Teaching the Radical Catalogue – a Syllabus
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DOI der Originalpublikation
Projekttyp
angewandte Forschung
Projektbeginn
2021
Projektende
2027
Projektstatus
laufend
Projektkontakt
Projektmanager:in
Beschreibung
Zusammenfassung
"Teaching the Radical Catalogue – a syllabus" interrogates prevailing practices of classifying and organizing knowledge in libraries of the Global North. Drawing on Emily Drabinski’s article “Teaching the Radical Catalog” (2008), the project develops a study and research program investigating the politics of naming and framing, as well as the practices of searching and finding, from an intersectional and decolonial perspective.
The program situates Western library systems within coloniality, challenging their claims of universality and neutrality, and examining the resulting biases, oppressions, and exclusions. While some information is easily retrievable, other knowledge remains hidden or inaccessible—every search is shaped by the decisions of librarians, information scientists, and developers who build the frameworks of discovery.
The program therefore asserts that information retrieval is not merely a technical act but a political project shaped by social, political, and technological forces. Drawing on Susan Leigh Star’s “The Ethnography of Infrastructure” (1999)—which argues that infrastructures become visible only when they break—the study program explores intersectional interventions and experiments that expose and critique the hidden mechanisms of library catalogues.
Across eight sessions with librarians, activists, artists, designers, and programmers, the syllabus examines the catalogue’s technological foundations and interrogates the assumptions, authority, and privilege of those engaged in cataloguing. Through conversations, interviews, and practice-based experiments, participants explore alternative structures: opening up cataloguing protocols (Infrastructural Manoeuvres), developing intersectional search tools (Feminist Search Tools, Constant), and experimenting with the political potential of annotation and rewriting (The Rewrite, Library of Inclusions and Omissions).
Through workshops, exhibitions, publications, and collaborations, the program fosters awareness of the structural biases underpinning library systems, enabling participants to recognize and address them.
Während FHNW Zugehörigkeit erstellt
Ja
Zukunftsfelder FHNW
Hochschule
Hochschule für Gestaltung und Kunst Basel FHNW
Institut
Institut Experimentelles Design und Medienkulturen
Finanziert durch
Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF)
Centre for Postdigital Cultures, Coventry University
Foundation Art Library Sitterwerk St Gallen
Centre for Postdigital Cultures, Coventry University
Foundation Art Library Sitterwerk St Gallen
Projektpartner
Centre for Postdigital Cultures, Coventry University
Foundation Art Library Sitterwerk St Gallen
Foundation Art Library Sitterwerk St Gallen
Auftraggeberschaft
SAP Referenz
Schlagwörter
radical librarianship
decolonizing knowledge infrastructures
radical cataloguing practice
feminist methodologies
decolonizing knowledge infrastructures
radical cataloguing practice
feminist methodologies