Bodies of Knowledge: A Discourse Analytic Insurrection of the Library Experience

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BODIES OF KNOWLEDGE A Discourse Analytic Insurrection of the Library Experience By Brian J. Rose In Philosophy Submitted to the Department of Philosophy University of North Carolina - Asheville Thesis Adviser: Dr. Melissa Burchard Fall 2011

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Undergraduate Thesis in Philosophy by Brian Rose (University of North Carolina at Asheville, 2011)

Transcript of Bodies of Knowledge: A Discourse Analytic Insurrection of the Library Experience

Page 1: Bodies of Knowledge: A Discourse Analytic Insurrection of the Library Experience

BODIES OF KNOWLEDGE A Discourse Analytic Insurrection of the Library Experience

By

Brian J. Rose

In

Philosophy

Submitted to the Department of Philosophy

University of North Carolina - Asheville

Thesis Adviser: Dr. Melissa Burchard

Fall 2011

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INTRODUCTION

Theoretical Objectives

If one traces the historical development of the library since its inception,

one notices a series of radical institutional transformations, beginning with

Melvill Dewey’s technobureaucratic procedures of library organization in the

19th Century, followed by the proliferation of digital information technologies

from the 20th through the 21st Centuries. Whereas librarians of antiquity were

conceived as custodians of “cultural monuments” to knowledge, this conception

is now eroded by one of librarians as information scientists.1 This reveals a

transformation of the humanistic discipline of librarianship into the scientific

discipline of Library and Information Science (LIS). This disciplinary

transformation has been paralleled by a transformation of the theoretical

constructs of knowledge and information within LIS discourse.

The Oxford English Dictionary defines knowledge as the “clear and certain

perception of fact or truth; the state or condition of knowing fact or truth,”2 in

contrast to information as “the imparting of knowledge in general,” including

“knowledge communicated concerning some particular fact, subject, or event;

that of which one is apprised or told; intelligence, news.”3 Within the context of

this analysis, the term knowledge is used to denote conceptual content in its

abstract, static capacity; that is, it constitutes conceptual content that has been

fixed within the schemata of objectivity and appropriated within a body of

knowledge. By contrast, information designates conceptual content in its material,

dynamic capacity; that is, it designates conceptual content insofar as it is treated

1 Bernd Frohmann, “Discourse Analysis as a Research Method in Library and Information Science.,” Library and Information Science Research 16, no. 2 (1994): 130. 2 “knowledge, n.,” OED Online (Oxford University Press, September 2011), http://0-www.oed.com.wncln.wncln.org/view/Entry/104170?rskey=jMDB28&result=1&isAdvanced=false. 3 “information, n.,” OED Online (Oxford University Press, September 2011), http://0-www.oed.com.wncln.wncln.org/view/Entry/95568?redirectedFrom=information.

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as an empirical phenomenon or material resource (e.g., a text) that may be

subjected to some dynamic process of manipulation (e.g., codification,

commodification, retrieval, exchange, translation, etc.).

The epistemological foundation of positivism has rearticulated the

theoretical roles of knowledge and information within LIS discourse. Whereas

the primary concern of librarianship once functioned toward the collection of

knowledge in its static capacity (i.e., fixing it within a cultural body of

knowledge), the primary concern of contemporary LIS discourses functions

toward the utilization of information in its dynamic capacity (i.e., its collection,

representation, systemization, manipulation, retrieval, and transmission). This

dynamic utilization, however, appeals to an abstract body of knowledge as a

hypothetical referent to the whole of objective reality.

In order to discern the configuration of knowledge and information by

discursive practices of positivism in contemporary LIS discourses, this

investigation will proceed through three progressive dimensions of inquiry.

Firstly, I will investigate the organization of information systems in contemporary

libraries through the discursive practices of positivism; secondly, I will discern

how these systems are dynamically mobilized through information retrieval

technologies, thereby establishing modalities of use between information systems

and users; lastly, I will analyze the positioning of subjects as information users

through the library’s institutionalized dissociation between knowers and known.

This first dimension—the analysis of systems—will explore the positivist

treatment of information as a material resource through the library’s textual

surfaces. I will subsequently explore the body of knowledge as a fundamental

positivist construct of objective reality. Furthermore, I will explore the library’s

organization of information systems through various schemata of unity and

discontinuity wherein the textual surfaces of information are arranged.

The information systems configured by positivism are subsequently

mobilized through information technologies; these technologies establish certain

modalities of use between information systems and users within contemporary

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libraries. I will commence this section by distinguishing the theoretical

discourses of information retrieval and information searching insofar as they

conceptualize modalities of use between information systems and users. I will

subsequently explore the differential use of three theoretical constructs (i.e.,

information representation, query construction, and information ranking)

between these two discourses.

My analysis of information users will explore the positioning of subjects

as information users with regard to the positivist configuration of textual realities

and modalities of use. I will demonstrate how textual realities establish the

dissociation between knowing subjects and objective knowledge; I will

furthermore demonstrate how modalities of use institutionalize the cancellation

of subjective experiences of knowing from the positivist body of knowledge.

Explication of Terms

An explication of the key terms is now necessary in order to maintain the

clarity of this analysis. In proceeding with this explication, I must posit a caveat

that this discourse analysis seeks to avoid any definitive conceptualization of

these terms. By this I mean that I am theoretically obligated to maintain a certain

level of ambiguity in my explication of these terms, to ensure that this analysis

does not become restricted to the same objectifying mode of positivist discourse

that it seeks to critique.

Discourse emerges through the complex and localized relations between

statements, and serves as an analytical tool through which knowledge and

power are conceptually associated. He later asserts that discourse is “constituted

by a group of sequences of signs, in so far as they are statements, that is, in so far

as they can be assigned particular modalities of existence.”4 In this sense,

“discourse” designates an indeterminate set of statements that is discursively

arranged through a particular modality of regularity. The magnitude of this set

4 Michel Foucault, The Archaeology of Knowledge & The Discourse on Language, Reprint. (New York: Vintage Books, 2010), 107.

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varies according to the analytical perspective—discourse may designate anything

from a portion of a text to the entirety of a culture’s body of knowledge.

The Oxford English Dictionary defines the term discursive as “passing

irregularly from one locality [e.g., subject] to another,” or “digressive.”5 Foucault

prolifically employs the adjective, most notably in the phrase discursive formation;

he identifies a discursive formation as establishing a “system of dispersion” or “a

regularity (an order, correlations, positions and functionings, transformations)”6

between a set of statements, objects, concepts, theoretical strategies, or subject-

positions. Discursive formations impose patterns of dispersion or regularity

according to certain rules of formation. A discursive formation may thus be

identified as a set of rules and practices that associate discourse with power.

Positivism, insofar as it constitutes a set of theoretical practices that establishes

conditions of dispersion and regularity between discourses of knowledge, may

be designated as a discursive formation; these conditions of dispersion and

regularity configure the complex associations between knowledge and power

within diverse contexts of discourse.

Exploratory Methodology

The theoretical model of this analysis relies primarily on Michel

Foucault’s methodology of discourse analysis, as articulated in The Archaeology of

Knowledge. One may conceive the theoretical model of this analysis as one of

exteriority, in contrast to more orthodox models of interiority. As Foucault writes:

“Usually, the historical description of things said is shot through with the

opposition of interior and exterior; and wholly directed by a desire to move from

the exterior … towards the essential nucleus of interiority.”7 Analyses of

interiority pursue a coherent nucleus of meaning that is thought to subsist in the

interiority of a particular discourse; by rooting a discourse to its interior nucleus,

5 “discursive, adj.,” OED Online (Oxford University Press, September 2011), http://0-www.oed.com.wncln.wncln.org/view/Entry/54094?redirectedFrom=discursive. 6 Foucault, The Archaeology of Knowledge & The Discourse on Language, 38. 7 Ibid., 120–1.

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this analytical model is concerned with the theoretical stabilization of knowledge

within a static interpretive domain. Analyses of exteriority, by contrast,

investigate particular discourses by establishing them in the specific contextual

fields of its emergence through subjective and social practices. Subsequently,

discourse analysis maps the fragmentations and discontinuities that interrupt

these domains of discourse.

Whereas my analytical methodology is primarily informed by Foucaultian

discourse analysis, the theoretical aims of this analysis are primarily derived

from Dorothy Smith’s critique of positivism in The Conceptual Practices of Power.

These aims are epitomized in Smith’s assertion: “We aim not at a reiteration of

what we already (tacitly) know, but an exploration of what passes beyond that

knowledge and is deeply implicated in how it is.”8 Smith claims that positivist

knowledge dissociates the knower from the known, and thus infers that

positivist epistemology establishes social relations of power by dissociating

subjective experiences of knowing from the body of knowledge. I will thus

undertake the analysis of LIS discourses in order to reveal the contemporary

library’s institutionalization of this dissociation.

8 Dorothy E. Smith, The Conceptual Practices of Power: A Feminist Sociology of Knowledge (Northeastern University Press, 1990), 24.

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PART I: INFORMATION SYSTEMS

Preliminary Exposition

Positivist epistemology is grounded in an abstract conception of objective

reality as the coherent totality of truth. Positivist discourse pursues the

accumulation of objective information within an abstract body of knowledge that

will hypothetically account for the entirety of this objective reality. Information,

in the form of textual surfaces, is subjected to certain discursive practices of

organization through which these surfaces are appropriated within the body of

knowledge. The contemporary library institutionalizes this appropriation by

dissociating information from its contextual emergence in subjective experience,

inscribing it as a referent of objective reality through a textual surface, and

organizing it within schemata of unity and continuity.

My task in this section is therefore to locate these discursive practices of

positivism that configure the contemporary library’s organization of information

systems. I will undertake the analysis of this systematic organization through

three levels of inquiry. Firstly, I will explore the positivist treatment of

information as empirical phenomena that can be systematically organized.

Secondly, I will investigate the abstract body of knowledge as a fundamental

positivist construct of objective reality. Lastly, I will explore the library’s

schemata of unity and continuity wherein textual surfaces of information are

organized.

The Textual Surfaces of Information

I will begin by investigating the positivist treatment of information as an

empirical phenomenon and/or material resource in the form of textual surfaces.

In the context of this analysis, textual surfaces designate any material articulation

of information (including, but not limited to, books, journals, articles, facts,

images, videos, and audio). Gary P. Radford notes how positivism, as an

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epistemological foundation, “holds that knowledge, as contained in texts,

constitutes an independent object that can be stored, classified, and arranged in

an objective manner.”9 Through its conception of information as an empirical

phenomenon, positivism establishes its authority over the arrangement of the

textual surfaces within the library’s systematic organization of information.

The contemporary institution of the research library may be thought of as

an operational field of discourse wherein the textual surfaces of information (in

diverse forms of media including language, image, audio, and so on) become

systematically arranged. The arrangement of textual surfaces is configured by the

discursive practices of positivism into a coherent information system. This

ubiquitous system functions in the storage, organization, retrieval, and

transmission of information.

By reducing informational content within a unifying textual surface, the

discursive practices of positivism isolate particular texts from their contexts and

arrange them within the library’s information system. Textual surfaces are

subsequently mined for particular statements that stand as fixed referents to

objective truth in the form of facts; the fact, as a coherent unit of information,

constitutes a magnified scale of textual surface that is further isolated from its

contextual field. The library’s information system constitutes a cataloged array of

textual surfaces that is inscribed with the order of conceptual integrity by the

discursive practices of positivism. Radford describes the typical conception of the

library’s information system as that of “a depository of objective knowledge that

scientists have captured in the structure of their language and have preserved as

manuscripts, books, articles, and other media.”10

The organization of information through textual surfaces may display

irregularities in the particular material formulations of these surfaces (e.g., the

progressive drafts of a dissertation, the progressive modifications of a theory, the

9 Gary P. Radford, “Positivism, Foucault, and the Fantasia of the Library: Conceptions of Knowledge and the Modern Library Experience,” The Library Quarterly 62, no. 4 (October 1, 1992): 410. 10 Ibid., 412.

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translation of a text into different languages, etc.). Nevertheless, positivist

discourse grounds the authority of its knowledge by asserting its universality as

overwhelming the variations of its articulation and the contingencies of its

application. In short, the positivist configuration of information systems

extricates the fragmentation and discontinuity of knowledge in order to preserve

its objective universality (i.e., its systematic unity and continuity).

The Body of Knowledge

The discursive practices of positivism, through their inherent appeal to

objective reality, pursue the configuration of an objective body of knowledge; this

body represents a coherent order of knowledge that seeks to account for the

totality of objective reality. The body of knowledge thus constitutes an abstract

positivist construct, insofar as it represents a hypothetical account of objective

reality that has yet to be articulated. The positivist body of knowledge is still in

development, progressively pursuing the “continuous accumulation of

knowledge”11 by positivist discourse. Radford postulates this process of this

accumulation as the extension of positivism’s authority over all forms of

knowledge. He asserts:

Positivist knowledge is able to grow because individual discoveries reveal specific parts of a single coherent picture, that is, nature. Over time, science eventually will reveal the properties of this totality by discovering the relationships among its individual parts in the form of covering laws.12

With the hypothetical realization of the body of knowledge, its development

culminates as a fixed conceptual order, wherein the entire domain of textual

surfaces coheres into a static collection of all possible knowledge.

Informational accounts are appropriated within the positivist body of

knowledge when they are fully dissociated from their subjective origin(s) and/or

context(s) of emergence. Once appropriated within the body of knowledge, these

accounts enter what Smith terms textual time. She writes:

11 Foucault, The Archaeology of Knowledge & The Discourse on Language, 4. 12 Radford, “Positivism, Foucault, and the Fantasia of the Library,” 411.

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At some point the account is fully worked up; at some point it drops away the traces of its making (references to evidence, research, researchers, the technical processes involved, and so forth) and stands forth as an autonomous statement representing the actuality of which it speaks. Indeed, at this point, it enters ‘textual time,’ it can generate statements using different terms, provided that the original conceptual structure, temporal and spatial order (chronotropy), and so forth are preserved. Traces of how it came about that may have been in textual form, such as its previous drafts, corrections, alternative wordings, and so forth, which provide for scholars of literature an inexhaustible mine of indeterminacies—all are obliterated.13

Once information is appropriated within the body of knowledge, it constitutes a

“virtual reality” that is universal through all subjective experiences of knowing—

that is, “it is the same on each occasion of its reading. Readers reading the final

version are held to be reading the same text.”14

The Schemata of Unity and Continuity

I have investigated the positivist treatment of information as a material

resource in the form of textual surfaces, and how this treatment enables the

systematic organization of textual surfaces within the library’s information

systems. Furthermore, I have established how positivist discourse establishes its

foundation of objective reality through an abstract body of knowledge. I will

now outline several schemata of unity and continuity through which the

discursive practices of positivism organize textual surfaces within the

contemporary library’s information system. Foucault asserts that one must

“question those divisions or groupings with which we have become so

familiar.”15 The purpose of this inquiry is not to advocate the upheaval of these

schemata, but rather to reveal the means by which these schemata dissociate

textual surfaces from their contextual fields of emergence.

This analysis will focus on three fundamental schemata of unity within

the library’s organization of textual surfaces (i.e. disciplinary unity, textual unity,

and authorial unity), as well one fundamental schema of continuity within the

13 Smith, The Conceptual Practices of Power, 74. 14 Ibid., 75. 15 Foucault, The Archaeology of Knowledge & The Discourse on Language, 22.

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organization of textual surfaces (i.e., chronological continuity). Furthermore, I

will briefly adumbrate a series of subordinate schemata that configure the

systematic organization of textual surfaces; these subordinate schemata further

the systematic dissociation of textual surfaces from their contextual fields of

emergence.

The contemporary library’s information architecture is fundamentally

configured through the cataloging of textual surfaces within disciplinary unities.

The boundaries between disciplinary unities may be conceived as discursive

relations between different modes of knowing struggling for dominance within

the positivist body of knowledge. The library delimits disciplinary boundaries

according to their respective domains of inquiry, methods of analysis, and terms

of articulation. This schema of disciplinary unity obscures the fragmentation

between diverse modes of knowing, thus preserving an appearance of systematic

coherence.

The library’s systematic organization of texts disregards any categorical

ambiguity between disciplinary boundaries (e.g., the disciplinary ambiguity

between discourses of philosophy and history), invariably inscribing a particular

position and function upon a textual surface within a specific discipline. The

fixation of a textual surface within a discipline establishes the text’s stability

within a specific domain; the stability of this position consequently imparts a

particular function to the textual surface within the library’s Body of Knowledge.

As Foucault writes, “The schemata of use, the rules of application, the

constellations in which they can play a part, their strategic potentialities

constitute for statements a field of stabilization.”16

Within the conceptual architecture of these disciplinary unities, more

specific systems of designation govern the organization of textual surfaces.

Foucault identifies one such artificial unity as that of the book. The organization

of discourse within the unity of a book is accomplished by “the material

16 Ibid., 103.

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individualization of the book, which occupies a determined space, which has an

economic value, and which itself indicates, by a number of signs, the limits of its

beginning and its end.”17 The catalog of the research library’s information system

thus designates its material with regard to the unity of a specific book, but

disregards the complexities and discontinuities contained within that book.

The library’s organization of textual surfaces into the unities of particular

books ensures the coherence of its organizational systems. This schema of textual

unity isolates the book from the network of relations from which it continually

emerges; that is, it isolates the text from its context. The library’s catalog thus

delimits procedures of inquiry within isolated textual unities that are fixed in

time and space, such that the catalog conceals the contextual field of relations

subsisting in the interiority and exteriority of books. Foucault maintains: “The

frontiers of a book are never clear-cut: beyond the title, the first lines, and the last

full stop, beyond its internal configuration and its autonomous form, it is caught

up in a system of references to other books, other texts, other sentences: it is a

node within a network.”18 The library’s organizational system extricates the book

from this reticulated field of relations, and consequently precludes inquiry into

the context of the content that it examines. One means of amending this

preclusion is through the cataloging of texts through a citational web, wherein

texts are mapped through their citations to other texts; information users could

thereby explore the contexts of these texts through the network of references they

maintain.

Foucault also identifies the schema of authorial unity within as an

artificial unity in “which we recognize and delimit by attributing a certain

number of texts to an author.” Foucault critiques the artifice of this unity by

asking, “Does the name of an author designate in the same way a text that he has

published under his name, a text that he has presented under a pseudonym,

another found after his death in the form of an unfinished draft, and another that

17 Ibid., 23. 18 Ibid.

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is merely a collection of jottings, a notebook?”19 The library’s systematic

unification of textual surfaces by their attribution to a specific author further

alienates the text from the contextual complexities of its emergence. This might

be amended through an increased effort toward the inclusion of various editions

and drafts of a given text. The artifice of this schema could also be resolved

through a more meticulous cataloging of authorial context with regard to a given

text; for example, by cataloging the dates, locations, and/or academic institutions

in which various drafts of a text were written (when such information is

available). These efforts would enable the user to develop a greater

understanding of the text’s emergence within its field of discourse.

Another form of unity inscribed into the library’s systematic organization

of textual surfaces is that of chronological continuity. This continuity is especially

pertinent to the library’s collection of printed journals; that is to say, academic

journals are arranged chronologically by the date of their publication. This

chronological organization configures a model that underscores the “continuous

accumulation of knowledge”20 by positivist discourse. This notion of continuous

accumulation reinforces the authority of objective knowledge by implying a

progressive “building up” of factual accounts into an abstract body of

knowledge.

One may also identify subordinate schemata of unity and continuity,

which underscore the aforementioned schemata of disciplines, books, œuvres,

and chronology. These subordinate schemata reinforce the stability of textual

surfaces within the unities and continuities of discourse. The identification of all

subordinate schemata of textual organization accomplished by the library system

is beyond the scope of this analysis; rather, I will submit three such schemata as

examples with regard to Foucault’s list of the procedures of intervention that

fragment texts (these procedures, as identified by Foucault, are italicized within

the following paragraph).

19 Ibid., 24. 20 Ibid., 4.

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For example, the library’s archive may present different editions of a text

without regard to the techniques of rewriting and methods of transcribing that have

configured their material variations. Furthermore, the library’s Body of

Knowledge may contain multiple translations of a text. These various

translations are archived by the library’s catalog under the singular designation

of the original text, without accounting for the diverse modes of translating (e.g.,

qualitative evaluations of different translations within the library catalog); rather,

the modes of translating are reduced to the artificial unity of a subject as

translator.21

Remarks & Consequences

In this section, I have investigated the discursive practices of positivist

discourse that configure the contemporary library’s organization of information

systems. I have undertaken this investigation through three dimensions of

analysis. I have explored the positivist treatment of information as a material

resource that can be systematically organized. I have analyzed the abstract body

of knowledge as a fundamental positivist construct of objective reality.

Furthermore, I have adumbrated the schemata of unity and continuity wherein

the library organizes the textual surfaces of information. To discern how library

systems are mobilized through modalities of information use, the proceeding

section will investigate LIS discourses of information retrieval and searching.

21 Ibid., 58–9.

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SECTION II: INFORMATION USE

Preliminary Exposition

This section will investigate the modalities of use between information

systems and users within the contemporary library. I will focus my analysis on

the modalities of use established through the theoretical discourses of information

retrieval (IR) and information searching (IS) regarding the use of these information

technologies. In her dissertational thesis for the University of Alabama entitled

“‘Use’ in the Literature of Library and Information Science,” Rachel Anne

Fleming-May claims information technologies have exponentially multiplied “the

numbers and types of uses of the library and information resources,”22 thus

necessitating the application of discourse analysis in order to discern how these

various types of uses function to establish relations of power within contemporary

LIS discourse.

I will commence this analysis of information use by distinguishing IR

discourse as a technologically-oriented, prescriptive model of information use;

by contrast, I will distinguish IS discourse as a user-oriented, descriptive model

of information use. After investigating this fundamental distinction between

these discourses, I will undertake a more detailed analysis of the differential

conceptions of three theoretical constructs (i.e., information representation, query

construction, and information ranking) between these discourses.

Retrieval Versus Searching

In their article entitled “The seventeen theoretical constructs of

information searching and information retrieval,” Bernard Jansen and Soo Young

Rieh maintain that both IR and IS discourses share the common “focus on the

interaction between people and content in information systems,” as well as the

22 Rachel Anne Fleming-May, “‘Use’ in the Literature of Library and Information Science: A Concept Analysis and Typology” (The University of Alabama at Tuscaloosa, 2008), 3–4.

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common theoretical perspectives of “people, information, and technology in

locating information stored in computer systems.”23 The divergence between

these discourses emerges through their differential conceptualizations of this

interaction and in their differential orientations of these perspectives.

Jansen and Rieh define information retrieval as “the field of academic study

concerned with … representing, storing, and finding information objects with

information technology.”24 Research in this field of discourse tends to focus on

such issues as “retrieval modeling, document processing and clustering, filtering,

link analysis of a collection, and matching algorithms, among others.”25 Through

this focus on the digital modeling of information technologies, IR discourse

constitutes a prescriptive approach to information use. The digital modeling of

information retrieval systems prescribes fixed modalities by which information

users may interact with these systems.

Information searching, by contrast, constitutes “the field of academic study

concerned with … interaction with information searching systems.”26 This user-

oriented field of research concerns itself with such theoretical issues as

“investigating user goals/tasks for using searching systems, information

searching behaviors/strategies during the interactions with a Web search engine

or an experimental retrieval system, as well as those examining the criteria for

the evaluation of a searching system, among others.”27 Through its theoretical

emphasis of information behavior research, IS discourse constitutes a descriptive

approach to information use. The descriptive analysis of information behavior is

subsequently extrapolated into the design of an information retrieval system.

IR discourse—through its emphasis on the technological design of

information retrieval systems—conceptualizes use in terms of retrieval, or “the

23 Bernard J. Jansen and Soo Young Rieh, “The seventeen theoretical constructs of information searching and information retrieval.,” Journal of the American Society for Information Science & Technology 61, no. 8 (2010): 1517. 24 Ibid., 1522. 25 Ibid. 26 Ibid., 1521. 27 Ibid., 1522.

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extraction of information from a content collection.”28 By conceiving information

use as a process of retrieval, IR discourse marginalizes the information user as a

passive variable within an algorithmic model; the user is thus rendered

submissive to technological design. By contrast, IS discourse conceptualizes use

in terms of search, or “the specific behaviors of people engaged in locating

information.”29 This conceptualization of use as an active process of searching

orients the theoretical emphasis of IS discourse toward the information; as such,

IS discourse determines the design of information technologies according to the

context of a user’s information need(s).

In order to more meticulously contrast the modalities of use patterned by

these discourses, it now becomes necessary to investigate three theoretical

constructs common to both discourses—these being information representation,

query construction, and information ranking. I will investigate the differential

conception of these constructs between IR and IS discourses so as to underscore

the contrast between their respective theoretical models of prescription and

description.

Information Representation

Jansen and Rieh note that IR discourses consider information as

“inherently concrete, definable, and encodable. Information retrieval follows the

positivist or rationalistic tradition … by considering information to be something

objective in the external reality.”30 Consequently, IR systems rely on positivist

practices of information representation, whereby “information can be represented

algorithmically by the sum of its attributes”31 within discursive schemata of

unity.

Within IR systems, various extraction procedures (e.g., pattern matching,

statistical learning, and natural-language processing) function to encode the

28 Ibid., 1517. 29 Ibid. 30 Ibid., 1524. 31 Ibid., 1522.

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“named entities and relationships in natural-language sentences” that are

contained within textual information.32 The codification of these entities and

relationships constitutes the dissociation of informational contents from their

contexts. IR discourses pursue the objective codification of information in the

same way for all individual users, regardless of the complex contextual

associations that persist between a specific informational content and the

experience of a particular user.

To posit one example, many IR discourses advocate a form of natural

language processing known as stemming, whereby a text’s terms are semantically

mapped to their specific base forms. These procedures are designed to increase

the efficiency of information retrieval by increasing the set of results retrieved

from any given search term; however, as Thorsten Brants notes in his article

“Natural Language Processing in Information Retrieval,” stemming “results in

an increase in recall, but sacrifices precision.”33 For example, a user searching for

specific uses of the term “knowledge” will also retrieve uses of the terms

“know,” “knowing,” “known,” etcetera; by inscribing specific terms within

discursive unities, the information user is cut off from the particularities of these

terms’ contexts.

Lacking the positivist conception of information as an objective resource,

IS discourses typically reject the algorithmic representation of information. Some

notable exceptions persist, however, in IS theoretical proposals for cognitive

and/or contextual schemata of information representation. One example of an IS

approach to information representation may be found in the principle of

polyrepresentation posited by Birger Larsen, Peter Ingwersen, and Jaan

Kekäläinen, wherein “cognitively and functionally different representations of

information objects may be used in information retrieval to enhance quality of

32 Gerhard Weikum et al., “Database and Information-Retrieval Methods for Knowledge Discovery.,” Communications of the ACM 52, no. 4 (April 2009): 59. 33 Thorsten Brants and Google Inc., “Natural Language Processing in Information Retrieval,” In Proceedings of the 14th Meeting of Computational Linguistics in the Netherlands (2004): 3.

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results.”34 This principle attempts to theorize a pluralistic schema of

representation that may be adapted to diverse contexts of information needs and

procedures of use. Larsen et al. state: “the principle of polyrepresentation

attempts to make simultaneous combination of evidences (representative features)

that are cognitively contextual to one another in a structured way.”35

Query Construction

IR systems rely on the theoretical construct of a query as a means of

codifying a user’s information need. A user articulates his/her information need

as “a query that an information retrieval system accepts.”36 The information need

is thus codified as “a set of one or more symbols that is combined with other

syntax and used as a command for an information retrieval system to locate

possibly relevant content indexed by that system.”37 The query is a fundamental

construct in information technologies “that affects result ranking, document

clustering, and almost all key information retrieval areas.”38

Prior to the advancement of information representation procedures, query

construction necessitated the use of complex query languages to “allow

professional users to specify more precisely what they are interested in.”39 These

structured query languages have been rendered obsolete within contemporary IR

systems, wherein the detailed representation of information favors keyword-

oriented queries. Weikum et al. thus maintain how, in information retrieval

systems, a “keyword search over structured data (such as relational databases)

makes sense when the structural data description—the schema— is so complex

that information needs cannot be concisely or conveniently expressed in a

34 Birger Larsen, Peter Ingwersen, and Jaana Kekäläinen, “The polyrepresentation continuum in IR,” in Proceedings of the 1st international conference on Information interaction in context, IIiX (New York, NY, USA: ACM, 2006), unpaged, http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1164820.1164840. 35 Ibid. 36 Jansen and Rieh, “The seventeen theoretical constructs of information searching and information retrieval.,” 1522. 37 Ibid., 1528. 38 Ibid. 39 Weikum et al., “Database and Information-Retrieval Methods for Knowledge Discovery.,” 58.

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structured query.”40 Rather than the user articulating his/her information need

through a structured query language, in many cases it is “much simpler is to

state five keywords … and let the system compute the most meaningful answers

in a relational graph.”41

The keyword-based query construction of IR systems generates a larger

set of retrieved results with greater efficiency, but once again at the cost of

precision. Through the rigorous codification of informational content by

information retrieval systems, the user’s search procedures become limited

within the schemata of information representation. So severe is this limitation

that a meticulous articulation of the user’s information need as a structured

query is no longer able to efficiently access the system’s contents. Rather, the

information need must be trivialized through a keyword query as a set of generic

terms, and the results retrieved from this query will be algorithmically selected

by the system itself (thus diminishing the selective autonomy of the user).

IS discourse maintains a much more ambiguous conception of the query

as a theoretical construct; it conceives the query as holding “a range of meanings

from the expression of the information need in a compromised form to the actual

underlying need itself.”42 Because of the ambiguity of this construct, some

information searching researchers have raised skepticism regarding the ability of

a codified query to adequately articulate the user’s underlying information need

to an information retrieval system.43

Information Ranking

The schematic representation of information and the codified query are

algorithmically extrapolated by an IR system into a set of results that is

automatically ranked according to some normative order. The model

40 Weikum et al., “Database and Information-Retrieval Methods for Knowledge Discovery.” 41 Ibid., 57. 42 Jansen and Rieh, “The seventeen theoretical constructs of information searching and information retrieval.,” 1528. 43 Ibid.

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determining this process is designated by the theoretical construct of information

ranking, whereby retrieval procedures are extrapolated into a “set of results that

one can algorithmically rank to the degree that they match a query.”44

Algorithmic models of information ranking are predicated on the normative

assumption “that all results retrieved do not have equal value based on a metric,

such as relevance.”45

IR systems algorithmically rank information by particular standards of

relevance. Relevance, as defined by Jansen and Rieh, constitutes “a foundational

criterion for evaluating the performance of searching or retrieval.”46 The

normative configuration of relevance through information ranking thus

constitutes a discursive practice whereby “the system takes a query, matches it to

information objects stored in the system using some algorithms, and provides a

set of document results. The focus is on the connection between information

objects retrieved and a query submitted, typically known as topical relevance.”47

One standard by which IR discourses define relevance is that of document

similarity (sometimes discussed as document clustering), which presumes that “if a

document is relevant to a given query, then similar documents also will be

relevant.”48 Jansen and Rieh posit a critique of document similarity as a standard

of relevance, arguing that it could inhibit knowledge discovery by limiting the

perspectives of retrieved results. They assert: “Naturally, the most relevant other

documents would resemble the one already found; however, from the user side,

this new document would be of little value since it may not contain new

information.”49

While IS discourse also concerns itself with the ranking of information by

standards of relevance, these standards are usually conceived through the

context of a particular user. Jansen and Rieh thus claim, “Information searching

44 Ibid., 1524. 45 Ibid. 46 Ibid., 1522. 47 Ibid., 1525. 48 Ibid., 1522. 49 Ibid., 1524.

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researchers embrace user relevance, which focuses on users’ cognitive state of

knowledge, intention, goals, and motivation with respect to information to be

used.”50 A contextual, user-oriented IS approach to relevance and information

ranking is exemplified in Weikum et al.’s argument for the development of

expressive ranking “to better capture the context of the user.”51 They note that

expressive ranking with regard to user-context “requires personalized and task-

specific [language models] that consider current location, time, short-term

history, and intention in the user’s digital traces.”52

Remarks & Consequences

This section has investigated the modalities of information use as

conceptualized by IR and IS discourses; I have contrasted the technologically-

oriented, prescriptive conceptualization of use by information retrieval

discourses against the user-oriented, descriptive conceptualization of use by

information searching discourses. I have outlined this contrast through the

differential use of three theoretical constructs by these discourses—these being

information representation, query construction, and information ranking. The

next section will explore the positioning of subjects as information users with

regard to information systems and modalities of use.

50 Ibid., 1525. 51 Weikum et al., “Database and Information-Retrieval Methods for Knowledge Discovery.,” 64. 52 Ibid.

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SECTION III: INFORMATION USERS

Preliminary Exposition

In the preceding sections, I have analyzed how positivist epistemology

configures the library’s architecture of textual surfaces within information

systems; furthermore, I have analyzed how this architecture establishes

modalities of use through information retrieval technologies. The task now is to

synthesize these analyses by investigating how subjects are positioned as

information users with regard to the systems and uses of information within the

contemporary library.

I will thus explore how the discursive formation of facticity configures

textual realities within the contemporary library’s information systems, thus

dissociating subjective knowers from the objectively known. I will furthermore

investigate how the modalities of use established by information technologies

position information users within pre-established modes of knowledge, thus

canceling subjective experiences of knowing from the positivist body of

knowledge.

Information Systems

The library’s systematic organization of textual surfaces coheres through

textual realities of objective information that is shared in common among

information users. Textual realities constitute fragmented components of the

body of knowledge: they are abstractions in progress, insofar as the body of

knowledge has yet to account for the whole of objective reality. Smith asserts:

“Textual realities constitute shared, identical, and perspectiveless objects and

environments, locked into decision processes through the schemata, categories,

and concepts that organize them.”53 The library institutionalizes these textual

53 Smith, The Conceptual Practices of Power, 84.

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realities as domains wherein subjective experiences of knowing must occur if

they are to be authorized as objectively valid.

Information is articulated through textual surfaces, which are thereby

authorized as objectified knowledge and arranged as textual realities. Textual

realities thus consist of information that has been fixed within the static form of

objective knowledge. The library configures the arrangement of textual realities

through a set of discursive practices that Smith terms ‘facticity’. She states:

Facticity … is an organization of practices accomplishing as a virtual reality ‘what is’ or ‘what actually happened’ or some other statement of what is the case. Facts are neither the statements themselves, nor the actualities those statements refer to. They are an organization of practices of inscribing an actuality into a text, of reading, hearing, or talking about what is there, what actually happened, and so forth.54

Facticity is the set of discursive practices whereby textual surfaces are positioned

as direct referents to objective reality. Facticity therefore establishes a discursive

formation wherein textual realities are conceived as conveying objective

knowledge to a knowing subject.

Through facticity, positivist discourse governs the system of relations

between the library’s textual realities, and subsequently arranges this system of

relations within the abstract body of knowledge. Information, as articulated by

individual theorists, is thus extracted from its subjective context of origin,

authorized as objective knowledge, and subsumed within textual realities. These

textual realities are arranged within the hypothetical body of knowledge to

which their objective status appeals.

Smith therefore maintains: “Members of a discipline accumulate

knowledge that is then appropriated by the discipline as its own. The work of

members aims at contributing to that body of knowledge.”55 She asserts that

disciplinary membership consists in the knowledge of “how to practice and

preserve the rupture between the actual, local, and historically situated

experience of subjects and a systematically developed consciousness of society. If

54 Ibid., 70–71. 55 Ibid., 15.

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we are to claim full and proper membership in our discipline, we must be

competent performers of this severance.”56

Smith asserts that “objectified forms of knowledge structure the relation

between knower and known. The knower’s relation to the object known is

structured by the social organization accomplishing it as knowledge.”57

Positivism positions the knowing subject exterior to the body of knowledge; the

objectification of knowledge necessitates that this knowledge be expropriated

from the contextual field of its subjective emergence. Smith cites the analyses of

Bruno Latour and Steve Woolgar in conceptualizing “the attainment of factual

status by a scientific finding as the progressive ‘forgetting’ of the originating

researchers and research.”58 She critiques the positivist construction of “factual

status” by asserting that “knowing is always a relation between knower and

known. The knower cannot be collapsed into the known, cannot be eliminated;

the knower’s presence is always presupposed. To know is always to know on

some terms.”59

Modalities of Use

In Section II, I investigated the positivist configuration of IR technologies

as establishing certain modalities of information use. These modalities of use

construct a normative model of objective knowledge through which certain

modes of knowing are inscribed as valid, whereas other modes are inscribed as

deviant. Smith states:

Our knowledge of the world is given to us in the modes by which we enter into relations with the object of knowledge. But in this case the object of our knowledge is or originates in the co-ordering of activities among ‘subjects.’ The constitution of an objective [body of knowledge] as an authoritative version of how things are is done in and as part of the practices of ruling in our kind of society.60

56 Ibid., 52. 57 Ibid., 63. 58 Ibid., 66. 59 Ibid., 33. 60 Ibid., 24.

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IR technologies function in the proliferation of a pre-established mode of

objective knowledge; this objective mode of knowledge positions the knowing

subject with regard to textual realities. Radford thus notes: “The activity of

conducting … searches becomes the individual's attempt to locate his knowledge

claims within an existing order of knowledge claims.”61

Foucault describes “instrumental intermediaries” through which subjects

are positioned at an “optimal perceptual distance whose boundaries delimit the

wheat of information.”62 Foucault elucidates the constituent processes of this

positioning as follows:

[The subject] uses instrumental intermediaries that modify the scale of the information, shift the subject in relation to the average or immediate perceptual level, ensure his movement from a superficial to a deep level, make him circulate in the interior space of the body—from manifest symptoms to the organs, from the organs to the tissues, and finally from the tissues to the cells.63

For the purposes of this analysis, the instrumental intermediaries that Foucault

describes as shifting the position of the subject will be understood as information

technologies. Information technologies configure the modes of knowing (i.e.,

information use) that juxtapose knowledge and knowers. As Foucault remarks,

these technologies configure modes of knowing from all scales of analytical

perspective—even down to “the interior space of the body” in which the

knowing subject circulates. This corporeal configuration demonstrates the

authority of objective modes of knowledge over subjective experiences of

knowing. IR technologies cancel these experiences by positioning subjects within

objectified textual realities. The modalities of objective knowledge thus establish

a discursive formation that marginalizes subjective experiences of knowing from

the positivist body of knowledge.

Smith notes that this regime of power “arises in the distinctive concerting

of people’s activities that breaks knowledge from the active experiencing of

subjects and from the dialogic of activity or talk that brings before us a known-

61 Radford, “Positivism, Foucault, and the Fantasia of the Library,” 419. 62 Foucault, The Archaeology of Knowledge & The Discourse on Language, 52. 63 Ibid., 53.

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in-common object.”64 IR technologies may be conceived as one form of this

“concerting of people’s activities,” insofar as they inhibit the “active

experiencing” of knowledge by subjects through their conception of information

use as a passive process of retrieval. As Jansen and Rieh assert, “Information

retrieval is not concerned with aspects of changes to a user’s knowledge or

wisdom based on the information retrieved.”65 Rather, IR discourses conceive

use purely as the extraction of information from a content collection; as such,

these discourses position users through a passive modality of reception.

Through this passive modality of reception, IR technologies restrict the

possibilities of information use, and thus position the user within the fixed mode

of objective knowledge. Subjective experiences of knowing are therefore canceled

from the positivist body of knowledge. The discursive practices of IR

technologies construct a prescriptive model for the use of information by

prescribing a governing conceptual mode as the only valid means by which to use

information.

Smith defines the governing conceptual mode as an objectifying mode of

knowledge whereby subjective experiences of knowing are discarded. She thus

maintains: “Entering the governing mode of our kind of society lifts actors out of

the immediate, local, and particular place in which we are in the body. What

becomes present to us in the governing mode is a means of passing beyond the

local into the conceptual order.”66 The governing conceptual mode thus displaces

the information user from his/her subjective experiences of knowing into a

textual reality of objective knowledge.

IR technologies render the local, immediate contexts of subjective

experiences of knowing as superfluous details that must be canceled from the

positivist body of knowledge. The governing conceptual mode accomplishes this

cancellation by creating, “at least potentially, a bifurcation of consciousness. It

64 Smith, The Conceptual Practices of Power, 80. 65 Jansen and Rieh, “The seventeen theoretical constructs of information searching and information retrieval.,” 1523. 66 Smith, The Conceptual Practices of Power, 17.

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establishes two modes of knowing and experiencing and doing, one located in

the body and in the space it occupies and moves in, the other passing beyond

it.”67 To extend this conceptualization, the subjective body of lived experience is

sacrificed to preserve the objective integrity of the body of knowledge. Smith thus

asserts that “objectified knowledge, as we engage with it, subdues, discounts,

and disqualifies our various interests, perspectives, angles, and experience, and

what we might have to say speaking from them.”68

Discovery from Within

Through her critique of positivist knowledge, Smith advocates “a mode of

discovering or rediscovering our society from within.”69 With regard to this

analysis, this entails that we reconceptualize the library experience from

within—that is, by attempting to understand how the library’s systems and

technological modalities of use configure our experiences and identities as

information users.

It would be theoretically naïve (if not impossible) to advocate the radical

abandonment of positivism as the epistemological model of LIS discourses; the

positivist configuration of library systems and modalities of use is, at this current

juncture, inescapable. And if we are to continue to participate in discourse—in

the innovative creation of knowledge—we cannot altogether reject the library as

an arena of this creation. Rather, it is our task to excavate the institutional

configuration of our identities as knowing subjects and of our subjective

experiences of knowing (through information systems, information technologies,

textual realities, bodies of knowledge, etc.). Smith’s analytical method thus aims

“not at a reiteration of what we already (tacitly) know, but an exploration of

what passes beyond that knowledge and is deeply implicated in how it is.”70

67 Ibid. 68 Ibid., 80. 69 Ibid., 23. 70 Ibid., 24.

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To rediscover the library from within, it is necessary that we discern how

we are positioned as information users by the library. Rather than falling into

pre-established modes of objective knowledge, we must understand the

complexities of our subjective modes of knowing and utilize these complexities

to contextualize our participation in the creation of knowledge. In describing the

diverse modes of knowing through which subjects are positioned, Foucault

writes:

The positions of the subject are also defined by the situation that it is possible for him to occupy in relation to the various domains or groups of objects: according to a certain grid of explicit or implicit interrogations, he is the questioning subject and, according to a certain programme of information, he is the listening subject; according to a table of characteristics features, he is the seeing subject, and, according to a descriptive type, the observing subject[.]71

By contextualizing our subjective experiences of knowing within an

understanding of these modalities, we reveal the conditions by which our

knowledge becomes possible, as well as the implications of our participation in

this knowledge.

Through this revelation, we are empowered to innovate new conditions of

possibility for knowledge. Radford thus maintains:

The practices of the library institutionalize particular arrangements of texts, but Foucault argues that one can work within this to create new labyrinths, new perspectives, and ultimately, new worlds. The library becomes an instrument of possibility rather than a place where possibility seems exhausted. The image of the library as an impersonal collection of silent and dusty texts containing the sum total of the knowledge of the world is challenged by a more dynamic image, in which users immerse themselves within the crevices and spaces between texts, forming connections and making discoveries far more profound than simply collecting specific facts.72

By rediscovering the library from within, the library is transformed from an inert

collection, fixing the limits of inquiry within an objective body of knowledge, to a

dynamic site of exponential possibilities for the creation of new knowledge.

71 Foucault, The Archaeology of Knowledge & The Discourse on Language, 52. 72 Radford, “Positivism, Foucault, and the Fantasia of the Library,” 420.

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CONCLUSION

This discourse analysis of has endeavored to discern the discursive

configuration of contemporary LIS discourses by positivism through three

progressive dimensions of inquiry. I commenced my analysis by investigating

the contemporary library’s organization of information systems through the

discursive practices of positivism; I proceeded by exploring the modalities of use

established by information retrieval technologies; I concluded with an analysis of

the positioning of subjects as information users, thus revealing the library’s

institutionalized dissociation between knowers and known.

The aim of this analysis was not the radical upheaval of contemporary LIS

discourses, nor the prescriptive disruption of positivist epistemology. Rather,

this analysis sought to excavate contemporary discourses of knowledge and

information in order to reveal their implications for subjective experiences of

knowing. That is, I have aimed at a more detailed understanding of the

discursive formations that determine our practices as knowing subjects within

the arena of the contemporary library. In light of these aims, I can identify two

fundamental philosophical implications of this analysis.

The first implication entails the reconciliation of any conceptual disparity

between the discursive domains of epistemology and politics. The analysis of

positivist epistemology as an institutionalized dissociation between subjective

knowers and the body of knowledge reveals how discourses and practices of

knowledge are caught up within a morass of social relations—an array of

discursive formations too dense and entrenched to be disentangled. By analyzing

discourses of knowledge configure social relations through the positioning of

subjects, I have demonstrated that any critical analysis of knowledge necessitates

theoretical attention to the social relations are inscribed by this knowledge.

Foucault expounds the association between epistemology and politics in

Power/Knowledge:

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There is an administration of knowledge, a politics of knowledge, relations of power which pass via knowledge and which, if one tries to transcribe them, lead one to consider forms of domination designated by such notions as field, region and territory. And the politicostrategic term is an indication of how the military and the administration actually come to inscribe themselves both on a material soil and within forms of discourse.73

Subsisting beneath the scope of articulated discourse is a multifarious regime of

social relations, whose perpetual contests for authority over knowledge

consequently function to configure the conditions of possibility for knowledge.

Through the discursive formation of positivism, the presence of knowing

subjects is continually cancelled from the objective body of knowledge; this

cancellation restricts the domain of knowledge to objective content, thus

concealing the contingencies and particularities of its contextual emergence

through subjective experiences.

The second fundamental implication of this analysis entails the

rectification of contextual analysis within the domain of knowledge. This

necessitates the abandonment of the theoretical model of transcendence, wherein

the objective conceptualization of knowledge locates the knowing subject in a

position of exteriority with regard to the known. Rather, this analysis implicates

the adoption of a theoretical model of immanence, wherein knowledge is

conceptualized as inextricably contained within a particular knowing subject.

Radford thus asserts, “Knowledge claims acquire their force and meaning

by virtue of particular discursive and social contexts.”74 The dissociation of

knowledge from its subjective context constrains the possibilities of knowledge

by appealing to the lowest common denominator of objective reality and

ignoring the underlying social relations that configure the articulation of

knowledge. Radford therefore notes how “Foucault's view of scientific

knowledge holds in abeyance the self-evidence of an objective world that

positivism addresses. This entails substituting for the term knowledge (of the

73 M. Foucault, Power/knowledge: Selected interviews and other writings (New York: Pantheon Books, 1980), 69. 74 Radford, “Positivism, Foucault, and the Fantasia of the Library,” 417.

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world) the term knowledge claims (about a world).”75 Smith similarly claims that

an adequate conception of knowledge must preserve the presence, concerns, and

particular experiences of the knower. She writes: “There is no other way to know

than humanly, from our historical and cultural situation. This is a fundamental

human condition.… Constructing a spot outside the world for the knowing

subject to stand in is the accomplishment of definite socially organized

practices.” (Smith 33)

Radford notes that the “the library institutionalizes the arrangement of

texts that provides the appropriate spaces in which new knowledge claims can

be located and given meaning.”76 From this, we may infer that previous

articulations of knowledge determine the conditions of possibility for future

articulations of knowledge. Thus the theoretical emphasis of the objective

content of knowledge constricts the possibilities for new contents. If knowledge

is to be anything other than a reiteration within pre-established channels of

inquiry, we must endeavor to cultivate the contextual richness of knowledge,

thus exponentiating its possibilities for dynamic innovation.

75 Ibid., 416. 76 Ibid., 418.

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