Authors : Raphaëlle Bats, Marilou Pain
An unexpected political mobilisation leads to the occupation of a large number of public squares in French cities from the end of March to July 2016. In those Nuits Debout, a collective starts up BiblioDebout, a participative library working on a gift basis.
Trough participative observations and text analysis of the collective’s mailing lists, this paper studies how BiblioDebout expresses a specific relationship between knowledge and power, and, therefore, emancipation.
BiblioDebout is utopian, egalitarian, emotional and experimental, and so on could be an inspiration for public libraries willing to renew with their political vocation.