic robotic arm which utilizes machine learning) will be shouted from the roofs as a means to garner social justice for the biologically intact (Barnes). What I mean to suggest quite boldly is that there will come a time when who and what we are biological will cease to be a viable basis for political correctness and identity politics. As our bodies become as malleable as our brains, the basis to our identities will gradually shift away from our biological constraints.

The senses work with our brains to subjectively render the world in which we live, and to some extent, our experiences brought to us by our senses alter what we identify with. But, are our identities something that arises from the way we learn to interact with our senses? In a few instances, deaf people forgo available technological operations that allow them to hear because they do not want to lose their relationship to the deaf community. They prefer to live within the constraints placed on their reality by their biological condition. But, as neuroscience makes it cost-effective to give the deaf the ability to expand their interpretation of the surrounding world through such things as electric vests that pick up sounds and then stimulate the back with patterns in real-time which can then be interpreted by the deaf as words, there will likely be fewer deaf communities. Similarly, the BrainPort for the blind "translates video images into simulation patterns on the surface of the tongue from a wearable video camera . . . Users feel bubble-like patterns on their tongues and interpret them as the shape, size, location, and motion of objects around them" (TRT World). The wearer of the device sees with their tongue, draws pictures, plays basketball and can rock climb. In both of the examples above neuroscience helped to break down the barriers of separateness and made possible realizations beyond biological constraints.

The freeing of identity from biological constraints opens to a neurological perspective from which to see ourselves. We can replace missing limbs with robotic arms and add the senses of seeing and hearing. These attributes of identity are physical. From the biological perspective we are our bodies and identifying with them connects us to the strength of our cultural heritage. But, as the neurological point of view replaces our biological identification with a malleable variable of possibilities, the equation that equals us becomes post-structuralist. This is not to say that we are setting ourselves up for failure by encompassing it. The neurological perspective does not diminish our biological connection to our cultural identity in the way that one would assume. We can rely on our biological identification as always, but in addition to that, we can realize our biological selves as being malleable. Only our perspective changes although to some extent our biological perspective becomes relativized.

Jack Gallant in his YouTube presentation on the subject of decoding the brain describes how neuroscience is capable of decoding images, including the semantic content, from low and high-level areas of the primary visual cortex. Approximations to what the test subject is seeing are decoded and reproduced by computers; the computers read the brain's activity and reproduce the visual images that the test subjects are seeing. He says that within fifty years or so "brain decoding devices that are cheap, portable and very powerful will be ubiquitous." According to Gallant, everyone will have mind-reading devices that read "[a]ll of [our] intentions, [our] desires, [our] attitudes, in fact, things that haven't reached conscious awareness yet" (Gallant). Gallant's neurological perspective makes it possible to copy everything that makes up a person's identity from the biological. And, although the physical body cannot be copied, it can be modified. When we can assume the bodies of online avatars that traverse the Internet to feel the pain and joy of warriors within animated reality perhaps some of the separateness that comes with being an individual stuck inside a race and culture will dissolve.

Regardless of whether or not neuroscience is introduced into the curriculum of grade schoolers, or introduced through their games, through their movies, through the people who children meet in their daily lives such as Amanda Kitts, or through the growing industries cropping up around neuroscience, the perception that our bodies and by extrapolation our races and our cultures are fixed parts of our identities is changing. What that means to an online community of super-powered heroes who sense the cyber-world as if it were real I do not know. But, along with our changing perception of who and what we are the perspectives of identity politics will likely have to change or fall by the wayside. The degree to which media and social engineering's effectiveness propagandizes race and the cultural aspects of our identities as a means to divide us along partisan lines is proportional to our ability to realize the similarities of the resultant of that which arises out of matter mapped as our connectome structures. And, what do we get when we replace our racial and ethnic characteristics that act as a basis to our cultural heritages with malleable simulations shared between all peoples but a more vibrant and creative coexistence that looks away from the past and towards what is possible.

Works Cited

Barnes, Jason. "Jason Barnes Cyborg Drumming Concert|Sci-Fi Meets Nature." YouTube, uploaded by Jason Barnes, 24 Mar. 2014, youtube.com/watch?v=hyervazVvi0.

Coren, Michael J. "Robot exoskeletons are finally here, and they’re nothing like the suits from Iron Man." Quartz, 02 May 2017, qz.com/971741/robot-exoskeletons-are-finally-here-and-theyre- nothing-like-the-suits-from-iron-man/. Accessed 12 May 2018.

Gallant, Jack. "Human brain mapping and brain decoding. | Jack Gallant | TEDxSanFrancisco." YouTube, uploaded by TEDx Talks, 31 Oct. 2017, youtube.com/watch?v=hyervazVvi0.

Lacan, Jacque. "The Mirror Stage as Formative of the Function as the I as Revealed in Psychoanalytic Experience." faculty.wiu.edu/D-Banash/eng299/LacanMirrorPhase.pdf. Accessed 12 May 2018.

Marshall, Peter J., and Christina E. Comalli. “Young Children's Changing Conceptualizations of Brain Function: Implications for Teaching Neuroscience in Early Elementary Settings.” Early Education &Amp; Development, vol. 23, no. 1, 2012, pp. 4–23.

Nicolelis, Miguel. "Miguel Nicolelis: Brain-to-brain communication has arrived. How we did it." YouTube, uploaded by TED, 26 Jan. 2015, youtube.com/watch?v=HQzXqjT0w3k. Accessed 13 May 2018.

The Gale Group Inc. "Identity Development." Encyclopedia.com, 2002, www.encyclopedia.com/children/applied-and-social-sciences-magazines/identity-development. Accessed 12 May 2017.

TRT World. "Blind people can now use their tongues to see." YouTube, uploaded by TRT World, 28 Feb. 2018, youtu.be/1wRoRfub2HY. Accessed 13 May 2018.