COLONIALITY AND THE CRITIQUE OF KNOWLEDGE ORGANIZATION SYSTEMS

Abstract

From a socio-critical perspective on the knowledge organization, this research aims to demonstrate the exclusionary and violent nature of knowledge organization systems when formulated from a universalist perspective, through the analysis of meta-representations present in Brazilian instruments within socio-cultural domains. The study is justified by the need for in-depth epistemological-historical understanding of knowledge organization, in dialogue with socio-critical readings of domain conformation concerning colonial and racist legacies in Brazil. The methodological premise is that instruments dedicated to Brazilian cultural heritage, folklore, and social studies would, in theory, exhibit high permeability to plurality. Methodologically, the study is characterized as qualitative research with a theoretical structure, via an exploratory perspective. The theoretical-analytical framework is anchored in the precepts of the critical theory of knowledge organization and the decolonial perspective, mobilizing the Ramón Grosfoguel’s concepts of epistemic and ontological extractivism and Hope Olson’s gender critical theory in knowledge organization epistemology. The corpus of the documentary research was constituted by a sampling focused on Brazilian knowledge organization systems. The inclusion criterion established the selection of thesauri whose domains were explicitly focused on culture and society. The analysis demonstrates how such instruments reduce cosmologies and subjects present on the periphery of the construction of Western discourse, such as women, Black people, and Indigenous people. The results point to the identification of epistemic violence that reinforces the structure of coloniality and its violent effects through the reproduction perpetuated by knowledge organization systems.