Sarah W. Laiola, PhD
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Research > The MetaNarratives of MetaData

MetaNarratives of MetaData

About my developing research project
​My second major research project, The MetaNarratives of MetaData engages the politics and poetics of metadata, by placing metadata in conversation with postmodern metanarrative and practices of self-reflexive meta-fiction . This project stems from the observation that metadata — data that describes data — often mobilize their self-reflexive operability in a way that is analogous to that of the postmodern meta- or master narrative. Just as the meta- or master narrative totalizes everything that can be said about a culture within an ideological system, so too does metadata typically totalize everything that can be said about a data object within a data-based, technological system. Taking inspiration from self-reflexive artworks that mobilize their self-reflexivity in resistance to master ideological systems — for example, meta-fiction — this project investigates possibilities for meta-data mark-up to similarly shift its self-reflexive poetics into a form of feminist, anti-racist resistance to master technological systems.

In support of this project, I received a grant from Georgia Tech’s Digital Integrated Liberal Arts Center (DILAC) to take a seminar in Metadata Beyond TEI at the 2017 Digital Humanities Summer Institute (DHSI). In June 2017, I presented a paper articulating the relationship between metadata and meta-narrative at the Society of the History of Authorship, Reading and Publishing (SHARP) conference. I later expanded this presentation into an article that uses Susan Howe’s language-oriented, self-reflexive poetry to imagine disruptive, feminist practices of meta-data markup, which is currently under review for publication.
Copyright Sarah W. Laiola 2017
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