The Power to Name and Frame

Abstract

Originally published as part of “Unbound Libraries” documentation, a worksession convened by Constant (Brussels) in 2020 (https://constantvzw.org/wefts/unboundlibraries.en.html), “The Power to Name and Frame” examines the political nature of cataloguing and classification systems that shape what is recognised, legitimised, and made findable as knowledge in libraries. Drawing on insights from library and information science, particularly the work of Emily Drabinski, Hope Olson, Suzanne Briet, and Sanford Berman, it explores how naming, categorising, and standardising are never neutral acts, but practices embedded in histories of power, hierarchy, and exclusion. Through eight scenes, it traces everyday experiences of sorting, structural dilemmas in classification, the violence of context-less naming, the possibilities and limits of uninscription, the paradox of the “document” exemplified by Briet’s case of a caged animal, and Melvil Dewey’s drive for universalising order. The text reflects on activist and scholarly efforts to challenge biased descriptors, while highlighting the structural constraints of library systems that aim for universality. It concludes by calling for a “radical catalogue”, an approach that treats the catalogue itself as a contested, meaning-making structure and invites users to critically engage with its assumptions, openings, and exclusions.