Page 49 - PERPUSTAKAAN UNIVERSITAS AIRLANGGA

Kajian Dalam Bidang Ilmu Perpustakaan dan Informasi: Filosofi, Teori, dan Praktik

orderliness and power. By performing deconstruction, librarians will
gain higher awareness of latent alternative ideas and perspectives, which
are likely to go counter the main stream. Given that librarians have all
this time been living within a habitus which seems to have positioned
their profession as marginalized, classless, and futureless, what will
possibly happen? Leaving librarians overwhelmed in deep frustration and
resignation will sooner or later kill the embryo of critical awareness and
innovative attitude. Without any critical thinking tradition and readiness to
deconstruct restraining structure at any time, small chances are librarians
able to fight against deeply entrenched hegemony.
Among Post-Structuralist philosophers and theorists, Jacques Derrida
(1930–2004) is touted as the most controversial (Wood, 1992). The thoughts
and methods offered by Derrida have shaken the world of sciences and the
development of philosophy in that they have raised human awareness that
behind realities and existing texts lie something else, an alternative truth
of equal significance. Through his renowned deconstruction approach,
he is able to tear order apart, shake hegemony, overturn logic, and put
anything considered to be a given to shreds to open the chance of building
new things and discovering new meanings. Deconstruction, according to
Derrida, has opened up human’s mind which has previously been closed.
Deconstruction delays meaning, criteria, judgment, and decision. It
involves decomposition of unity to disclose latent differences (Deutscher,
2006). As stated by Gayatri Spivak (1976), Derrida is controversial because
with his relentless honesty, he is able to unceasingly investigate how we
produce truth. To Derrida, there is no end to truth. Truth is a coma, a pause
that gives us an opportunity to ask and question what is hidden behind
what has been accepted as a given among community. As long as librarians
resign themselves to the notion that libraries are no more than places for
storing books and resting places for visitors, there will be no innovative
breakthroughs generated. This is not the case with librarians who are able
to think critically and see the future as a challenge. Critical librarians will
not resign easily. They will struggle to fight against limitations and think of
how to create innovations amid restrictive uncertainties.
With deconstruction, Derrida does not intend to state that everything is
of equal value, but to demonstrate that there is no single correct interpretation
or meaning to a text. Unlike Western metaphysic philosophical thought
that sees reality to be in binary oppositions at all time, in which one party is
superior over the other, Derrida shows that by performing deconstruction,
we will always be open to radical multiplicity (Al-Fayyadi, 2009; Asyhadie,
2004; Derrida, 1976, 1978). Differences and alternative thoughts, from
Derrida’s point of view, are not something that need to be tamed or subdued,

Rahma Sugihartati 29