The Cyborg Librarian as Interface: Interpreting Postmodern Discourse on Knowledge Construction, Validation, and Navigation within Academic Libraries

This paper explores the implications of postmodernism upon a historically modern institution by articulating and applying three components of postmodernity to the academic library: the rise of local narratives, the performativity of knowledge, and the notion of the cyborg, a humanmachine hybrid inhabited, in many ways, by the academic librarian. In his 1999 article “Towards a Postmodern Context for Information and Library Education,” Dave Muddiman explains the dilemma of postmodernism for libraries as a paradigm incompatible with the profession’s origin story. He writes, “The roots of information and library science lie very firmly in the ‘modern.’”1 Not only were the majority of libraries founded during modern times (circa 1750–1950), but it was against the backdrop of modernist notions of order, progress, authority, and control that these libraries flourished. Libraries aligned themselves with modernist ideals, claiming the organization and dissemination of knowledge as their privileged contribution to society, in effect becoming a “supreme form of rational social organization . . . that . . . imposed order upon the chaos of human thought and made the resultant knowledge available for the good of mankind.”2 The value-laden modernist library proved both prolific—writing its mantras into policies for patrons, as well as into the broader cultural memory—and steadfast. However, over the past fifty years, rampant societal change 3.3yoder 8/7/03, 2:58 PM 381 The Cyborg Librarian as Interface 382 and a revolutionary cultural mindset called “postmodernism” have taken a toll on the self-assured institution, cracking the fortress of the modern library and demanding an exploration into its changing functions and values. As is evident in other sectors of society, this undercutting of traditional authority produces anxiety and turmoil. Librarians and critics vary in their assessment of the influence of postmodernism on libraries, but fear is undeniable. William H. Wisner’s book Whither the Postmodern Library is one example of a scathing attack on the admission of postmodernism into libraries. He equates the advent of postmodernism in libraries with an unhealthy reliance on technology, a decline in the American educational system, and a disregard for truth and ethics amid a mad dash to consume information rather than seek knowledge. Wisner predicts that libraries, unable to compete with technology and edged out by competition with for-profit information management companies, will cease to exist; they will die within the coming century.3 I believe that if libraries are to take seriously such ominous predictions, they must learn to speak the language of postmodernism. By its very concept, the term defies definition. Postmodernism is not a unified ideology, but a pastiche of thought. It is one thing to one person, and something entirely different to another. Opposed to modernism, postmodernism is a fluid continuum refusing association with rigid categories. It pervades art, literature, cultural criticism, science, and religion, offering new conceptions of revered disciplines. For purposes of this paper, however, a specific working definition of postmodernism is necessary. One influential theorist, Jean-Francois Lyotard, situates postmodernism in the context of the emergence and dominance of local narratives over monolithic metanarratives and the resulting legitimation and performativity of knowledge.4 While superficially opposed to one another, these components of postmodernism not only speak to the current situation of the academic library, they combine to form a new conception of the processes of education and research, and a revisiting of the role of the academic librarian within those processes. The idea that emerges is that of a “human-machine,” a term inspired by Donna Haraway’s postmodern invention of the “cyborg,” which she defines as, “a cybernetic organism, a hybrid of machine and organism, a creature of social reality as well as a creature of fiction.”5 Constructing Knowledge: Local Narratives Replace Metanarratives Lyotard categorizes postmodernism by the presence of localized narratives—small, incompatible stories and exercises in meaning-making. This is coupled with an “incredulity toward [modern] metanarratives,” which sought to explain the whole of the universe.6 To Lyotard, postmodern society is composed of disparate communities, each with its own values, language games, and symbols. As such, these communities are fragmented groups, broken off and isolated from one another and unable to communiI believe that if libraries are to take seriously such ominous predictions, they must learn to speak the language of postmodernism. 3.3yoder 8/7/03, 2:58 PM 382