Towards a Tactical Librarianship

Summary

Techno-rational “spectacles of disintegration” (Wark, 2011), mutation of communication systems into media fragments, is embedded into invisible infrastructures of “metadata society” (Pasquinelli, 2015). Diffused across cognitive platforms, algorithmic control over code surplus value (Pasquinelli, 2014 ) in digital prosumer labour reinstates questions on organizing alternatives in commons, networked distribution of knowledge beyond dominant, noble lie on information democratization. Critical “commons” of librarianship and tactical media converge in distributive freedoms of shadow libraries. Following remembrances on the critical core of librarianship counterculture from Bay Area and lesson from Celeste West on “learning to be a publisher, as well as librarian and journalist” (Samek, 2010, 32) I argue in favor of introducing the “pirate philosophy” (Hall, 2016) as methodological tool for identifying current micropolitics of resistance in digital humanities from which tactical librarianship emerges as a critical pedagogical proposal.

Keywords: critical librarianship; tactical media; social algorithm; pirate philosophy; digital posthumanities.