Praising Imperfection: Why editions do not have to befinished

Scholarly editing has traditionally been understood as a long process, culminating in an opus magnum which stands forever after. Or at the very least, for very long. We argue that this is at least partially derived from technical, not intellectual premises: With printed media, an edition was so expensive to produce, that intermediary versions have been impossible to distribute. Digital media on the other hand do not create these costs and can be changed arbitrarily often.´

This can be seen as part of a process, which changes the accessibility of Humanities’ information drastically and makes many things easily accessible, which have so far been considered below the horizon. Having “all the sources” available, rather than the small subset, that could be made available by traditional editions, has long been a dream of the historical branches of the Humanities. It is strange, that when this dream could actually be made real, we read suddenly appeals for sticking to a canon not as a technical necessity, but as an intellectual virtue.

We propose to embrace the technical changes willingly: It is a constituent characteristic of the Humanities, that the interpretation of evidence is never concluded. The way in which we present evidence should reflect that. An edition, therefore, is not the culminating final triumph of an individual genius. It is, for intellectual reasons, a small step on a long road.