Envisioning the Digital Humanities in Richard Powers’ Fiction: Technology, the Self, and the Encyclopedic Impulse

Abstract

This paper will examine the presentation of digital humanities (DH) in the fiction of Richard Powers, who has consistently explored the intersection of technology and the humanities in his fiction. I will engage several theoretical questions in the current debates around DH. Specifically, several of Powers' novels have envisioned actual implementations of digital humanities projects whether in creating an artificially intelligent algorithmic 'reading machine' in Galatea 2.2, who is trained to read fiction and pass a comprehensive exam for a Master's Program in English; models of canonical art works (such as Matisse's paintings) and interactive architectural models in Plowing the Dark (specifically a model of Hagia Sophia in Istanbul); and even accurate portrayals of social networking-in sections of Generosity and in a short story Enquire Within upon Everything, a short piece that anchors a recent collection of DH essays in Switching Codes (2011). In many of Powers' works, the author juxtaposes individuals who are caught in their own inner subjective worlds juxtaposed against an 'unlimited' database, what I will call the 'encyclopedic impulse.' Powers' celebration of the 'encyclopedic impulse' in his fiction marks his work as an important touchstone for conceptualizing certain ideas and current debates within digital humanities. Besides an argumentative essay, this essay includes several visualizations and word frequency charts analyzing encyclopedic novels.