Speculative code studies, or, notes on the future of critique in the (digital) humanities

Alex Monea will offer some of the initial outlines of his current research project that aims to develop a new methodology tentatively coined speculative code studies. In theory, the idea is that critical code, software, and hardware studies can be made to speak to blackboxed systems or pieces of code, software, and hardware, and that they can do so in an anexact, yet rigorous way that preserves their critical-analytical purchase. Such a practice would look to constitute a sufficient, if piecemeal, archive of materials for rigorous speculation about the contents of black boxes. Beyond the event horizon of the black-box lie the secrets to the future of technically grounded humanistic inquiry into the stakes of computational media. Without a rigorous theory and method of speculative code studies, critical code, software, and hardware studies remain subalternized, unable to speak (back) to the power structures that conditioned and continually modulate their identities. In short, if our emerging field(s) of technically grounded scholarship remains mute about Google/Alphabet, Facebook, Amazon, Alibaba, Weibo, and their ilk, then we are missing something crucial. This workshop will begin with an outline of some of these ideas and will be preceded by discussion of how we might further such a research agenda and achieve the goal of socio-politically meaningful code, software, and hardware studies.