As repositories of knowledge, archives and libraries are old as the written word itself (actually, in some instances, they precede it). In their modern form, they emerge over the course of 18th and 19th century as monolithic and hierarchical but public and supposedly neutral institutions, meant to provide uncommodified access to culture and knowledge in the climate of rising capitalist commodification. As Medak and Mars write, “the public library held a utopian promise of making all the world’s memory available to all members of society without barriers.”
The idea that libraries are in any way neutral was challenged during 1960s and 1970s, when it increasingly became obvious that the notion of neutrality effectively perpetuated implicit structural exclusions of class, gender, and race. Libraries provided access but were also the instruments of enclosure, serving as gatekeepers of epistemic and material privilege. They were meant to conserve not only the artefacts, but even more importantly, the context in which these have been acquired and stored, that is to say, the ways in which the artifacts are meant to be interpreted. The type of world’s memory that libraries/archives held, turned out to be very particular, despite posing as universal.
For a brief time, the emergence of the internet invigorated the dream of libraries as providers of universal access to the entire world’s memory and knowledge. But, the availability of appropriate technological infrastructure to conduct the task did not translate into desired political and economic reality. [shard: technological determinism] Quite the contrary, internet helped enforce capitalist intellectual property regimes even more efficiently, creating artificial scarcity in the place of actual abundance [shard: abundance].
At the same time, the public function of the library itself came under attack as the logic of the market penetrated the public realm of politics. Wendy Brown argues that the neoliberal extension of market values into formerly non-economic domains turned all human and institutional action into “rational entrepreneurial action”. Not only have libraries progressively lost funding, they also had to orient themselves towards commercial ends; curation processes were supplemented by an imperative to provide what is commercially viable, popular, dictated by demand. The public became even more porous.
Owning to methodological nationalism [shard: methodological nationalism], the national container of public repositories of knowledge has for a long time remained invisible. With revisionist politics taking hold around the world, the function of the library as not simply public, but national-public institution, came to the forefront. The revisionist trend showed that the notion of the public is further demarcated, nationally cast, and instrumental for any nationalist project.
Digital shadow libraries germinate and sprout on the verges of these enclosures and redefinitions of what constitutes the public and how is one able to access it. They reject the rules of the game – copyright law, the logic of supply and demand and the imperative of profit, the dominant ideology of nationalism and identitarianism – without exiting it. They are parasites [shard: becoming parasitic]. They hide within the system, they latch onto it, without belonging.
As UbuWeb memorably stated: “We are hiding in plain sight, right out in the open. You just have to know how to find us.”
As carriers of context, digital shadow libraries and archives do not aspire to universality. In line with the feminist politics of location, they are always located somewhere, in a certain context, taking accountability for their particular position. However, they are firmly homelandless [shard: homelandless]. They are not patriotic; they don’t pledge allegiance to any particular state or nation. They hide where ever a shelter is available. They are on the go, barbarian [reflection: Barbarian library].
They are institutions, not communities of the like, but negotiators of difference working towards a common goal. They are not unconditionally open nor transparent. They determine rules and procedures for admittance and exclusion [reflection: closing the window to open the door]. They are not blind to power relations. They are autonomous in as much as they are shard⁄interdependent [reflection: the interdependent networks of archives]. They are fragile and ephemeral. They are vernacular, functional rather than monumental. They change hands. From . They are shard⁄produced through shard⁄care.
References:
Tomislav Medak & Marcell Mars. 2022. Public Library and The Return of the Repressed Memory of the World. Stories and Threads: Perspective on Art Archives. L’Internationale Online
Wendy Brown. 2003. Neo-liberalism and the End of Liberal Democracy