My Twitter bio currently describes me as ‘a radical cataloguer’. It seemed apt at the time: a neat way of summing up who I am, what I do, and what I stand for. But now, thanks to this month’s GLAM Blog Club theme and a well-timed lunch with noted incendiary librarian Hugh, I’m having second thoughts about this whole ‘radical’ thing.
Now, this doesn’t mean changing my professional or political views, as strident and idiosyncratic as they are. It means rethinking what the word ‘radical’ actually means to me. What is radical, really?
Successive linguistics lecturers drilled into me the lesson that etymology is not semantics. A word’s origins may bear no relation to its current meaning. And yet being ‘radical’ entails, literally, going back to our roots. To consider the core or essence of something. The word came to English via the Latin radicalis, the adjectival form of radix, ‘root’. English regards Latin as an adstratum language, a more prestigious tongue from which we borrow liberally in an effort to appear learned. I suspect this desire to appear somewhat educated is why I ultimately settled on a Classics major.
I was going to talk briefly about ‘contemporary radicalism’ but realised I had no idea what that looked like. Different people, depending on their own views, will describe other views as ‘radical’. I wonder whether being ‘radical’ is more of a relative than an absolute phenomenon; that is, the description depends less on the viewpoint itself than on what surrounds it. I know the kinds of things I would consider ‘radical’ have changed dramatically over the last couple of years. That is, the things themselves haven’t changed, but my perception definitely has.
As I experienced what I can only describe as an ecological awakening over the last eighteen months or so (starting with David Wallace-Wells’ absolutely terrifying article ‘The Uninhabitable Earth‘, now expanded into a book I’m too scared to read), I made what most people would consider some fairly radical life choices. In particular, I stopped flying. I’ve done a lot of interstate travelling this year, all of it by train, bus or ferry. I’m very aware that the planes kept flying without me. But I decided to put my money where my mouth was, and financially support more sustainable forms of transport. It feels less radical, and more necessary, with each passing day.
I read an article just today on what climate scientists do to live more sustainable lives. Forsaking air travel was on almost everyone’s mind. If more people start doing something, does it inherently become less radical? Might we start to see greater shifts in what broader society considers ‘normal’, against which the ‘radical’ is compared?
Besides, can you really call yourself ‘radical’ with a straight face? I wonder if it’s like calling yourself an ‘ally’ to a marginalised or oppressed class of people. You don’t get to decide whether you’re an ally or not. They do, when your actions have spoken loud enough. It’s not a permanent adjective. It’s not a badge you get to keep. It’s something you do, not something you are. A continual state of mind and being, not a fixed point in time.
I look at the kind of work I do in libraries, at so-called ‘radical cataloguing’. I’ll be touching on this in my upcoming NLS9 talk (spoiler!) but while many people both inside and outside library land might look at my cataloguing ethos and go ‘Oof, that’s pretty radical’, I’m increasingly convinced that nothing I do in libraries should be considered radical at all. It only feels radical because it’s seemingly so unusual. Thinking of metadata and systems librarianship as not just user-centred, but user-facing. Recognising the cataloguer’s power to name and actively looking to cede that power to the people and groups we describe. Encouraging critical viewpoints of—and within—the catalogue. This shouldn’t be radical. This should be completely normal.
But what if it becomes normal? What, then, would be considered ‘radical’? If radicalism is relative, what new, progressive, revolutionary ideas might emerge, in our sector and in many others?
I genuinely can’t wait to find out. But first, the Overland train to Adelaide on Tuesday. And perhaps a new Twitter bio.