ABSTRACT
Amidst ongoing debates over the role (or lack thereof) of critical theory in the digital humanities (DH), this chapter examines the development of major public-facing DH projects in Scotland within the context of Scottish language politics and broader discourse around Scottish identity. The Scottish Corpus of Texts & Speech and the Wee Windaes digital exhibition of the National Library of Scotland throw into relief the limitations both of the dominant Anglo-American rhetorics of criticality in DH work and the limitations of critical theory in effecting meaningful social change through heritage-oriented DH projects. As an alternative, the innovative interface of Wee Windaes is examined and proposed as a model for an affective approach to displaying digital collections that draws on the “reparative reading” practices of Eve Sedgwick and other queer feminist critics to leverage the distinctive affordances of digital media for “de-centering the academic” (à la Amy Earhart) and enfranchising culturally marginalized populations through “postcritical” means.
