Montreal's anarchist bookstore, Librairie l'Insoumise, is located downtown on Saint Laurent Boulevard. It opened in November 2004, several months after the closing of the Alternative bookshop. The bookstore specializes primarily in French and English-language literature on anarchism

Anarchism

Anarchism is generally defined as the political philosophy which holds the state to be undesirable, unnecessary, and harmful, or alternatively as opposing authority in the conduct of human relations...

, ecology, green anarchism, primitivism, labour, anti-repression, native studies, anthropology, history, economics, anarchist fiction, feminism, queer/LGBT

LGBT

LGBT is an initialism that collectively refers to "lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender" people. In use since the 1990s, the term "LGBT" is an adaptation of the initialism "LGB", which itself started replacing the phrase "gay community" beginning in the mid-to-late 1980s, which many within the...

, art and fiction, from perspectives relevant to anarchism.

An anarchist bookstore here since the late 1970s

From the late 1970s on, Alternative bookshop moved to and rented space at this location. The non-profit association (known by the acronym "AEELI") that presently owns the Insoumise bookstore was formed in 1982, and bought the building a year later, thus ensuring that a bookstore could continue without paying high downtown rents.

From the 1990s on, the Alternative bookshop collective became the object of numerous criticisms for its management and its poor relations with certain groups and currents of anarchism in Montreal. In 2003, an anarchist distributors' coalition formed, withdrew their publications from Alternative and encouraged people to book browse at the "Anarchist Kiosks" occasionally held at the Café Chaos, on nearby St-Denis street. The Coalition was involved in a bitter struggle to bring about changes or oust Alternative from the bookstore space.

The bookstore's French name l'Insoumise means "The Insubordinate", a derogatory moniker given to Louise Michel

Louise Michel

Louise Michel was a French anarchist, school teacher and medical worker. She often used the pseudonym Clémence and was also known as the red virgin of Montmartre...

 by the powers that be; she was a French anarchist and participant in the Paris Commune

Paris Commune

The Paris Commune was a government that briefly ruled Paris from March 18 to May 28, 1871. It existed before the split between anarchists and Marxists had taken place, and it is hailed by both groups as the first assumption of power by the working class during the Industrial Revolution...

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The bookstore is self-managed by a bookstore committee (the comité libraire) mandated by the non-profit organisation. It is open to individual anarchists or anarchist distribution projects, through their delegates. Since 2004, the great majority of Montreal's anarchist distributors, writers or publishing projects have become active members, or leave their material on consignment.

In the same building as the bookstore, there is a lending library and reading room, the DIRA, which stands for Documentations, Informations, Références et Archives

Documentations, Informations, Références et Archives

Documentations, Informations, Références et Archives , or DIRA, is an infoshop in downtown Montreal, Quebec. It serves as a free community lending library of books relevant to anarchism, and as a public archive of texts, flyers, videos, and other material produced by libertarian movements...

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