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 Deweys 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
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://0www.oed.com.wncln.wncln.org/view/Entry/104170?rskey=jMDB28&result=1&isAdvanced=fal
se.
3 information, n., OED Online (Oxford University Press, September 2011), http://0www.oed.com.wncln.wncln.org/view/Entry/95568?redirectedFrom=information.
1

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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 librarys institutionalized dissociation between knowers and known.
This first dimensionthe analysis of systemswill explore the positivist
treatment of information as a material resource through the librarys textual
surfaces. I will subsequently explore the body of knowledge as a fundamental
positivist construct of objective reality. Furthermore, I will explore the librarys
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
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 perspectivediscourse may designate anything

from a portion of a text to the entirety of a cultures 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 subjectpositions. 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
Foucaults 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,
discursive, adj., OED Online (Oxford University Press, September 2011), http://0www.oed.com.wncln.wncln.org/view/Entry/54094?redirectedFrom=discursive.
6 Foucault, The Archaeology of Knowledge & The Discourse on Language, 38.
7 Ibid., 1201.
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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 Smiths critique of positivism in The Conceptual Practices of Power.
These aims are epitomized in Smiths 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
librarys institutionalization of this dissociation.

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 librarys 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 librarys
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 librarys 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 librarys 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 librarys 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
librarys 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
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
knowledge11 by positivist discourse. Radford postulates this process of this
accumulation as the extension of positivisms 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
12

Foucault, The Archaeology of Knowledge & The Discourse on Language, 4.

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
indeterminaciesall 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 librarys 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 librarys 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 librarys organization of textual surfaces (i.e. disciplinary unity, textual unity,
and authorial unity), as well one fundamental schema of continuity within the

Smith, The Conceptual Practices of Power, 74.

Ibid., 75.
15 Foucault, The Archaeology of Knowledge & The Discourse on Language, 22.
13
14

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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 librarys 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 librarys 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 texts stability
within a specific domain; the stability of this position consequently imparts a
particular function to the textual surface within the librarys 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 librarys 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 librarys 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 librarys 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 librarys 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
18

Ibid., 23.
Ibid.

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is merely a collection of jottings, a notebook?19 The librarys 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 texts emergence within its field of discourse.
Another form of unity inscribed into the librarys systematic organization
of textual surfaces is that of chronological continuity. This continuity is especially
pertinent to the librarys 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 knowledge20 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, uvres,
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 Foucaults list of the procedures of intervention that
fragment texts (these procedures, as identified by Foucault, are italicized within
the following paragraph).
19
20

Ibid., 24.
Ibid., 4.

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For example, the librarys 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 librarys Body of
Knowledge may contain multiple translations of a text. These various
translations are archived by the librarys 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 librarys 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., 589.

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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
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), 34.
22

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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 useroriented 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 discoursethrough its emphasis on the technological design of
information retrieval systemsconceptualizes use in terms of retrieval, or the
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 users 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 discoursesthese 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 attributes31 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
Ibid., 1517.
Ibid.
30 Ibid., 1524.
31 Ibid., 1522.
28
29

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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 texts 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
Keklinen, wherein cognitively and functionally different representations of
information objects may be used in information retrieval to enhance quality of

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.
32

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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 users 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 keywordoriented 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 descriptionthe schema is so complex
that information needs cannot be concisely or conveniently expressed in a
Birger Larsen, Peter Ingwersen, and Jaana Keklinen, 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.
34

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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 users search procedures become limited
within the schemata of information representation. So severe is this limitation
that a meticulous articulation of the users information need as a structured
query is no longer able to efficiently access the systems 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 users 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

Weikum et al., Database and Information-Retrieval Methods for Knowledge Discovery.

Ibid., 57.
42 Jansen and Rieh, The seventeen theoretical constructs of information searching and
information retrieval., 1528.
43 Ibid.
40
41

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

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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 taskspecific [language models] that consider current location, time, short-term
history, and intention in the users 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 technologicallyoriented, 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 discoursesthese 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.

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

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SECTION III: INFORMATION USERS

Preliminary Exposition
In the preceding sections, I have analyzed how positivist epistemology
configures the librarys 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 librarys 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 librarys 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.

Rose 23

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 librarys 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
55

Ibid., 7071.
Ibid., 15.

Rose 24

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 knowers 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 knowers 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

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

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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 bodyfrom 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
perspectiveeven 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 peoples activities that breaks knowledge from the active experiencing of
subjects and from the dialogic of activity or talk that brings before us a knownRadford, Positivism, Foucault, and the Fantasia of the Library, 419.
Foucault, The Archaeology of Knowledge & The Discourse on Language, 52.
63 Ibid., 53.
61
62

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

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

Rose 27

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
withinthat is, by attempting to understand how the librarys systems and
technological modalities of use configure our experiences and identities as
information users.
It would be theoretically nave (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 discoursein
the innovative creation of knowledgewe 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.). Smiths 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

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

Rose 28

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
72

Foucault, The Archaeology of Knowledge & The Discourse on Language, 52.

Radford, Positivism, Foucault, and the Fantasia of the Library, 420.

Rose 29

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 librarys 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 librarys
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 relationsan 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:

Rose 30
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

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.
73

Rose 31

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
76

Ibid., 416.
Ibid., 418.

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