An anarchist library in South London, open twice a week for the last two years, for face-to-face ecounter and discussion. Large distro of anarchist texts, for free/contribution, as well as books to borrow and a growing archive. Irregular presentations and discussion events (more than 20 so far!)... Despite all appearances, London is not a seamless flow of merchandise, machines, and docile obedients. It is a site of social conflict, waged by exploiters, managers – the benificiaries of a tightly monitored and supervised prison society – and the minority of the excluded – those among the raw material and the waste of the metropolis who refuse to resign themselves to that grim excuse for a life. Anarchist ideas, analysis and methods have something vital to bring to this situation. But these are dead when they languish on shop shelves surrounded by journalistic and academic spiel – and if they make it into the familiar radical ‘spaces’ at all, are drowned out by the sales pitches of activist-politicians. An anarchist library is an instrument in this ongoing conflict with all authority or it is nothing. The stories, reflections, analysis, the encouragement and scorn which fill the pages of anarchist publications of the past and present contain an inner explosivity which propels us into the elsewhere, to banish the misery of opinion and chatter and confront reality on our terms: the terms of rebellion. Written, printed, distributed, read and debated from the long past to this very moment, on an anti-political trajectory away from all fixed forms, the unquiet storm of subversive ideas put onto paper is the discourse of rebels, and – so as to continue to not to be offered up as spectacle for the academy or media – these tools forged in fire must continue to carve their own time and space against this world. From under the glitter and glare of London, the prison city, this anarchist library now humbly stands. Not a shop, nor a radical ‘space’, nor the organ of some organisation or other, Touchpaper is a small contribution towards a place for the encounter, for eye-to-eye discussion and for pushing outwards against the grain.
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