The future of the digital scholarly editor: interpretation, subjectivity and presence?

Abstract

The technological innovations, and the possibilities that come with them, have far-reaching implications for the activity of a scholarly editor. Digital technologies can facilitate or even replace several traditional tasks of scholarly editing and textual analysis. This leads to new findings as well as new forms of presenting these findings to the public. As a consequence, the editor is now concerned not only with carrying out textual research but also with presenting his or her results in a suitable format. Whether an edition combines traditional approaches or rather presents an entirely new perspective on the text, the use of digital technology implies a reconsideration of the labour and activity of the editor. Notwithstanding the number of groundbreaking changes that take place in scholarly editing, it is important to remain aware of the core and basic assumptions of the discipline. Therefore, this article focuses on an issue that is present in traditional as well as digital scholarly editing: the tension between an editor’s interpretation and an objective presentation of the text. The article reviews the existing theory on the subject through three different perspectives. It considers the possibility of editorial objectivity, the desirability of editorial presence, and the implications for the presentation of findings. The findings suggest that the digital paradigm requires more that a slight alteration of the current theory.