Liberating Knowledge at the Margins

Abstract

This paper proposes an LIS research paradigm by which the transactional relationships between knowledge organization systems (KOS) and external scholarly discourses may be identified and examined. It considers subject headings as discursive acts (or Foucauldian “statements”) unto themselves—in terms of their materiality, rarity, exteriority, and accumulation—arising from such discourses, and which, through their usage in library catalogues and databases, produce their own discursive and non-discursive effects. It is argued that, since these statements lead through their existence and discovery (or absence and neglect) to the creation of further texts, then potentially oppressive discursive formations may result where marginalized knowledges are concerned. The paper aims to better understand these processes in scholarly discourses—and the role of libraries therein—by examining recent examples in the LIS literature regarding matters of race and gender, and which are suggestive of this emergent paradigm.