Identity/difference, globalization, LIS: An assessment at two historical inflection points

Libraries are now deeply entangled in the culture-and-identity wars, with a prominent journal’s call for papers noting the “pathological aspects of our modern information ecosystems” and libraries now characterized as sinister and indoctrinating. This is a sea change. A group of theorists outlined the nature and severity of our conflicts over identity, difference, and globalization approximately 30–35 years ago, forming an understanding how we came to be where we are now, and what is happening in and to libraries. This article (1) introduces those theorists and briefly outlines their theses on identity, difference and globalization and their cultural and political reverberations. Testing that analysis the paper will (2) examine an early inflection point: Richard Rodriguez’ 1982 memoir Hunger of Memory: an early flashpoint in identity politics and educational research, curriculum and debates around school multiculturalism. Examining library and information science while those controversies swirled is telling, and forms a contrast. The paper will then move to the current political and cultural position of libraries (3) framed by the second inflection point of the 2016 US presidential election, which fully enveloped libraries in toxic and unexpected ways that our theorists anticipated. A conclusion follows (4) examining what we can draw from the historical comparison, and asks how well our theoretical description actually holds up and where LIS might go from here.