Franco Moretti

Bio: Franco Moretti is an academic researcher from Stanford University. The author has contributed to research in topics: Literary criticism & Tragedy. The author has an hindex of 17, co-authored 41 publications receiving 3377 citations.

Under which King, Bezonian? Literary Studies between Hermeneutics and Quantification

Abstract: What is the relationship between the quantitative literary history of the past twenty years and the older hermeneutic tradition? Answers have typically been of two kinds: for many in the interpretive camp, the two approaches are incompatible, and the newer one has little or no critical value; for most quantitative researchers, they are instead perfectly compatible, and in fact complementary. Here, I will propose a thirdpossibility, that will emerge step by step from a comparison of how the two strategies work. How they work, literally; in the conviction that practices – what we learn to do by doing, by professional habit, and often without being fully aware of what we are doing – have frequently larger theoretical implications than theoretical statements themselves. In other words: understanding what a research paradigm does, ratherthan what it declares it wants to do. This is the plan.

WHY A BIOMES ApPROACH?

Abstract: This book has its origins in a confluence of interests, derived alike from my prior scholarship and from pedagogical imperatives. l began my scholarly career as a student of the literatures of ancient Greece and early China, fascinated by each tradition individually and drawn to the institutional discipline of comparative literature as the only venue (if in sorne ways a reluctant one) for pursuing such divergent interests. TIle desire to find something useful to say about these two literatures in conjunction with each other that did not depend on daims of contact, and, in particular, to do so in a way that might speak to comparatists as weIl as to specialists in each language individuaIly, led me to consider the phenomenon of authorship in both traditions, and particularly how stories about the lives of authors were used in each context to negotiate the transition from a predominantly oral transmission to transmission through writing. As l was studying, and writing about, that process, l l became especially interested in a similarity between the early Greek and Chinese contexts that l had not noticed, or paid enough attention to, earlier-in both cases, the historical record shows that literary texts (oral or otherwise), and other cultural artifacts, circulated across political boundaries so that the world of a common Greek (Panhellenic)2 or Chinese culture was larger by far th an that of any polity then in existence, providing sorne measure of cultural solidarity to a politically fragmented world.

Falsche Bewegung

Abstract: Diagramme, Zeitreihen, Netzwerke, Histogramme… Vor fünfzehn oder zwanzig Jahren hätte man in Artikeln über das Kino und die Musik, die Literatur und die bildende Kunst noch nichts davon gefunden. Die Visualisierung kultureller Daten ist es, was die digital humanities auf den ersten Blick von den älteren geisteswissenschaftlichen Verfahren unterscheidet. In seinem neuen Buch reflektiert Franco Moretti einige der stillschweigend geteilten, manchmal vielleicht nur unbewusst mitgeführten Prämissen dieser neuen Untersuchungspraxis – geleitet von der Überzeugung, dass diese Praxis sehr starke theoretische Voraussetzungen mit sich führt, die offen gelegt werden müssen. »Falsche Bewegung« bietet eine ebenso ehrliche wie anspruchsvoll-kritische Einschätzung der sogenannten »quantitativen« Wende in den Literatur- und Kulturwissenschaften, zu der der Autor selbst mit der Gründung des Literary Lab 2010 in Stanford einen entscheidenden Impuls gegeben hat. Seine Synthese, die die Wegmarken abschreitet, die nach und nach auf der Forschungsroute der hier versammelten Beiträge erreicht wurden, eröffnet neue Perspektiven auf das, was für die humanities an diesem strategischen Wendepunkt auf dem Spiel steht: Was hat der quantitative Ansatz erreicht, welche Erwartungen wurden (nicht) erfüllt und was geschieht mit der wissenschaftlichen Vorstellungskraft in den humanities, wenn Probleme der Statistik und Programmierung Fragen nach der Form in den Hintergrund drängen?

Critical questions for big data

Abstract: The era of Big Data has begun. Computer scientists, physicists, economists, mathematicians, political scientists, bio-informaticists, sociologists, and other scholars are clamoring for access to the massive quantities of information produced by and about people, things, and their interactions. Diverse groups argue about the potential benefits and costs of analyzing genetic sequences, social media interactions, health records, phone logs, government records, and other digital traces left by people. Significant questions emerge. Will large-scale search data help us create better tools, services, and public goods? Or will it usher in a new wave of privacy incursions and invasive marketing? Will data analytics help us understand online communities and political movements? Or will it be used to track protesters and suppress speech? Will it transform how we study human communication and culture, or narrow the palette of research options and alter what ‘research’ means? Given the rise of Big Data as a socio-tech...

Big Data, new epistemologies and paradigm shifts:

Abstract: This article examines how the availability of Big Data, coupled with new data analytics, challenges established epistemologies across the sciences, social sciences and humanities, and assesses the extent to which they are engendering paradigm shifts across multiple disciplines. In particular, it critically explores new forms of empiricism that declare ‘the end of theory’, the creation of data-driven rather than knowledge-driven science, and the development of digital humanities and computational social sciences that propose radically different ways to make sense of culture, history, economy and society. It is argued that: (1) Big Data and new data analytics are disruptive innovations which are reconfiguring in many instances how research is conducted; and (2) there is an urgent need for wider critical reflection within the academy on the epistemological implications of the unfolding data revolution, a task that has barely begun to be tackled despite the rapid changes in research practices presently taking place. After critically reviewing emerging epistemological positions, it is contended that a potentially fruitful approach would be the development of a situated, reflexive and contextually nuanced epistemology.

Six Provocations for Big Data

Abstract: The era of Big Data has begun. Computer scientists, physicists, economists, mathematicians, political scientists, bio-informaticists, sociologists, and many others are clamoring for access to the massive quantities of information produced by and about people, things, and their interactions. Diverse groups argue about the potential benefits and costs of analyzing information from Twitter, Google, Verizon, 23andMe, Facebook, Wikipedia, and every space where large groups of people leave digital traces and deposit data. Significant questions emerge. Will large-scale analysis of DNA help cure diseases? Or will it usher in a new wave of medical inequality? Will data analytics help make people’s access to information more efficient and effective? Or will it be used to track protesters in the streets of major cities? Will it transform how we study human communication and culture, or narrow the palette of research options and alter what ‘research’ means? Some or all of the above?This essay offers six provocations that we hope can spark conversations about the issues of Big Data. Given the rise of Big Data as both a phenomenon and a methodological persuasion, we believe that it is time to start critically interrogating this phenomenon, its assumptions, and its biases.(This paper was presented at Oxford Internet Institute’s “A Decade in Internet Time: Symposium on the Dynamics of the Internet and Society” on September 21, 2011.)

The Language of the Gods in the World of Men: Sanskrit, Culture, and Power in Premodern India

Abstract: List of Maps Preface and Acknowledgments Introduction Culture, Power, (Pre)modernity The Cosmopolitan in Theory and Practice The Vernacular in Theory and Practice Theory, Metatheory, Practice, Metapractice PART 1. THE SANSKRIT COSMOPOLIS Chapter 1. The Language of the Gods Enters the World 1.1 Precosmopolitan Sanskrit: Monopolization and Ritualization 1.2 From Resistance to Appropriation 1.3. Expanding the Prestige Economy of Sanskrit Chapter 2. Literature and the Cosmopolitan Language of Literature 2.1. From Liturgy to Literature 2.2. Literary Language as a Closed Set 2.3. The Final Theory of Literary Language: Bhoja's Poetics Chapter 3. The World Conquest and Regime of the Cosmopolitan Style 3.1. Inscribing Political Will in Sanskrit 3.2. The Semantics of Inscriptional Discourse: The Poetics of Power, Malava, 1141 3.3. The Pragmatics of Inscriptional Discourse: Making History, Kalyana, 1008 Chapter 4. Sanskrit Culture as Courtly Practice 4.1. Grammatical and Political Correctness: The Politics of Grammar 4.2. Grammatical and Political Correctness: Grammar Envy 4.3. Literature and Kingly Virtuosity Chapter 5. The Map of Sanskrit Knowledge and the Discourse on the Ways of Literature 5.1. The Geocultural Matrix of Sanskrit Knowledge 5.2. Poetry Man, Poetics Woman, and the Birth-Space of Literature 5.3. The Ways of Literature: Tradition, Method, and Stylistic Regions Chapter 6. Political Formations and Cultural Ethos 6.1. Production and Reproduction of Epic Space 6.2. Power and Culture in a Cosmos Chapter 7. A European Countercosmopolis 7.1. Latinitas 7.2. Imperium Romanum PART 2. THE VERNACULAR MILLENIUM Chapter 8. Beginnings, Textualization, Superposition 8.1. Literary Newness Enters the World 8.2. From Language to Text 8.3. There Is No Parthenogenesis in Culture Chapter 9. Creating a Regional World: The Case of Kannada 9.1. Vernacularization and Political Inscription 9.2. The Way of the King of Poets and the Places of Poetry 9.3. Localizing the Universal Political: Pampa Bharatam 9.4. A New Philology: From Norm-Bound Practice to Practice-Bound Norm Chapter 10. Vernacular Poetries and Polities in Southern Asia 10.1. The Cosmopolitan Vernacularization of South and Southeast Asia 10.2. Region and Reason 10.3. Vernacular Polities 10.4. Religion and Vernacularization Chapter 11. Europe Vernacularized 11.1. Literacy and Literature 11.2. Vernacular Anxiety 11.3. A New Cultural Politics Chapter 12. Comparative and Connective Vernacularization 12.1. European Particularism and Indian Difference 12.2. A Hard History of the Vernacular Millennium PART 3. THEORY AND PRACTICE OF CULTURE AND POWER Chapter 13. Actually Existing Theory and Its Discontents 13.1. Natural Histories of Culture-Power 13.2. Primordialism, Linguism, Ethnicity, and Other Unwarranted Generalizations 13.3. Legitimation, Ideology, and Related Functionalisms Chapter 14. Indigenism and Other Culture-Power Concepts of Modernity 14.1. Civilizationalism, or Indigenism with Too Little History 14.2. Nationalism, or Indigenism with Too Much History Epilogue. From Cosmopolitan-or-Vernacular to Cosmopolitan-and-Vernacular Appendix A A.1 Bhoja's Theory of Literary Language (from the Srngaraprakasa) A. 2 Bhoja's Theory of Ornamentation (from the Sarasvatikanthabharana) A.3 Sripala's Bilpank Prasasti of King Jayasimha Siddharaja A.4 The Origins of Hemacandra's Grammar (from Prabhacandra's Prabhavakacarita) A.5 The Invention of Kavya (from Rjaekhara's Kavyamimamsa) Appendix B B.1 Approximate Dates of Principal Dynasties B.2 Names of Important Peoples and Places with Their Approximate Modern Equivalents or Locations Publication History Bibliography Index

New games, new rules: big data and the changing context of strategy

Abstract: Big data and the mechanisms by which it is produced and disseminated introduce important changes in the ways information is generated and made relevant for organizations. Big data often represents miscellaneous records of the whereabouts of large and shifting online crowds. It is frequently agnostic, in the sense of being produced for generic purposes or purposes different from those sought by big data crunching. It is based on varying formats and modes of communication (e.g., texts, image and sound), raising severe problems of semiotic translation and meaning compatibility. Crucially, the usefulness of big data rests on their steady updatability, a condition that reduces the time span within which this data is useful or relevant. Jointly, these attributes challenge established rules of strategy making as these are manifested in the canons of procuring structured information of lasting value that addresses specific and long-term organizational objectives. The developments underlying big data thus seem to carry important implications for strategy making, and the data and information practices with which strategy has been associated. We conclude by placing the understanding of these changes within the wider social and institutional context of longstanding data practices and the significance they carry for management and organizations.