Abstract

Bibliography provides a compelling vantage from which to study the interconnection of classification, rhetoric, and the making of knowledge. Bibliography, and the related activities of classification and retrieval, bears a direct relationship to textual studies and rhetoric. The paper examines this relationship by briefly tracing the development of bibliography forward into issues concomitant with the emergence of classification for retrieval. A striking similarity to problems raised in rhetoric and which spring from common concerns and intellectual sources is demonstrated around Gadamer’s notion of intellectual horizon. Classification takes place within a horizon of material conditions and social constraints that are best viewed through a hermeneutic or deconstructive lens, termed the “classificatory horizon.”.