Elaborate isolation: Metastructures of knowledge about women

This paper examines the category of "Woman" within the metastructure of a s ystem of knowledge organization. We trace the subject scheme used to list b ooks about women in a standard bibliographic guide over the first three-qua rters of the twentieth century. Building on the feminist critique of subjec t representation, our analysis documents how the category was continually c onstructed over time, providing evidence of multiplication, isolation, and confusion in the process. The outcome is a framework that fails to capture the complex nature of knowledge about women and conceals relationships to t he larger body of knowledge. The case of this legacy system exemplifies pro blems associated with representing the complexity and integration of knowle dge and provides a basis for considering the potential residual impacts of current information organization and navigation systems.