Jeanluc Nancy's Globalisation And Mondialisation And The Catalog Of Nippur

By Author: Alex Lee
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Jean-Luc Nancy, in describing two contrasting directions in which history might be currently unfolding globalisation (globalization), which he sees as the death of the world and mondialisation (world forming), which involves "the creation of the world" [5, p. 29], offers an enormously generative theoretical framework within which to consider the tension inherent in IL between the librarian's aspiration to aid in finding, evaluating, and using information (mondialisation) and the librarian's desire to suppress this impulse by Thomas Sabo declaring certain knowledge as off-limits (globalisation).

A radical theorizing of IL requires contextualizing it in this dynamic tension between library as an aid to accessing information (mondialisation) and library as a barrier to access (globalisation). Catalogs and indexes, the same tools for using the library, for gaining access, for facilitating circulation of materials, for the consumption of information, are also the marks of certification and of authority, literally the list of holdings. Jacques Der-rida explains this authority ...
... through etymology. In tracing archive to arkheion, a house in which superior magistrates, archons, both guarded and interpreted official documents, Derrida sees the archive as a place of patriarchal guardianship and "hermeneutic authority". According to Nancy's framework, globalisation results in a homogenized and unjust world, where hermeneutic authority is oppressive and total a world in which librarians see their role primarily as guarding and vetting information. Mondialisation, on the other hand, would require librarians to redefine their primary task as contributing to the creation of an equitable world by conceptualizing information as something that is created and to undertake this personal redefinition with a sense of urgency: "To create the world means: immediately, without delay, reopening each possible struggle for a world, that is, for what must form the contrary of a global injustice against the background of general equivalence". Just as Jacques Derrida's linguistic excavation of the word archive "reopens" our understanding of hermeneutic authority, so might an attempt to link Nancy's framework to archeologists' physical excavations of ancient libraries open possible ways of conceptualizing IL.

Excavation of the earliest known library, near Nippur in southern Mesopotamia, unearthed what might be thought of as IL's founding text: a rudimentary catalog. Consisting of two tablets, "dating to around 2000 B.C., both inscribed with a list of Sumerian works of literature various myths, hymns, laments" Thomas Sabo Jewellery,how does this catalog, etched in clay, offer us insights into the ways freshman and sophomore college students interact with information.