In my last couple of posts, I interrogated what might be meant by common words like “object” and “thing” in a digital context. Utilizing distinctions made by Martin Heidegger, I suggested that we experience the world around us in terms of objects when we look only for what is present, what is scientifically verifiable, what is calculable, in a manner the philosopher calls Vorhandenheit, or present-at-hand. Alternatively, Heidegger offers us the notion of a thing, which gathers its surrounding context together in its use, which …

In my previous post, I began to define what we might mean when we call something an “object” by way of the philosopher Martin Heidegger’s term Vorhandenheit. With this neologism, which is translated as the compound present-at-hand, Heidegger articulates an abstract, indifferent, and theory-driven way of relating to an entity that narrowly focuses on its empirical and scientific qualities.

This semester, DWRL staff members working in the Digital Archiving Research Area (DARA) have been tasked with exploring the technological, pedagogical, and theoretical intersection of two formidable abstractions: The Archive and the Object. These are vibrantly contested terms, around which significant differences in epistemological and discursive practice turn. Like black holes colliding, the meeting of these rhetorical question marks will send waves throughout the university—or such is our gambit.