* Just now realizing I had misplaced my week 2 post in the Commons Forum *

Looking at Torn Apart/ Separados:

One of the maps affects with regard to shinning a light on recipients of ICE money is to present an identifiable network with data which, though public, remains obscured by the separation of its many individual nodes. Developing an understanding of what a practical application of DH is about around the work presented by this site would position DH as a method of asserting a right to the information commons and using that public “space” as a lever of power. What’s more, the diversity of methodologies required for this sort of project presents DH as practice akin to spatial tactics and coalition building between otherwise separate social justice movements, methods which have grown in popularity and efficacy in the 21st century. In both fields, this signals a recognition of the necessity of developing stronger new tactics for unmet goals and ways of tapping into the power of individuals who reproduce culture from the ground up.

Developing an understanding of what DH is about on a theoretical level, around this project and site which reflects on its team as “scholars of space, race, gender, and the digital,”  falls in line with Patrik Svensson’s comments in the 2012 Debates in the Digital Humanities about DH as a “trading zone” for tackling difficult data methodologies. Also in line with Svenssons comments, in this instance regarding the facilitation of “deep integration between thinking and making,” the team behind Torn Apart/ Separados expresses their working assumptions as the “knowledge that data is imprecise, impure, and as much a tool for incarceration and control as it is for revealing the truth.”