Document and institutionalities: epistemological and political dimensions

Abstract

This paper problematizes the concept ‘document’ in disciplines prioritizing the emphasis on the characteristics of physicality of the support for a practical objective. It points the need to complement such constructs meaning to seek ways of comprehending the phenomenon holistically, casting the following hypotheses: a) the materiality of the document is ulterior to the physicality of the support; b) the document is constituted as a product of social practices, surrounded by different institutionalities. The reflection on the symbiotic relation among the materiality of the document, social practices, and institutionalities is preceded by the questioning of the epistemology as a meta-discursive space, finding in the political component a complementing strategic alternative. It seeks to comprehend the document as an object with social value (source of information or evidence), considering, among other aspects, the authority of the subject who validates the object in an institutional context. It aims also to demonstrate that the materiality of the document has its identity determined by its documental function and by social practices conferring political value to it. Hence, it finds subsidy in aspects approached in the works by Michel Foucault and Maria Nélida Gonzáles de Gómez, considering variables found ranging from the conception of documental values to the validation of information transforming the object in a document. They consider, thus, informational practices, actions, and regimes, in an interpretative space aiming to attempt to comprehend political and epistemological undertakings somehow regarded, institutionally, by the power-knowledge relation.