Livingness as a Liberatory Framework for Decolonizing LIS Praxis

The fields of library and information science (LIS) are in a pivotal moment. While the stakes may seem higher than ever, Indigenous, Black, and queer communities have long anticipated this moment, demonstrating how libraries and archives are not yet equipped to meaningfully participate in the project of decolonization. I build on existing calls for decolonization in our discourse and practices by drawing attention to the living/non-living dualism in our ontologies and the ways it constrains our ability to reconcile with our fields’ colonizing origins. I contemplate what it would mean to treat all information as endowed with a sense of livingness, which exposes the ethical downfalls of trying to neatly group objects as living or non-living, document or body. Livingness as a liberatory framework moves our discourse beyond who or what should be given ethical regard and centers a relational, more-than-human ethics of care.