Desclassification in knowledge organization: a post-epistemological essay

Abstract

The contents of the digital network stem from different forms, logics and cultures of knowledge. Once on the Net, however, they
are all submitted to unifying formats and logics provided by digital technology itself. A technology is, first of all, the product of
a given culture. Every culture and identity classifies and names all kinds of material and symbolic objects. Nowadays, the West is
the one culture that has taken upon itself the task of global classification supported by its own digital networks. Classification is
an epistemological tool provided by modern rationality whose internal structures and modes of inference are derived from
metonymic, dichotomic and analogical reductions of the diversity of current worlds. In this paper, a kind of practical Hermeneutics, called “declassification”, is introduced and proposed as the route to a knowledge which overcomes organizational epistemology.
Declassification is an open system that installs logical pluralism in the core of understanding and enunciation processes through
meta-cognitive tools.