QuestioningText_LP

Ramsay, Stephen. (2011). Reading Machines: Towards an Algorithmic Criticism. University of Illinois Press.


 * What is the text about – empirically? **
 * What phenomenon is drawn out in the text? A social process; a cultural and political- economic shift; a cultural “infrastructure;” an emergent assemblage of science-culture- technology-economics? **

Articulating the difficulty of building an “algorithmic hermeneutics,” the text is primarily about the possibility of leveraging technological affordances experimentally. In doing so, it articulates a cultural infrastructure – how the scientific epistemologies have come to shape the digital technologies available to digital humanists.


 * Where is this phenomenon located – in a neighborhood, in a country, in “Western Culture,” in a globalizing economy? **

The phenomenon is located in the field of literary criticism and the digital humanities. While the author does not geographically situate these fields, they are primarily being developed in Western institutions.


 * What historical trajectory is the phenomenon situated within? What, in the chronology provided or implied, is emphasized -- the role of political or economic forces, the role of certain individuals or social groups? What does the chronology leave out or discount? **

The phenomenon is occurring at a time when many academic fields are being “informated” and leveraging digital technologies to support their academic work. At time same time, it is occurring at a time when many humanities jobs are [|threatened by computational social sciences], a phenomenon that that author draws out less in his writing.


 * What scale(s) are focused on -- nano (i.e. the level of language), micro, meso, macro? What empirical material is developed at each scale? **

Reading Machines focuses primarily on the nano – the level of text and language – and how it meshes with the micro – the level of computer/technology. In questioning how machines can be leveraged to support interpretive analysis of texts, the book reflects on the philosophy of language but also considers what computers are good at and how their affordances can be leveraged to work with humanistic inquiry. However, it also considers how digital humanists understand the practice of literary analysis and how this shapes the digital humanities writ large – meso and macro scales, respectively.


 * Who are the players in the text and what are their relations? Does the text trace how these relations have changed across time – because of new technologies, for example? **

Literary scholars and digital humanists are the primary players in this text. Notably, the role of the literary scholar is both threatened with the emergence of computational social science, and opened to new possibilities through experiments with algorithms and digital infrastructures.


 * What is the temporal frame in which players play? In the wake of a particular policy, disaster or other significant “event?” In the general climate of the Reagan era, or of “after-the-Wall” globalization? **

The players in this text are in the temporal frame where the digital humanities are gaining traction, while simultaneously threatened by the emergence of the computational social sciences. They are also in a time frame when interdisciplinarity is being discursively promoted in the academy, while also often not being structurally supported.


 * What cultures and social structures are in play in the text? **

Cultures of computation (such as conceptions that the digital produces objectivity) and cultural logics built into algorithms are illuminated in Ramsay’s book. In this sense, there is a “sciences vs. the humanities” social structure that plays out in significant ways. Additionally, the cultures of literary scholarship – aims for epistemological pluralism, for example – are articulated.


 * What kinds of practices are described in the text? Are players shown to be embedded in structural contradictions or double-binds? **

The players in Ramsay’s book are in serious structural contradictions as they attempt to leverage digital infrastructures with embedded cultural logics that differ drastically from theirs to support their work:

[This book] proposes that we channel the heightened objectivity made possible by the machine into the cultivation of those heightened subjectivities necessary for critical work.


 * How are science and technology implicated in the phenomenon described? **

Digital technologies shape and are shaped by scientific epistemologies in the text. The text notes how certain epistemologies and scientific cultural logics have shaped available digital technologies and how these in turn reshape how digital humanists with competing logics take up such technologies.


 * What structural conditions– technological, legal and legislative, political, cultural – are highlighted, and how are they shown to have shaped the phenomenon described in this text? **

Few structural conditions are shown to have shaped the text’s phenomena. This is with the notable exception of technological conditions – how the affordances of digital machines and particularly algorithms shape the practice of literary text analysis.


 * How – at different scales, in different ways – is power shown to operate? Is there evidence of power operating through language, “discipline,” social hierarchies, bureaucratic function, economics, etc? **

In this particular text, power is shown to operate as working through code, and in this, sense through language and the disciplines that inform it.


 * Does the text provide comparative or systems level perspectives? In other words, is the particular phenomenon described in this text situated in relation to similar phenomenon in other settings? Is this particular phenomena situated within global structures and processes? **

It does not.


 * What is the text about – conceptually? **
 * Is the goal to verify, challenge or extend prior theoretical claims? **

The goal of this book is to challenge theoretical claims that algorithms are incompatible with humanistic work.


 * What is the main conceptual argument or theoretical claim of the text? Is it performed, rendered explicit or both? **

The main conceptual argument of the book is that algorithms, despite being built with cultural logics that tend to over-determine structure – can be leveraged to facilitate an algorithmic criticism, or in other works, to support interpretive literary text analysis. It is rendered through both description and example – and it would have been super cool if it had been performed!


 * What ancillary concepts are developed to articulate the conceptual argument? **


 * Narrowing constraints, or in words that I recognize “light structures” can are compatible with and can facilitate literary criticism, offering new ways of seeing and reading texts.
 * The guiding logics of the sciences differ drastically from those of the humanities.


 * How is empirical material used to support or build the conceptual argument? **

Ramsay provides several examples of how algorithms can provide new ways of reading and interpreting texts. He closely reads works of literary criticisms that leverage algorithmic techniques to provoke new modes of interpretation.


 * How robust is the main conceptual argument of the text? On what grounds could it be challenged? **

Since the conceptual argument is at the heart of the text – much over and above the empirical – it is written quite robustly. I can see those humanists averse to structure arguing that any form of structure can over-determine the reading of a text.


 * How could the empirical material provided support conceptual arguments other than those built in the text? **


 * Modes of inquiry? **
 * What theoretical edifice provides the (perhaps haunting – i.e. non-explicit) backdrop to the text? **

The theories undergirding literary criticism/ the value of hermeneutics are at the center of Ramsay’s analysis. Ramsay also uses media theory to talk about how computers have come to embody certain cultural logics. Science studies is in there but never explicit.


 * What assumptions appear to have shaped the inquiry? Does the author assume that individuals are rational actors, for example, or assume that the unconscious is a force to be dealt with? Does the author assume that the “goal” of society is (functional) stability? **

Ramsay assumes that the goal of literary text analysis is to generate multiple perspectives and subjectivities. He further assumes that the scientific method is incompatible with humanistic methods.


 * Does the author assume that what is most interesting occurs with regularity, or is she interested in the incidental and deviant? **

Ramsay’s examples are almost all deviant, showing how algorithms can be leveraged “against the grain” to produce effects that open rather than shut down space for multiple interpretations.


 * What kinds of data (ethnographic, experimental, statistical, etc.) are used in the text, and how were they obtained? [merged with] How was the data analyzed? If this is not explicit, what can be inferred? How are people, objects or ideas aggregated into groups or categories? What additional data would strengthen the text? **

I’m going to call the data in this text literary. Ramsay points to experimental algorithmic systems that facilitate literary interpretive play, and “reads” them much like a literary critic would.


 * If interviews were conducted, what kinds of questions were asked? What does the author seem to have learned from the interviews? **

No interviews.


 * Structure and performance? **
 * What is in the introduction? Does the introduction turn around unanswered questions -- in other words, are we told how this text embodies a research project? **

The introduction of this book introduces the context that Ramsay is working within – scientific inquiry is often seen as opposed to humanistic inquiry, and digital computers are becoming a manifestation of this division. He describes what the book is going to try to do and situate it within the digital humanities (though not through literature review):

This is a book about literary text analysis—a particular form of scholarly engagement within the much broader field of interests, concerns, and endeavors we now call digital humanities. But it is more fundamentally a book that tries to locate a hermeneutics at the boundary between mechanism and theory. He also uses it to define what he means by “algorithmic criticism, outline the book, and offer acknowledgements.


 * Where is theory in the text? Is the theoretical backdrop to the text explained, or assumed to be understood? **

The theoretical backdrop – that is literary theory (and in particular the hermeneutic tradition) – is explained outright in the text, including its history, its development, and its relevance today.


 * What is the structure of the discourse in the text? What binaries recur in the text, or are conspicuously avoided? **

The binary of scientific objectivity vs. subjectivity in the humanities recurs throughout the text. Along with this – the scientific method vs. hermeneutics. Further, he specifically attempt to push the limits binary discourses of structure vs. play.


 * How is the historical trajectory delineated? Is there explicit chronological development? **

Ramsay articulates a history of the relevance of literary criticism since its inception in the first chapter of his book. This is explicit chronological development. He also gives brief snippets of the history of AI from Turing to Weizenbaum, but this is not explicit development.


 * How is the temporal context provided or evoked in the text? **

Ramsay evokes the temporal context for his proscriptions on the introduction of the text. Throughout the text, as he references sometimes, much older instances of algorithmic literary criticism, he provides dates for temporal context.


 * How does the text specify the cultures and social structures in play in the text? **

The text is explicit about the culture of algorithms and computers, the cultures of scientific inquiry, and the cultures of literary criticism. These are at the heart of the argument. The social structure of antagonism between scientists and literary critics is also drawn out explicitly.


 * How are informant perspectives dealt with and integrated? **

There really aren’t informant perspectives in this text.


 * How does the text draw out the implications of science and technology? At what level of detail are scientific and technological practices described? **

Technical details are described with fine-grain detail, literally explaining and diagramming how algorithms work. The scientific epistemologies that Ramsay describes as shaping computation, algorithms, and machines are drawn out with much less fine detail; they’re more referenced than explained.


 * How does the text provide in-depth detail – hopefully without losing readers? **

The book provides in-depth detail primarily when performing “readings” various algorithmic modes of literary criticism. It outlines how the systems work, uses visuals to depict them, and tells a story of how they open new modes of interpretation.


 * What is the layout of the text? How does it move, from first page to last? Does it ask for other ways of reading? Does the layout perform an argument? **

The layout of the text somewhat performs Ramsay’s argument, setting it up like a computer program for interpretive work. The introduction is labeled Preconditions, outlining the theoretical foundations from which Ramsay is starting his analysis, the assumptions he is making, and his acknowledgements. The conclusion is labeled Post-conditions, describing the results of his analysis and what it means for digital humanists. Each middle chapter builds the argument (or the program) laying several “readings” of algorithmic criticism next to each other. Much like a program would, the book reads from start to finish.


 * What kinds of visuals are used, and to what effect? What kind of material and analysis are in the footnotes? **

Ramsay often draws the structure of the algorithms he portrays (either with pseudo-code or literally illustrating how the text would move through the algorithm with a diagram). It helps the reader see how algorithms open space for play. The footnotes are primarily used to put works of literature that he points to into context.


 * How is the criticism of the text performed? If through overt argumentation, who is the “opposition”? **

The text’s criticism is not quite overt, though Ramsay does suggest that computers are often seen as, by design, overcoming “the excess of the postmodern,” which is an argument that he refutes throughout the text.


 * How does the text situate itself? In other words, how is reflexivity addressed, or not? **

The book is primarily in Ramsay’s voice and is careful to outline its basic assumptions. However, Ramsay does not exactly position himself in the text – i.e. how his point of view as someone who understands code impacts his view, or how his point of view as a literary critic impacts his view.

In the book’s dedication: My parents - to whom this work is lovingly dedicated - offered me a gift that in subtle ways informs this work at its core: never once did they ask me what I was going to do with it. (xii)


 * Circulation? **
 * Who is the text written for? How are arguments and evidence in the text shaped to address particular audiences? **

The text is written primarily for digital humanists, which is evidenced by his shaping of the text as a consideration of the possibilities that digital technologies afford digital humanists. Further, it is written for literary critics as a sort of manifesto as to how constraints (in this case, digital) can shape new forms of interpretive practice and play.


 * What all audiences can you imagine for the text, given its empirical and conceptual scope? **

The book has an important message for science studies scholars – about how scientific epistemologies shape code, but also how that code can be reshaped through experimentation. It is also useful for critical designers.


 * What new knowledge does this text put into circulation? What does this text have to say that otherwise is not obvious? **

The text makes an important argument about the value of light structure and the possibilities for code to be leveraged for other than it is intended. It makes an important argument about how algorithmic constraint can be extremely productive for producing subjective arguments – that constraint can open space for interpretation, where popular rhetoric suggests that such constraint shuts it down.


 * How generalizable is the main argument? How does this text lay the groundwork for further research? **

The main argument is definitely geared towards the digital humanities, yet, as mentioned above, could be generalized into an argument about experimentation with digital affordances.

The main argument of the text suggests responsible experimentation with the affordances of algorithms and digital technologies to support humanities work. And by responsible, I mean attentive to the philosophies that undergird both computation and humanities theory.
 * What kind of “action” is suggested by the main argument of the text? **