As bibliotecas nacionais na perspectiva do regime de informação: um diálogo epistemológico e político

Abstract

In the face of the crisis narratives that permeate national libraries as an 'institutional category' from the post-Second World War to the beginning of the twenty-first century, we seek to investigate the possible controversies that reach and associate them with these narratives. Due to the complexity presented by these institutions, the concept of regime of information is used to articulate the analyzes in two main ways: 1) to explore the 'national libraries category' as information network nodes that relate to several other network nodes, as librarian-informational thinking in the following epistemological frameworks: the custodial paradigm, Documentation and Information Science (IS); 2) to discuss national libraries based on the relations between politics, information and power that are established between national states, modern institutions and the market; to do so, the contributions of Foucault and Deleuze are used to reflect on the changes of the disciplinary society to the control society. The analysis of the national libraries has as reference the general and updated study of Fuentes (2003) and the bibliographic productions fomented by the International Federation of Library Associations and Institution (IFLA) in the twentieth (postwar) and XXI centuries. Regarding the first line of analysis proposed, it is pointed out that the controversies that link national libraries to possible crises have repercussions with problems identified by relevant authors in the Information Science itself, especially up to the end of the 20th century: the dualist vision between practical research and reflection epistemological; the removal of political, philosophical debate and the prioritization of technical aspects; shifting the informational issues of the political-state scope towards the scope of the economy and the market. However, it is also indicated that the approximation between praxis and theory in IS, which tends to strengthen in the contemporary context under the bias of the social paradigm, can contribute to explore with density the aforementioned problems. The research aims to not only theorize about this approach, but also to carry it out using the regime of information and networks approach to highlight the importance of national libraries being connected: among themselves, to librarian-informational thinking, to contemporary society; as well as to emphasize the importance of participating actively in the construction of the social - re-aggregating and affecting people, places and documents widely. In relation to this last point, it is identified that the patrimonial mission, even being associated with the main crisis factors, still stands out in contemporary discourses as an 'identifier' element of the national libraries, in this way, dialogues with Bernd Frohmann and Bruno Latour - that stimulate a reading of documentary social practices as creators and mobilizers of affections - to bring a perspective of the patrimonial mission less directed to the signs and more directed to the connection of the signs to the worlds that surround them.