El problema ideológico de la selección-eliminación-destrucción de libros y bibliotecas

Meneses Tello, Felipe and Licea de Arenas, Judith El problema ideológico de la selección-eliminación-destrucción de libros y bibliotecas. Ciencias de la Información, 2005, vol. 36, n. 2, pp. 65-71. [Journal article (Paginated)]

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English abstract

We examine two complex aspects of the problematic intrusion of political and ideological imperatives upon the world of libraries and books: 1) Materials selection, freedom to read, and censorship. We suggest that choices of library materials are linked to policies of lay and religious leaders who tend to prohibit, on one hand, works which are considered hostile to the government and, on the other, items deemed contrary to church religious ideology. 2) Elimination, destruction, and out-and-out states of siege, in which acts of suppression (of books) and annihilation (of books and of libraries themselves) arise from policies that endanger the public order. Thus through a theoretical-historical analysis, we discern the ideological role of such instruments and cultural systems, and the ideological power they exert within the structure of the society and the state. We explain that under certain social and political circumstances, these cultural assets are subject to varying degrees of systematic repression that range from comparatively tenuous measures of circumscription, to destructive mechanisms that operate on a grand scale. We conclude that the phenomenon of elimination and destruction of library collections and libraries, whether through violent sieges or by means of civil repression, should be regarded from a perspective that calls for justice and reprisal, because these devastating events constitute crimes against culture.

Spanish abstract

El estudio político-ideológico de los libros y las bibliotecas se hace desde dos rubros complejos: 1] la selección, libertad de lectura y censura, donde se plantea que la selección de materiales en las bibliotecas está relacionada con las políticas de los poderes seglares y religiosos que prohíben obras hostiles o perniciosas y, 2] la supresión y aniquilamiento de libros y bibliotecas por el peligro que representan para el orden público. Así, a través de un análisis teórico-histórico, se vislumbra la función ideológica de esos instrumentos y sistemas culturales y su poder en el seno de la sociedad y del Estado, dado que bajo ciertas circunstancias sociales y políticas dichos recursos culturales están sometidos a diversos grados de represión sistemática que van desde medidas tenues de proscripción hasta mecanismos de destrucción a gran escala. De esta manera, la eliminación-destrucción de acervos bibliográficos y repositorios en estados de sitio bélicos o civiles se considera a partir de una perspectiva de condena y justicia en virtud de que esos escenarios constituyen un atentado contra la cultura.

Item type: Journal article (Paginated)
Keywords: [Spanish keywords] Ideología, Censura, Selección de Libros, Libertad a Leer, Memoricidio, Libricidio [English keywords] Ideology, Censorship, Book Selection, Freedom to Read, Memoricide, Libricide
Subjects: E. Publishing and legal issues. > EE. Intellectual freedom.
B. Information use and sociology of information > BC. Information in society.
E. Publishing and legal issues. > EF. Censorship.
B. Information use and sociology of information > BF. Information policy
Depositing user: Zapopan Martín Muela-Meza
Date deposited: 07 Feb 2007
Last modified: 02 Oct 2014 12:06
URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10760/8928

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