Digital Hermeneutics: The Reflexive Turn in Digital Public History?

Abstract

The digital–be it in forms of data, infrastructures, or tools–interferes atall levels in the practice of doing public history. This chapter argues that digitalpublic historians have to reflect more deeply on the epistemological consequencesof their digital practices. It proposes the concept of“digital hermeneutics”as a con-ceptual framework for this reflection. As a“hermeneutics of in-betweenness,”digi-tal hermeneutics investigates the trading zone of digital public history where newdigital methods and approaches meet disciplinary traditions and epistemic culturesof history.