Manifesto (english language)

Rebel Studies Library is an alternative educational co-operative: library, cinema screenings, discussions, lectures, foreign language classes etc. We are meant to educate those oppressed people which are, by different reasons, can’t afford to use traditional state educational institutions.

We are situated in the belarussian state, where, because of different reasons, that happening right now in our society, and, especially, in the educational system, many people don’t have access to the education and its gets more and more difficult to afford it for those who still have, the price of books gets higher and higher. Moreover, supranational powers of the neoliberal globalization, ruled by the corrupted media, that are controlled by the corporations and 1%, are systematically distract people from the important things in their life, and cultivate anti-intellectual values (“If you’re so smart, why are you so poor?”). All this powers are meant to educate people in the manner of supporting the existing neoliberal capitalism.

In accordance with all this arguments, we have decided to unite together in order to educate ourselves, with our free project that is run voluntarily (without neither coercion nor domination), in an anti-hierarchical manner, without bosses, and also to help those people who are in need. We are meant with the help of our educational initiatives to destroy stereotypes about some groups which capitalism tries to marginalize. For example, with the help of the arabic language classes we want to diminish stereotypes about the islamic world.

Principle of the voluntary collaboration, which is the core idea of our library, means that each person can come to the library and to be part of the library. For example, new person, can help with shelving books. Each person can propose his own class.

We think, that neither existing belarussian educational system of the restoration of the soviet system of education nor model, that is proposed by the western society, are not adequate, because truly free art and knowledge are “alien to the state, frequently hostile to the state”, while every officially registered institution is meant to support the existing state ideology according to its geographical and political location.

We were greatly inspired by the libertarian experiments, that have been existing in the educational field over 100 years, for instance some contemporary ones: Free School Network (http://freeskoolsproject.wikispaces.com/), New Orleans Lyceum (http://nolalyceum.wordpress.com/), Laisvasis universitetas (http://www.luni.lt/).

We have sympathy to the different radical left (anti-authoritarian left) and anarchist initiatives, with which we connect our project and the content of the books we have in our library.

Red and Black symbols of our project doesn’t mean that we support anarcho-syndicalists, but we have general sympathy towards anarchist ideas of the classless society and thus we support connected to that ideas initiatives.

Also, one of the major goal of our project is to create potential for the serious anti-authoritarian left analitics in Belarus, which we don’t have at all (check the new section in our library ‘Analyze Belarus’). That’s why, we want to create those reports labeled as ‘Analyze the system’, which will try to evaluate from the philosophical prospect the anti-authoritan movement.

Also, it is imporant that our project is an attempt to make ideologically conscious all those people, who are just into ‘diy punk subculture’ and at the same time pretend to be part of the anti-authoritarian movement. That’s why, we launch new project, that should be the core initiative of our library, called ‘Rebel Studies’ (more info – http://rebels-library.org/news/rebel-studies-classes/, where we will try to satisfy the need in the ‘anti-authoritarian’ knowledge with academic depth of the question.

So, right now we have the following initiatives among our project:

-Library. Anyone can come and take the interesting book. We have books in the different foreign languages;

-Cinema Screenings. We promote the awareness of the contemporary global issues with the help of the movies about social problems;

-Foreign Language Classes. You can study for free foreign languages. Right now we have arabic language classes;

-Translations. We translate different interesting articles from foreign languages and publish them online;

-Books not Bombs. We help poor people: we give the homeless people books or materially help those initiatives, which give homeless food for free (Food not Bombs), or support those people, who, because of their political beliefs, are in jail (ABC-Belarus);

-Book4Translation. You can order paper book in foreign language. You should pay back for the book by translating one article from this book.

-Print4Rebels. You can print for free interesting pamphlet/article/brochure related to the anarchist/anti-authoritan/radical left movement. For more info please contact the library.

-Analyze Belarus. We will try to create quality analitical reports from the libertarian prospective of what’s going on in Belarus. More info here

-Rebel Studies. We organize academic-style classes dedicated to the different libertarian topics. Classes, that are connected with such topics as: from representation of the revolutionary ideas in literature and philosophy to the libertarian education; from revolutionary politics of the second half of the twenthieth century to the ‘radical’ aspects of the auteur cinema; from the history of the anarchism to the theory of the contemporary anarcho-primitivism and ‘radical’ ecology movement. You can read more info here

Other initiatives which you can propose and realize!

The third edition of the Manifesto was accepted during the discussion of the collective on 09.10.2012

1 Comment

  • Anna Sinfield says:

    Hello there,

    I am currently producing a podcast called Anything But Silent for the British Library, where we shine a light on and celebrate libraries around the world.

    I’m curious about your library and would love to learn more about how and why it came into exisitance – and how it’s used today.

    would I be able to have a chat over skype with one of you to learn more?

    Thank you!

    all the best,

    Anna S

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