LIBRARIES AS INSTRUMENTS OF EPISTEMIC SURVEILLANCE: ETHICS, POWER, AND INFORMATIONAL AUTONOMY

Abstract

Contemporary socio-technical transformations have intensified forms of control, monitoring, and filtering of knowledge, configuring a scenario in which physical and digital libraries assume functions that go beyond traditional informational mediation. This article analyzes how libraries act as devices of epistemic surveillance, understood as the set of technical, institutional, and discursive mechanisms that regulate what can be known, how it can be known, and by whom such knowledge becomes accessible. Using a theoretical-conceptual approach anchored in Foucault, Deleuze, and Zuboff, it discusses how curatorial practices, collection policies, metadata systems, usage metrics, recommendation algorithms, and scientific evaluation indicators structure forms of power-knowledge that directly impact the production, circulation, and legitimation of information. It argues that, although they play a strategic role in the democratization of access, libraries also participate, albeit often silently, in processes of epistemic hierarchization, cognitive exclusion, and the normalization of informational behaviors. This study also analyzes how these practices affect the critical autonomy of individuals and produce epistemic dependencies in highly mediated digital environments. Finally, it proposes ethical and formative guidelines for emancipatory informational mediation, guided by transparency, cognitive justice, and the promotion of critical information literacy as the foundation of contemporary informational citizenship.