Another Look at a Knowledge Organization Pioneer: Traces of Racism in Paul Otlet’s Writings

Abstract

Critical strand of studies in Knowl­edge Organization (KO) and Library and Information Science (LIS) have been focused on gender bias and power inherent in the classification of knowl­edge artefacts. From the mid-2000s, attention turned to other types of biases notably racial biases. These studies have exposed and rightly critiqued how the supposedly “universal” classification and knowl­edge artefacts designed by LIS and KO pioneers were designed mostly by white men. Wiegand (1996) demonstrated that Melvil Dewey, the creator of DCC, was a notorious racist and antisemite. This paper raises the issue of how the LIS and KO communities have dealt with the legacy of one its most celebrated pioneers, Paul Otlet, whose writings had imprints of white supremacist ideologies at least in two of his texts ‘Afrique aux Noirs’ and ‘Monde. Essai d’universalisme’. In particular, we speculate about the quasi-omerta that had surrounded Otlet’s writings on race and racial relations considering the amount of exegesis done on his works. The one-sided narrative portraying Otlet mostly in a positive light and magnifying his works has led to epistemicide and “documentary injustice”.