Open Arabic Periodical Editions: A Framework for Bootstrapped Scholarly Editions Outside the Global North

This paper introduces and evaluates the project Open Arabic Periodical Editions (OpenArabicPE) as a case study of minimal computing. It confronts hyperbolic promises of mass digitization and computational methods for the exploration of digitized cultural heritage as a hegemonic episteme rooted in 20th-century, English-speaking, neoliberal capitalism from the margins. OpenArabicPE is a framework for open, collaborative, and scholarly digital editions of early Arabic periodicals from the late Ottoman Eastern Mediterranean. It addresses the specific affordances of a historical multilingual society, whose material heritage continues to be looted, destroyed, and neglected; whose material heritage resists digitization efforts by being dependent on non-Latin scripts and, for instance, non-Gregorian calendars; and whose contemporary heirs cannot draw on the vast resources in wealth and socio-technical infrastructures of the Global North. Centered around generosity and minimal computing, OpenArabicPE is run by volunteers and currently hosts six editions with some 630 journal issues and more than 7 million words, without any funding, by re-purposing data, software, and infrastructures.