Flaubert, Foucault, and the Bibliotheque Fantastique: toward a postmodern epistemology for library science - Gustave Flaubert, Michel Foucault - Qualitative Research

Library Trends, Spring, 1998 by Gary P. Radford

INTRODUCTION

Traditional concepts of knowledge, meaning, and communication in library and information science are facing a crisis; they are unable to adequately characterize and structure the experience of interacting with the modern academic library (see Budd, 1995; Radford, 1992; Radford & Budd, 1997; Tuominen, 1997; Zwadlo, 1997). The emergence of this crisis has been preceded by the advent of sophisticated information storage, processing, and retrieval technologies that are significantly transforming the nature of the library experience for both the librarian and the user. Also changing are the relationships among the librarian, user, and the texts the library houses or has access to elsewhere. The field of library and information science has taken, both explicitly and implicitly, a model of knowledge developed by the positivist social sciences as the basis for describing the nature of the library and these changes (Harris, 1986). Recently, scholars such as Budd (1995) and Radford (1992) have argued that the positivist model of knowledge, far from providing useful accounts of change, may be contributing to a profound lack of understanding of how people experience their interactions with the modern academic library. In other words, the epistemology of library science must become explicitly recognized as a significant problem to be addressed by library scholars.

This article addresses the issue of epistemology and library science by considering Michel Foucault's (1967/1977) essay, "La Bibliotheque Fantastique" (translated as "The Fantasia of the Library"). This is a work of literary criticism rather than scientific analysis, and this choice of genre is deliberate. Walsh (1987) has noted that "there exists a discourse of the Library" (p. 211) and argues that literary criticism of the library is among the "most stimulating, thought-provoking, and controversial criticism written today. The Library...is apparently ripe for decentering" (p. 212). The usefulness of considering the library experience from the perspective of literary criticism lies in its ability to provide an alternative perspective from which the rationalistic assumptions of a positivist epistemology can be foregrounded, transcended, and critiqued along with the conception of the library it supports. Thus, following Budd (1995), a major objective of this article is "to shift, first thought, then discourse, then research, by initiating a questioning of assumptions and purposes" (p. 315). Following a brief account of the implications of the positivist perspective for conceptualizing the modern library experience, this article will offer an alternative postmodern epistemology from which library scholars can rethink traditional notions of the library, librarian and, most importantly, library users.

RATIONALITY, ORDER, AND THE SEARCH FOR TRUTH

In the Western literary tradition, the library has long been taken as a metaphor for order and rationality (Castillo, 1984; Garrett, 1991). It represents, in institutional form, the ultimate realization of a place where each item within it has a fixed place and stands in an a priori relationship with every other item. The rationality of the library in many ways represents the description of nature idealized by the institutions of positivist science. As the library imposes a completely consistent system upon a collection of unique texts, so positivist science seeks the system by which unique observations derived from nature can be ordered and classified according to a set of general principles. Garrett (1991) has argued that there exists a "collective belief, unchallenged until recently, in the existence of a scientifically derived and classifiable body of knowledge" and that the library is "one of the most visible and important temples that society has erected to this belief" (p. 382).

A library is a place where knowledge is first classified and then kept, stored in texts of all kinds such as books, periodicals, and audiovisual materials. Such an understanding imposes a rigid structure of expectations that come to define the library experience for both librarian and library user. The reference interview, for example, comes to represent an interface where texts, and hence their information, can be located and acquired. Indexes, catalogs, and other information retrieval systems act as road maps to navigate this environment of knowledge. For both positivism and the library, the dominant metaphor is that of "the search." In positivist science, the search is for underlying structures that comprise the truth of the natural world. In the library, the search is among structures for a truth that will alleviate a specific "information need." In both cases, the structure to be discovered/searched is preordained, either by a supreme being or by a librarian. Indeed, the image of the "librarian-god" is common in the literary portrayal of the library (see Borges, 1962).

The association of library with order underlies many common stereotypes of librarians. The representation of the librarian as stern and forbidding is found in much popular discourse (Mount, 1966; Radford & Radford, 1997; Swope & Katzer, 1972) though two images in particular are prominent. The first is that of the librarian, usually a female (Carmichael, 1992), patrolling the library floors and saying "shhhh!" to any who would dare to make a sound. The second is that of the librarian "stamping out" the book. Sable (1969) describes the librarian stereotype as: