Libraries in the margins
03. Freedom in the void
Let us now move to consider the margins (one can just as well say the silent, silenced center).
Gayatri Chakravortry Spivak. In Can the Subaltern Speak?, 1988.
The margins do not necessarily have to be spatially or symbolically located in a “periphery”, despite the fact that such “peripheries” (social, geographical, cultural, identitary…) are often, in fact, margins. A margin is any space in which the central, nuclear, dominant, and hegemonic rules cease to be valid, generally by choice, but also by abandonment and forgetfulness of those who are in charge of imposing such rules.
A margin is, then, a space devoid or liberated from certain norms. This may entail a high risk of social conflict but, at the same time, it opens up a large number of latent possibilities. The fact that hegemonic controls and impositions are weaker, laxer, or do not exist at all, implies a series of problems for populations used to continuous State presence but, at the same time, it allows considering a set of opportunities and developing ideas that do not necessarily adhere to those promoted, accepted, or blessed by the status quo.
In that sense, the margin is a space of freedom. It can also be an “unprotected” space, indeed. But if one considers that many times “protection” implies the renunciation of a series of liberties and the acceptance of a number of rigid rules, of gags of self-censorship and shackles of self-control….
…perhaps the “danger” inherent in the life of the margin is compensated by the creativity that is allowed or enabled within its borders.
***
Returning to the editorial simile used in previous posts of this series, the margins turn out to be spaces that are usually considered as “empty of content” but in which the content ends up existing. Spaces designed to give importance and meaning to the “center” but which end up acquiring meaning on their own — and, sometimes, even a greater importance. Spaces where rules generally have no force or no value and in which, therefore, anything is possible, including intelligent criticism, acid mockery, creative dissent, informed debate, negation…
In general, the margins turn out to be forgotten spaces that, even so, continue to function in some way. Sometimes they become chaotic, dangerous, and shattered places — chaos and violence are the options that end up winning the game there. Other times, however, they are places where creativity takes over. Creativity understood not only (or not necessarily) as an artistic exercise, but as one of desperate innovation, of searching for solutions and urgent answers with the materials at hand.
It is then that the margins speak.
And that is when unique and rebellious ideas and practices appear, free of shackles and gags, madly creative, committed to the core of their communities, and devoid of prejudices and expectations.
Because they have nothing to lose, and so much to gain.
That, all of that, includes libraries, archives, and museums, if those labels can be used (or need to be used) to talk about those spaces. And of many others, similar or intermediate, or mixed, that have to do with knowledge and memory. Two elements, the latter, that are essential in the margins, and that have been systematically denied by the “center”.
