Vom Topos des Scheiterns als konstituierender Kraft: Ein Essay über Erkenntnisprozesse in den Digital Humanities

The language of experimentation favours tendencies within Digital Humanities discourses that emphasize aspects of innovation and play. There is, however, another component that is often overlooked in the German context: and that is the association with an importance of failure. This essay examines whether the dimensions of failure mentioned within the field are rooted in epistemological concerns. To that end, it first (and foremost) reviews scholarship concerned with the possibilities of Digital Humanities knowledge production before concluding with a look at the way in which the framing of infrastructures as laboratories and methods as experiments may obscure the need for value assessment.