Det för(s)könade biblioteket En diskursteoretisk läsning av biblioteket vid KVINFO

Sammanfattning: This thesis applies a discourse theoretical approach in order to examine in what ways and with what possible meanings the library at KVINFO participates in the overall gender discourse in society. This means that our reading takes place at a metatheoretical level, focussing on the library as a constructor of meaning in relation to society's gender discourse. Besides the actual reading, the thesis argues for the fruitfulness of using both a discourse theoretical and a feministic perspective in the field of Library and Information Science. By looking at libraries in general through a lens provided by these perspectives, libraries are staged as battlegrounds for competing discourses, that attempt to promote its particular knowledge claim on how reality should be perceived. The reading shows that it is possible to perceive the library at KVINFO as a material articulation that takes shape by and is part in a feministic counter discourse against the masculinistic hegemonic discourse, which throughout ?hisstory? has positioned women as ?the other?, and established men as the normative category in society, including the libraries. Through its practise KVINFO has contributed to a change in the collective identity ascribed to women. KVINFO is also read as an articulation that both represents and participates in the creation of women as a group and simultaneously the group men are created. Hereby men as a group are politicised. Our conclusive reading is that KVINFO as articulation disturbs the prevailing gender discourse, and this thesis perceives KVINFO as politics in motion.