Between art, technique and technology: some thoughts on bibliography and its gestures

Abstract

This paper proposes a discussion on the concept of "bibliographic gesture", seeking to define it in relation to definitions of technique and technology. It tries to understand the core of doing of what we call bibliography, to the extent that it becomes librarian knowledge, expressing and organizing its tools. The main discussion individualizes two different operations, one of technical nature and the other technological. Without a clear hierarchical boundary between speculation and application, between science and technology, it is necessary to structure the discourse of bibliographic practices not yet articulated in theory. This is a bibliographical work that discusses concepts in a historical perspective, using authors who reflected on these issues, mainly Herbert Marcuse, Michel Foucault and Michel de Certeau. Indeed, technology understood as an organized system of devices to be used thanks to technical skills is a process that develops mainly along Modern Age, while bibliography, understood as a set of practices, also develops on the same temporal axis. Autonomy achieved by technology, especially in information studies, produces a set of problems for the development of bibliography. Our proposal is to retrieve an idea of bibliography as a technique identified as gesture that produces cultural expression.