Reading machines : toward an algorithmic criticism

113 Pages·2011·1.383 MB·English

by  Ramsay, Stephen

READING
MACHINES
STEPHEN RAMSAY
Reading Machines
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Topics in The digiTal huManiTies
Humanities computing is redefining basic principles about research
and publication. An influx of new, vibrant, and diverse communities of
practitioners recognizes that computer applications are subject to continual
innovation and reappraisal. This series publishes books that demonstrate the
new questions, methods, and results arising in the digital humanities.
SerieS editorS
Susan Schreibman
Raymond C. Siemens
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Reading
Machines
StePhen rAmSAY
univeRsiTy of illinois pRess
Urbana, Chicago, and Springfi eld
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© 2011 by the Board of Trustees
of the University of Illinois
All rights reserved
Manufactured in the United States of America
1 2 3 4 5 c p 5 4 3 2 1
∞ This book is printed on acid-free paper.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Ramsay, Stephen.
Reading machines : toward an algorithmic criticism /
Stephen Ramsay.
p. cm. — (Topics in the digital humanities)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
isbn 978-0-252-03641-5 (cloth) —
isbn 978-0-252-07820-0 (pbk.)
1. Linguistic String Parser (Computer grammar)
2. Discourse analysis—Data processing.
3. Reading machines (Data processing equipment)
I. Title.
p98.5.p38r36 2011
401'.41—dc22 2011006829
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For William and Mary Ramsay
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One no longer noticed the accidents of things but
only the substance of the universe, and this is why we
did not care whether the flawless surface was a liquid
equilibrated according to eternal laws, or a diamond,
impervious except under a light falling from above.
—Alfred Jarry, Exploits and Opinions
of Dr. Faustroll, Pataphysician
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conTenTs
Preconditions ix
1
An Algorithmic Criticism 1
2
Potential Literature 18
3
Potential Readings 32
4
The Turing Text 58
5
’Patacomputing 69
Postconditions 83
Notes 87
Works Cited 91
Index 95
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pRecondiTions
When Willard McCarty proposed that we “ask in the context of computing
what can (and must) be known of our artefacts, how we know what we know
about them and how new knowledge is made,” he undoubtedly meant to lift
our gaze above the merely practical matters suggested by the term “humani-
ties computing” (McCarty 1231). For to ask such questions “in the context of
computing” is to suggest that computing belongs in the rarefied atmosphere
of epistemology—that it is less a matter of doing (or allowing, or facilitating)
this or that with the human record, and more a matter of providing an addi-
tional, and perhaps an uncommonly fertile, occasion for theoretical musing
and contemplation. For McCarty, actual results are less important than the
insights gained from the juxtaposition of mechanism and mind. The field can
proudly and justly describe itself as “the quest for meaningful failure” (1232).
Against this view stand those who regard computers in the humanities as
providing a welcome relief from the radical skepticism of contemporary hu-
manistic thought. Here, after all, is a machine that not only gives answers but
also demands them—a device that is wholly intolerant toward equivocation
and uncertainty. In this view, the computer represents an emancipation from
the ironic imprisonments of postmodern excess. Even without supposing
that computation leads toward (or even begins with) objectivity, some see
it as a way to get beyond the beached solipsism that characterizes modern
discours and toward its right and proper end in raison. It is scientific method
joined to humanistic inquiry. It is the dream of Descartes tempered by the
dream of Leibniz.
Computers are perhaps chief among those tools we routinely describe
as “changing everything,” and yet neither of the desiderata stated above are
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