Digital studies and transcontextualization of the humanities: The case of organology

AbstractThis research starts from the observation that Bernard Stiegler’™s general organology draws from the philosophical rethinking of the original practice of organology in musicology. Stiegler’™s main philosophical concepts that led to the establishment of general organology, as well as the trajectory of development of Stiegler’ general organology from his musical/musicological experience are discussed and explained. The main claim of this article is that the philosophical platform of general organology has an activist potential for the revitalization of the contemporary humanities and the transformation of the humanities into digital studies. This transformation takes place in the manner of two-level transcontextualization. The first level concerns the transcontextualization of the musicological organology into the general organology as a philosophical platform for understanding the phenomenological and ontological questions of a human being in the world mediated by digital technology. The second level concerns the activist potential of the general organology in relation to the humanities. The transformation of the humanities into digital studies is enabled through the transcontextualization of the general organology as the new, revitalized philosophical ground of the humanities that are dealing with the conditions of humanity in our contemporaneity. This means that digital studies involve not only the digital mediation of the knowledge, but researching that should be implemented in improving the humans' skills, knowledge, attention, and perceptive capabilities through digital technologies.