Reading for Enactment: A Performative Approach to Digital Scholarship and Data Visualization

A mid two decades of debate on the nature and promise of the digital humanities, one term has recurred with notable frequency: performance. For the authors in question—I am thinking of essays published by a number of prominent figures in the field between 2001 and 2015—the use of the term does not pertain to theater or music, as if the digital humanities ought to be understood as some kind of staging or recitation. Rather, the use of the term pertains to various senses of action. In orienting ourselves toward performance qua acting, doing, and effecting in the digital