Bringing Up Underground Corpora: Ethics and Manuscripts in an Age of Digital Reproduction

While methodological considerations of positionality and disciplinary reflexivity have long been standard components of ethnographic studies, this is still not the case in codicology. Within the field of Arabic and Islamic manuscripts, recent debates on provenance and the use of digital archives have once again emphasised the need for increased awareness of issues tied to the individual researcher’s access to and use of collections located in both the Global North and Global South. This article draws on my experience of working with digital reproductions of premodern Arabic manuscripts from my living room in Berlin during the COVID-19 pandemic. Beginning with the notion of unauthorised underground manuscript corpora that circulate among researchers, I provide an overview of current debates on the ethical dimensions of digital codicology in Arabic and Islamic Studies. Pointing out the need for a synoptic consideration of colonial history and researcher positionality, I ultimately argue for the methodological value of including an “epistemic politics” at the forefront of manuscript research.