Manual labour, intellectual labour and digital (Academic) labour: A critical enquiry of the practice/theory debate in the digital humanities

Abstract

Although it has not been much considered as such, the digital humanities movement (or at least the most theoretically informed parts of it) offers a critique “from within” the recent mutation of the higher education and research systems. This paper offers an analysis, from a Critical Theory perspective, of a key element of this critique: the theory vs. practice debate, which, in the digital humanities, is translated into the famous “hack” vs. “yack” motto, where DHers usually call for the pre-eminence of the former over the latter. I show how this debate aims to criticise the social situation of employment in academia in the digital age and can further be interpreted with the culture industry theoretical concept, as a continuance of the domination of the intellectual labour (i.e. yack in this case) over manual labour (hack). I argue that, pushing this debate to its very dialectical limit, one realises that the two terms are not in opposition anymore: the actual theory as well as the actual practice are below their very critical concepts in the current situation of academic labour. Therefore, I call for a reconfiguration of this debate, aiming at the rediscovering of an actual theory in the academic production, as well as a rediscovering of a praxis, the latter being outside of the scientific realm and rules: it is political.