Pulp III: an intimate inventory of the banished book

Abstract

"This is the third book in this five-volume series on books, libraries, and communities, at what is the midpoint of the project before its two-year derailment by the global pandemic. All three volumes demonstrate an evolutionary timeline of their own, as well as being reflective of global shifts in discourse around knowledge production and access, ideological stances, and strategies of resistance. The contents of this book partly reflect a pushback against middle-aged spread, of the need to inject urgency into the complacency of pacifism and neutrality as the only tools that the high-minded must employ. A critical expansiveness is needed in rethinking the nature of the book, the library, and the human impulse of violence. There being no easy answers for the latter means that the reasons why we still default so easily to destruction remains a disaffected question, only partially explored here, and pending some resolution, or at least definitive position, by the final volume"--From the introduction by Shubigi Rao.

Contents

Part I. A preliminary profile. Introduction ; The future of the library : eleven propositions ; Ordering libraries : an intimate inventory -- Part II. Anecdotal evidence. Banishment and resistance : a brief primer (a. Dangerous women ; b. Dangerous diaries) ; Languages on the brink : Kristang (a. On the Singaporean Eurasian community ; b. On the Melakan Portuguese community) ; Languages on the brink : Cimbrian (a. Histories of a highlands ; b. How to say hello) ; Initial notes on print in the Malay world (a. The idea of literature ; b. Labour and lithography) ; Archives of community (a. Between us : an Arabic library in Berlin ; b. Documents and sound : an Armenian centre in Venice); Archives of resistance (a. The oral testimony ; b. The pacifist resistance) ; Archives of protest (a. A century of worker struggle ; b. Labour and the unbound book) -- Part III. Postscript. Afterword ; Acknowledgements -- Bibliography : being an ongoing list for Pulp 2014-2021.