Nicholas Rubakin through the lenses of a critical theory of information

Abstract

In the scope of epistemological-historical and sociocritical studies in Library & Information Science, the paper discusses the possible intersections between Russian librarian Nicholas Rubakin’s thought and the critical theory developed by members of the Institute for Social Research, internationally known as the Frankfurt School. This paper aims to investigate whether and under which conditions the bibliopsychological theory developed by the Russian theorist in the 1880s and 1920s, centered for and by reading as an instrument of social change, presents convergences with Frankfurt’s critical theory, developed in the 1930s, which serves as a theoretical and methodological basis for the critical theory of information. This study is exploratory, theoretical and based on a qualitative approach. Besides, it adopts a bibliographical and historical research criteria within the scope of the epistemology of Library & Information Science and the perspective of critical theory in the field. The theoretical concepts employed in this research are founded, on the one hand, on Nicholas Rubakin’s approach to reading and, on the other hand, on the critical theory, according to the philosophers of Frankfurt School Max Horkheimer and Herbert Marcuse; these contributions are complemented by the works of Arthur Bezerra and Gustavo Saldanha on critical theory of information. The results indicate three categories of analysis that suggest that there is an association between critical theory and bibliopsychology: theoretical foundation; methodological structure; and transformative praxis. The findings reported here shed new light on the sociocritical dimension in Nicholas Rubakin’s thought through the lenses of Library & Information Science and its contribution to social change.