A Digital Humanities Project Proposal
Throughout my project proposal, I have spoken to a number of ways in which "In Whispers and Furtive Glances" grows out of the concerns articulated in and around the digital humanities. If Alan Liu encouraged me to jump in the rabbit hole, so to speak, that is Cuba's specific social, cultural, and historical contexts, and if Tara McPherson demanded that I take that focus on context and put it into productive conversation with Cuba's domestic telecommunications infrastructure, I have come out on the other end understanding how the "lenticular logics" that surround this juxtaposition produce a kind of "ambient" access in which Cuban peoples develop digital literacies and practices of (h)ac(k)tivism all their own.
Yet, what is particularly important to recognize with Cuban digital literacies, is not only the manner in which the digital humanities can be used to help substantiate new and updated approaches to the digital divide and access and literacy, but also how the shape and tenor of Cuban digital literacies themselves have demanded a sort of "perpetual making." In making this claim about "perpetual making," I mean to say that every use of digital technologies, and particularly those that serve as practices of (h)ac(k)tivism, represents a profound act of social writing and critical consciousness. Digital technologies, in this sense, are never just idle "tools" or uncritical platforms for delivering content. No. By necessity, even proximity to digital technologies connotes a kind of insight into the "lenticular logics" of Cuba's narrative of digital access, insight that is equal parts constraining and empowering.