ABSTRACT
The way of comparative literature, like Gideon’s early experimentalism, has always been to advance by the axes of contrast and correlation, period and geography. Despite the increase in connectivity over time, the author's initial findings suggest that the domain of comparative literature is connected more weakly and perhaps in fundamentally different ways than other fields, such as sociology, anthropology, history, or economics. Visual-quantitative methodologies devolve into shallow futurism and blunt instrumental reasoning. The trajectory of the digital humanities becomes more meaningful in the context of the broader dynamics. The digital humanities are a force of iconoclasm, used to question and to refine the prevailing orthodoxy. In Gideon’s experiment, intellectual field was the fleece that made observation possible. The field is evolutionary rather than revolutionary, in that it draws on extant practices long part of the humanities–among them critical edition making, museum conservation, librarianship, graphic design, creative computing, experimental art and philosophy, exploratory data analysis, and historical reconstruction.
