Instauraciones discursivas de la organización del conocimiento: H. E. Bliss y la Sociedad Internacional para la Organización del Conocimiento (ISKO)

Abstract

The discourse of knowledge organization has been scientifically and institutionally reinforced by theInternational Society for Knowledge Organization - ISKO since the late twentieth century. This discourse often accredits to Bliss (1929, 1933) the origins of knowledge organization as an area of investigation based mainly on issues regarding classification systems and conceptual relation systems, such as the thesaurus. Acknowledging the fact that the term “knowledge organization” is already present in an article by Otlet (1903), this work consists of the observation and reflection on the possible theoretical associations between the concepts of Bliss and Otlet. The textual scope of this reflection includes, in addition to the already mentioned texts by Bliss and Otlet, works by Dahlberg (1993, 1995) and Hjørland (2003, 2008) who can be considered founders of a new discursive perspective. From the methodological point of view, this study was guided by a text by Michael Foucault - What is an author? (1992). Foucault believes that, as a name, the author is not only a reference, but also has other indicative functions. The results of this reflexive and interpretive study show that Dahlberg granted a special status to Bliss’s work, which implies that he and later authors developed those ideas and their applicability, establishing Bliss as the founder of a discourse, appropriated and reinterpreted by ISKO. Regarding Otlet, we verified that he is not the founder of a discourse linked to knowledge organization in ISKO’s approach. However, we verified that his work closely addresses the issue of information recovery, present in Hjorland. In this way, Otlet’s knowledge organization discourse can contribute and become associated with a discourse fostered by the ISKO.