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* [[Introduction | Introduction]]
 
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* [[Survey_of_the_field | Survey of the Field]]
==[[Introduction]]==
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** [[Survey_of_the_field#intro | intro]]
==[[State of the art in this domain / survey of the field]]==
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** [[Survey_of_the_field#Early_conceptual_artist_books:_Setting_up_infrastructures_of_production_and_distribution_.28the_60s_and_70s.29 | Early conceptual artist books: Setting up infrastructures of production and distribution (the 60s and 70s)]]
==[[Summary of projects and submitted material]]==
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** [[Survey_of_the_field#Terminologies_and_identity_politics | Terminologies and identity politics]]
==[[Survey of the field]]
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** [[Survey_of_the_field#Making_Public:_.E2.80.9CInsertions_into_Ideological_Circuits
==[[Reflection Theorisation of projects and submitted material]]
 
==[[Analysis]]
 
==[[References]]
 
 
 
==Introduction==
 
 
 
This text provides an overview account account of a doctoral research project, provisionally entitled "Why Publish?" that is an exploration of the politics of publishing practices. The research project asks about the social and political agency of publishing by exploring the micro-politics of production, dissemination and consumption of knowledge. In practical terms, the research process comprises a range of different activities (art-making, workshopping, publishing, editorial work, collaborative practices, conferencing, exhibition etc.) and a portfolio of different outputs (books, chapters, ephemera, artworks, events, pedagogical interventions, reading rooms, etc.). The enquiry that is described here is situated at the intersection of contemporary art, radical education and institutional analysis.<ref name="contemporary art"/> 
 
 
 
'Publishing practices' is an expanded term that refers us to the process of publication in the widest sense. Publication (in print or code) may be understood as a means of sharing, of disclosing, of passing on, or of 'making public' texts, images, ideas or what we may summarily call"knowledges". One way of understanding the product of publication is as an instance of temporarily stabilised knowledge. Such temporary stabilised knowledge - the publication  - is subject to modification as it circulates: it can be used, built upon by others and therefore proliferate and spread into different regions and contexts. While publication can enable the one to speak to the many, and as such can be seen as a mode of address that constructs patterns of dominance (footnote maybe insert reference st ideas of print culture as part of homogenising and creating the nation etc.)  the act of publication can also be seen as a tool to give voice to bodies and experiences, which are not already recognised within the immediate accessible field of knowledge. Therefore publication can be seen as a process that invites both assent and dissent, and that produces countervailing views and alternative readings, something that has fuelled much debate on "the public sphere". These are themes that have been widely discussed in respect of the rise of print culture (Eisenstein, 1982; Johns, 1998). However, the specific focus of this research is not the global or historical claims for the impact of print culture, but rather the micro-politics of publishing practices at the intersection of contemporary art, radical education and institutional analysis.  Drawing upon Gabriel Tarde’s proposition that knowledge is a mode of socialisation and “social communication” (1928) I will investigate publication as a social and pedagogical – and as such a political process –  that catalyses dialogue and generates proposals to intervene in social processes and structures.
 
 
 
While there is much discussion of the political agency of the book, what arguably constructs 'the political nature of the book' (Adema and Hall, 2014; Thoburn, 2014) is not necessarily the book as a discrete container for radical content alone. Instead, what is of interest in this particular inquiry is the book's assumed capacity as a conceptual and material means to practically intervene and disrupt and change existing systems of production, distribution and consumption of knowledge.
 
 
 
Take the early conceptual artists' book in the specific context of 1960s and 1970s counterculture for example, which has been described as 'a means of democratising and subverting existing institutions by distributing an increasingly cheap and accessible medium (the book),[...] in order to re-imagine what art is and how it can be accessed and viewed.' <ref name="Adema1"/>
 
 
 
For the field of scholarly publishing we can observe in the last decade how new material conditions of academic book production, organisation and consumption allow for experimentation with form and concept of academic publishing. Digital publishing and open access for example allow for both 'circumventing and placing in question the very print-based system of scholarly communication - complete with its ideas of quality, stability and authority - on which so much of the academic institution rests.'<ref name="Adema2"/> Of course within the field of scholarly publishing there is some variability, for instance the role of the monograph in parts of the humanities in contrast to the role of the double-blind peer review article in some of the medical sciences, or the role for the critical edition in the humanities as against say the meta-research analysis paper in the social sciences, in short, there are different scholarly publishing hierarchies and protocols across the disciplines but the overarching claim is still viable in spite of this.
 
 
 
We also observe a broad challenge under way whereby publicly funded research is being subject to the demand that it is freely made available. These challenges are addressed by academic activists, such as the 'Radical Open Access Collective' asking 'how should we set about reclaiming open access from its corporate take-over, evident not least in the rise of A/BPC models based on the charging of exorbitant, unaffordable and unsustainable publishing fees from scholars and their institutions?' and calling for 'the creation of new forms of communality, designed to support the building of commons-based open access publishing infrastructures, and promote a more diverse, not-for-profit eco-system of scholarly communication.'<ref name="Radical Open Access"/>
 
 
 
Mayfly Books describes the situation as 'it seems today that scholarly publishing is drawn in two directions: On the one hand, this is a time of the most exciting theoretical, political and artistic projects that respond to and seek to move beyond global administered society. On the other hand, the publishing industries are vying for total control of the ever-lucrative arena of scholarly publication, creating a situation in which the means of distribution of books grounded in research and in radical interrogation of the present are increasingly restricted.' <ref name="mayflybooks"/>
 
 
 
Claim: Biases and inequality of what is legitimised and valued by mainstream, commercial, institutional infrastructures. Publication merely understood as object, as product commodity or in academia as research output, ticks the boxes of audit and  metrification. In academia this arguably leads to a problematic trend that values output (the product) over practices. In other words how can we develop values such as equity, openness, collegiality, quality, and community
 

Revision as of 09:21, 18 December 2019