Decolonize the libraries
A handful of notes | Part 1 of 2
[This text was presented at the Cusco International Book Fair (Peru) on November 18, 2023].
Introduction
What do we talk about when we talk about “libraries”? And about their contents? What do we mean when we talk about “documents”? What is, from our perspective, the “why” and “what for” of our spaces for the conservation of knowledge and memories? What do we librarians, archivists, and museologists do?
During the years in which I studied Library and Information Science at the Faculty of Philosophy and Humanities of the National University of Córdoba, in Argentina, I thought I found the answers — if not all, at least a handful of them — to these questions. They were answers that came from the pages of the most prominent manuals in the disciplines of knowledge and memory. And from articles, and conferences, and international declarations, and recommendations, and guidelines — the world of libraries, archives and museums, we well know, is populated with definitions, concepts and tools, and everything is measured, controlled and normalized.
However, today I know that everything I had in my hands then was nothing more than the official version of events: a package of canned answers that only took into account the realities of a small majority of libraries. And that, as always, left aside, consciously or unconsciously, the enormous minority.
It took me a few years to realize all that. To understand that there were small majorities and large minorities, and a hegemonic discourse that spoke about the former and ignored the latter. To find out that what the sacred LIS handbooks told was not the truth, or at least not all of it, and that, as Subcomandante Marcos said when he wrote in Chiapas, there were many worlds, but they were in this one.
And many possible libraries within what, today, and despite everything, we insist on calling “libraries.”
Uncomfortable questions
I got the first clue that my knowledge and my training were not as solid as I believed nor as monolithic as they seemed shortly after graduating, in an indigenous community in northeastern Argentina: a de-library-ed place to which I arrived precisely so that it would cease to be so. When I stood before the community members and announced the good news of the library’s arrival to their lands and their lives, I received a series of cold looks and a single response. An answer in the form of a question.
“And what do we want a library for?”
That phrase hit me. How could someone not want a library?
I was lucky not to be held hostage to my own ideas: I gave myself permission to explore those of those who had decided to remain proudly un-library-ed. What position was that community in? Little by little I managed to understand that the library — or, at least, the most widespread and common version of “library”; that is, the one that I knew, defended and carried with me — not only did not respond to any of the needs of that community or solve any of its problems, but it also created additional inconveniences for them. It was a strange element, an invasive intruder, an external implant that was never going to take root in that territory, among those people who insisted on asking me why on earth they would want what I was going to offer them.
My reflections stripped me naked and put me in front of a cruel mirror. I faced my poor beliefs and constructs; my intellectual miseries, subjected by weak academic pins; my stereotypes and prejudices; my small and limited ideas about the universe in general and about my LIS world in particular… And it was then that I began to suspect that there were probably many potential forms of libraries: as many as human groups, as horizons, as stories and memories… At the same time, I began to sense that the handbooks I used to learn my profession showed only a part of reality, and they did so knowing that they were leaving aside many experiences, possibilities and paths. And I ended up assuming that that community’s question, the one that had broken so many of my certainties, was not going to be the last one that had such an effect.
And so it was. Shortly afterward, in a town in northwestern Argentina where I was helping to create a local archive, a young man wanted to know if those shelves full of papers and photos could hold textile fragments. I remember shaking my head in a mute gesture of denial, and his surprised eyes, and the question leaving his lips quickly:
“And why not?”
I did not know what to say. Because guidelines and policies designed far from there, on the other side of the world, said so? Because it was ordered by the great archival authorities, who preferred to ignore realities other than their own, the dominant one, the “correct” one? Because the word, generally written, sometimes spoken, was the Queen within the disciplines of knowledge and memory management, and textiles were “something else”? None of the answers I tried convinced me. I stared at him, with a stupid look on my face, and shrugged my shoulders, even more stupidly.
It took me a long time to find an adequate answer to that question. By the time I finally did it, all I managed to do was further break the by-then flimsy foundations of what I thought I knew.
The final blow came a couple of years later, again in the northeast of my homeland, when I was explaining to a group of librarians the differences between a library, an archive and a museum. An elderly woman, clearly indigenous and proud of being so, asked me why such atrocities were done to the memory of a people.
“Our memory, the memory of my people, is one and one only” she told me. “We don’t break it up to put the pieces in separate boxes depending on the shape they have.”
Her comment made all the sense in the world: in my professional life I had dedicated myself precisely to fragmenting heritage and placing those pieces in different spaces, and applying labels, regulations and organization and classification policies to them. All of this to later invest a similar amount of time and effort in putting those pieces back together so that they made sense ― which, it must be said, rarely happened, or had a successful result. Why were we doing that?
As time went by, I ended up adding all my doubts ― those that I accumulated in my many years of wanderings among libraries, archives and museums, large and small, in all corners of Latin America. Why were there no books on indigenous languages in libraries that operated in communities where indigenous languages were primarily spoken? Why is orality not recognized as a valid source of information if, today, the spoken word continues to be the main means of transmitting knowledge? Why is a movie poster considered a document, but an engraved pumpkin or a painted cloth is not? Why do we continue to place so much emphasis on reading and books when there are many other means to acquire and transfer knowledge and skills? Why are some books placed on shelves “a library”, but the same books in a basket, a box or a backpack are no longer one? Why are some sheets sewn between two painted cardboard covers not respectable as a source of information, but the same sheets, stapled under an editorial seal, are?
From the sum of those questions many others emerged. Many more. Especially about my profession. Why do we, as librarians, or archivists, or museologists, believe what we believe and do what we do? Do we ever doubt, or do we simply act like automatons, without asking questions? Have we been given the opportunity to think critically? Have we given it to ourselves? Or are we simple tool-applying machines, neutral and aseptic? Do we realize that what we do every day is something political, a social process that implies a lot of responsibility and commitment?
Since then I have traveled the world with more doubts than certainties, and with my backpack full of questions that rarely receive answers. I have added some new terms to my vocabulary that have helped me understand a little better — but only a little — where I stand as a professional in the disciplines of knowledge and memory. I have gotten rid of some preconceptions, although there are others that I have attached like caltrops, or adhered like tattoos to my skin. I understood a little about what we do, with whom, how, when, where…
But I’m still not clear about why. Or why.
It is when I approach these last questions that certain ideas begin to appear: resistance, trenches, rebellion, gaps, struggles, activism, militancy… And, above all, decolonization.
[Read part 2 here]
