This book is a compilation of the results of interviews with various people involved in publishing activities conducted by Taiwanese author Zhang Wenxuan while traveling to cities in Southeast Asia and South America for two years starting in 2018. It consists of three chapters: Samizdat, Manifesto, and Archive. Each chapter introduces the activities of publishing activists, organizations, artists, designers, libraries, and bookstores that correspond to the keyword.
The first chapter, Samizdat, which means self-publishing in Russian, deals with six publishing companies, archives, and libraries, including Subeng, an activist who played an important role in the Taiwanese independence movement, Romanet, a designer who collects and studies independent publications in Peru, Aeromoto, a library operated autonomously in Mexico City, Reading Room, an art archive and education space in Bangkok, and Marzin Kiri, a publishing movement targeting the public in Indonesia. The chapters on Manifesto and Archive that follow also introduce various people who use publishing as a tool or medium to produce, convey, preserve, and educate their political beliefs or knowledge.
This book is not simply about introducing interviews or activities of people in publishing. As the subtitle, 'Extracting Publishing Practices from the Global South' suggests, it is also a history book that records, through the voices of contemporaries, how the geographical category of the 'Global South', which is perceived as a backward region in the world order, was constructed and continues through past colonial rule or current global capitalism. The author ultimately proposes to rediscover and invent the value of publishing through the voices and messages of people who want to make the world a better place through publishing activities or books.
Softcover, 105 x 150mm, 344 pages, Korean & English, published in South Korea, 2023.
