CRITICAL PHENOMENOLOGY IN INFORMATION SCIENCE

GAPS, APPROACHES AND ANALYTICAL HORIZONS

Abstract

Phenomenology is one of the theoretical and methodological approaches most frequently employed in Brazilian Information Science, particularly due to its ability to investigate the informational experience in its subjective and intersubjective dimensions. However, critical phenomenology remains scarcely and unevenly incorporated as an explicitly identified analytical framework capable of articulating experience, historicity, technological materiality and power relations. Against this backdrop, this study aims to discuss the possibilities for integrating critical phenomenology into the field of Information Science, identifying similarities and gaps in the phenomenological authors traditionally drawn upon by the field and proposing its expansion based on contemporary critical foundations. To this end, a theoretical and exploratory study has been conducted, based on a literature review and conceptual analysis of the literature on phenomenology, post-phenomenology and critical phenomenology. As a result, it was found that the application of phenomenology in this field remains largely focused on the description of experience and the construction of meaning, without systematically incorporating historical, material and political structures as constitutive dimensions of informational experience, as also suggested by an exploratory search of national and international indexing databases. The aim is to understand critical phenomenology not as a break with the phenomenological tradition, but as its analytical extension in the face of the socio-technical transformations shaping contemporary information processes.