How Self-Published Content Reaches the Public Library

When the e-book reader was popularized in the late 2000s, the book industry as a whole soon had to adapt to mass readership of e-books. The rise of the e-book also meant the rise of new sources of content – in particular, digitally self-published works. In the United States, public libraries quickly established cooperative infrastructures that offered patrons standardized access to self-published e-books. These new library infrastructures were developed in the hopes of fostering a greater democratization of public writing and reading, and also had far-reaching consequences for library licensing practices until the present day. Based on a series of interviews with pioneers involved in the process of bringing self-published content into the public library, this work is a contribution to early internet studies and traces the emergence of innovative digital infrastructures in the public library

Enemies of All Humankind

Hostis humani generis, meaning “enemy of humankind,” is the legal basis by which Western societies have defined such criminals as pirates, torturers, or terrorists as beyond the pale of civilization. Sonja Schillings argues that this legal fiction does more than characterize certain persons as inherently hostile: it provides a narrative basis for legitimating violence in the name of the state. The work draws attention to a century-old narrative pattern that not only underlies the legal category of enemies of the state, but more generally informs interpretations of imperial expansion, protest against government-sponsored oppression, and the transformation of institutions as “legitimate” interventions on behalf of civilized society

Enemies of All Humankind

Hostis humani generis, meaning “enemy of humankind,” is the legal basis by which Western societies have defined such criminals as pirates, torturers, or terrorists as beyond the pale of civilization. Sonja Schillings argues that this legal fiction does more than characterize certain persons as inherently hostile: it provides a narrative basis for legitimating violence in the name of the state. The work draws attention to a century-old narrative pattern that not only underlies the legal category of enemies of the state, but more generally informs interpretations of imperial expansion, protest against government-sponsored oppression, and the transformation of institutions as “legitimate” interventions on behalf of civilized society

On Un-Doing Law

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Bellamy’s Rage and Beer’s Conscience: Pirate Methodologies and the Contemporary University

Over the last decade piracy has emerged as a growing field of research covering a wide range of different phenomena, from fashion counterfeits and media piracy, through to 17th century buccaneers and present-day pirates off the coast of Somalia. In many cases piracy can be a metaphor or an analytical perspective to understand conflicts and social change. This article relates this fascination with piracy as a practice and a metaphor to academia and asks what a pirate methodology of knowledge production could be: how, in other words, researchers and educators can be understood as ‘pirates’ to the corporate university. Drawing on the history of maritime piracy as well as on a discussion on contemporary pirate libraries that disrupt proprietary publishing, the article explores the possibility of a pirate methodology as a way of acting as a researcher and relating to existing norms of knowledge production. The methodology of piratical scholarship involves exploiting the grey zones and loopholes of contemporary academia. It is a tactical intervention that exploits short term opportunities that arise in the machinery of academia to the strategic end of turning a limiting structure into an enabling field of opportunities. We hope that such a concept of pirate methodologies may help us reflect on how sustainable and constructive approaches to knowledge production emerge in the context of a critique of the corporate university.