A colonialidade do saber na Ciência da Informação no Brasil: influências dos outsiders no processo de institucionalização sociocognitiva

Abstract

Colonialism transformed socioeconomic, geopolitical, cultural and religious relations globally, which persist in the various colonialities, including that of knowledge, impacting, in general, the sciences and, particularly, Information Science. Given this, the general objective of this research was to analyze the influences of the coloniality of knowledge on the implementation and institutionalization of Information Science in Brazil. To this end, the objective was, specifically, to identify the foreign intellectuals (outsiders) who worked in the implementation and institutionalization of Information Science in Brazil; make visible the participation of identified outsiders in national scientific production, in dissertation guidance and in Information Science institutions; examine elements of the coloniality of knowledge that, directly and/or indirectly, influenced the implementation and institutionalization of Brazilian Information Science; understand the influence of external agents on the social and cognitive institutionalization of the area in Brazil; and investigate silencing of knowledge (epistemicides) in scientific production in the area in Brazil influenced by the coloniality of knowledge. In the research, he assumed that coloniality influenced Brazilian education, including Information Science, initially shaped by foreign models, notably American and European ones; the intervention of outsiders in its implementation as an indication of the coloniality of knowledge; and the permanence of this influence to this day. Regarding methodological procedures, the research was characterized as exploratory-descriptive, with a quantitative and qualitative approach, seeking to “get to know-with” the subjects in a non-extractive, archaeological, indicative and epistemological imagination methodological perspective. During implementation, surveys were carried out on the performance of outsiders who participated in the implementation of the area, with regard to their respective scientific productions, dissertation guidance and the scientific production of their students at a national level. To this end, bibliographical surveys were carried out in three Information Science and Librarianship journals, namely, Ciência da Informação, Revista da Escola de Biblioteconomia da Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais and Revista de Biblioteconomia de Brasília. Subsequently, a survey of the dissertations supervised by these external agents in the master's degree in Information Science at the Brazilian Institute of Information in Science and Technology was carried out. Finally, the scientific productions of external agents' students were surveyed, aiming to examine the influence of foreigners on these productions. The research results show that the coloniality of knowledge in Information Science is configured as a complex and multifaceted phenomenon, whose evidence is materialized in different elements of cognitive and social institutionalization, such as foreign researchers, lines of research, problems and themes addressed, scientific productions and theoretical references adopted. The research culminates with the proposition of theoretical-methodological solutions for the deconstruction of the coloniality of knowledge in the area, among which the identification of emerging knowledge and the implementation of a national project of decolonization and liberation from the modern and colonial epistemic dependence of Brazilian Information Science stand out. It is concluded that the cognitive and social institutionalization of Information Science in Brazil highlights the marks of the coloniality of knowledge in informational thinking, with emphasis on the direct intervention of outsiders in the production of knowledge, the devaluation of local knowledge, the epistemological hierarchization and the supremacy of knowledge from the Global North.