Digitalectics.com re-imagines the digital space from the decolonial, multilogical perspective reflecting the heterogeneity of socio-cultural spheres of non-western societies like India. Cognisant of the limitations of the current affordances of digital technologies, the urgency to overcome them by extending their reach to indigenous knowledge systems and the need for archiving it, the website forays into conceptual overlaps and variations in literary traditions across Indian languages. It hopes to deploy digital tools to see how different historical forces contribute in the making of shared meanings and histories.
We are a group that emerged from academic engagements on the question of optimizing the use of digital tools to comprehend and annotate Indian poetic texts at the Department of English, Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi. Our project ‘Digital Apprehensions of Poetics’ led by Prof. Nishat Zaidi, and supported by the Ministry of Education, Govt of India under its Scheme for the Promotion of Academic and Reseach Collaboration” facilitated multiple courses and workshops that were aimed at bridging the gap between the shrinking significance of Indian poetics and ever-growing digitization. With digitalectics, we aim to go a step further exploring wider implications of digital technologies for contemporary literary production and consumption in Indian languages as well as for critical cataloging of Indian literatures. We invite scholars of Indian literary traditions, practitioners, and graduate and doctoral students to join us in this endeavour by sharing their knowledge and insights.