The act of collecting

Abstract

This work deals with the discussion around collecting and its suitability and relevance to the disciplines of Archivology, Librarianship and Museology. In this sense, it proposes the concept of collecting as a social practice constructed and expanded by representations of culture. In order to delimit the object of discussion of the thesis, the concept of categorizing collecting in three historical periods was introduced: Renaissance, Enlightenment and Contemporary, seeking to relate them to the disciplines presented in this thesis. In addition to this categorization, the basic theoretical principles of the work were sought in the philosophers Gaston Bachelard and his idea of approximate knowledge and in Ivan Domingues' formulation of the subject who constructs knowledge. In this sense, we sought to highlight the relationship between documents, collections and culture, with the demiurgic subject as the central figure in establishing these concepts. Each period is analyzed below, dealing with a manual from each area of Archivology, Librarianship and Museology, totaling three per period and nine in all. The aim of this analysis is to try to find the marks of human collecting expression through the professional practices of the areas consolidated in the manuals which, in turn, guide how collections should be treated and managed in archives, libraries and museums. In this way, it problematizes issues specific to each of the areas and, at the same time, similarities on the issue of collecting from both a theoretical and practical point of view. In this sense, it envisages the possibility of a dialogue that goes beyond the scope of the practices and theories of the areas and thus proposes a debate that is both disciplinary and transversal.