Trapped in Our Own Discursive Formations: Toward an Archaeology of Library and Information Science

This article introduces Michel Foucault's "Archaeology of Knowledge" as a way of addressing what Wayne Weigand has termed "tunnel vision and blind spots" in the discipline of Library and Information Science (LIS). Invoking Foucault's Archaeology in the context of Wiegand's problematic provides a framework in which to understand (1) how the discursive formation of LIS is itself a problem to be analyzed beside others, (2) how the nature of the discursive formation hinders potentially fruitful research in LIS, and (3) how understanding Wiegand in terms of Foucault can help to generate a new self-reflexive and critical attitude among LIS scholars to their own discursive formation and the discursive formations of others.