THE FEMINIST AND THE EMPERORS NEW CLOTHES - FEMINIST DECONSTRUCTION AS A CRITICAL METHODOLOGY FOR LIBRARY AND INFORMATION STUDIES

Deconstruction is a poststructural methodology useful for questioning underlying assumptions. A feminist approach adds to deconstruction an active, applied element appropriate to a female-intensive profession. This article draws on feminist deconstructive theory and its applicati on in other professions to develop an approach suitable for research i n library and information studies (LIS). It explains and provides an e xample of feminist deconstruction as a methodology. The example addres ses an assumption of information storage and retrieval: the necessity of imposing a universal language on information for effective retrieva l. A feminist deconstruction reveals that the boundary between uniform ity and diversity of language is artificial or constructed and that an y such boundary is exclusionary. The article concludes with other sugg ested applications of feminist deconstruction in LIS.