ABSTRACT
Objective:
Critical and decolonial studies are becoming increasingly common in scholarly productions related to archives, libraries, and museums, especially in international literature. Considering the lack of archival literature on the subject in the Brazilian context, this article aims to map the international editorial domain of Archival Science, searching for special/thematic issues and books whose focus and theme fall in the critical and decolonial epistemic dimension.
Methods:
The methodology is exploratory and descriptive, using Hjørland (2002) domain analysis through the lens of scientific and epistemic structuring. The journals Archival Science and Journal of Critical Library and Information Studies and the publishers Litwin Books and Routledge were selected for analysis, with the corresponding thematic series Archives, Archivists and Society and Studies in Archives.
Results:
The results showed a domain composed of eight editorials (2 in journals and 6 in books) from 2017 to 2022, indicating a recent concern in discussing critical and decolonial themes. Furthermore, the 13 editors make up a discourse community still under construction, coming from countries with a history of colonization, with a more significant predominance in North America. They are affiliated with universities, with research focused on the themes encompassing the critical and decolonial dimensions (community archives, social justice, oral history, the emotional impact of archival work, digital archives, memory, and human rights, among others).
Conclusions:
Through this mapping, it was possible to identify, albeit initially, the logic of the scientific structuring, and biographical epistemic of critical and decolonial themes in international archival science.
KEYWORDS:
Decolonial Archival Science; Critical Archival Studies; Plural Archival Studies; Domain Analysis; Editorial Domain