'Publishing After Progress' special issue of Culture Machine

Dear all,

We are pleased to announce the release of Publishing after Progress, a special issue of the open access journal Culture Machine, guest-edited by Rebekka Kiesewetter:

https://culturemachine.net/archives/vol-23-publishing-after-progress/

Culture Machine • Vol 23 • 2024 • Special Issue: Publishing after Progress

Contents:

Kiesewetter, R. (2024) ‘Guest Editorial Notes (after Progress?)’, Culture Machine Vol. 23.. https://culturemachine.net/vol-23-publishing-after-progress/rebekka-kiesewetter-guest-editorial-notes/

Kember, S. (2024) ‘Householding. A feminist ecological economics of publishing’, Culture Machine Vol. 23.. https://culturemachine.net/vol-23-publishing-after-progress/kember-householding/

Pooley, J. (2024) ‘Before Progress. On the Power of Utopian Thinking for Open Access Publishing’, Culture Machine Vol. 23.. https://culturemachine.net/vol-23-publishing-after-progress/jeff-pooley-before-progress/

Godínez-Larios, S. & Aguado-López E. (2024) ‘Publicación digital y preservación de los communes: una apuesta tecnológica latinoamericana’, Culture Machine Vol. 23.. https://culturemachine.net/vol-23-publishing-after-progress/godinez-y-aguado-apuesta-tecnologica-latinoamericana/

Kolb, L. (2024) ‘Sharing Knowledge in the Arts: Creating the Publics-We-Need’, Culture Machine Vol. 23.. https://culturemachine.net/vol-23-publishing-after-progress/kolb-sharing-knowledge-in-the-arts/

Kiesewetter, R. (2024) ‘Experiments towards Editing Otherwise’, Culture Machine Vol. 23.. https://culturemachine.net/vol-23-publishing-after-progress/kiesewetter-experiments-toward-editing-otherwise/

Adema, J. (2024) ‘Experimental Publishing as Collective Struggle. Providing Imaginaries for Posthumanist Knowledge Production’, Culture Machine Vol. 23.. https://culturemachine.net/vol-23-publishing-after-progress/adema-experimental-publishing-collective-struggle/

Magazine, R. & Méndez Cota, G. (2024) ‘Reverse Scholarship as Solidarity after Progress’, Culture Machine Vol. 23.. https://culturemachine.net/vol-23-publishing-after-progress/magazine-mendez-reverse-scholarship/

Snelting, F. & Weinmayr, E. (2024) ‘Committing to decolonial feminist practices of reuse’, Culture Machine Vol. 23.. https://culturemachine.net/vol-23-publishing-after-progress/snelting-weinmayr-decolonial-feminist-reuse/

Groten, A. (2024) ‘Designing sideways. Inefficient publishing as mode of refusal’ , Culture Machine Vol. 23.. https://culturemachine.net/vol-23-publishing-after-progress/groten-designing-sideways-2/

Mussio, V. (2024) ‘Tus libros y poemas bailan y se besan en Internet: Matrerita, la edición digital y su potencialidad para emancipar cuerpos en peligro’, Culture Machine 23.. https://culturemachine.net/vol-23-publishing-after-progress/valeria-mussio-tuslibrosypoemasbailan/

 
About Publishing After Progress:

Publishing After Progress brings together a series of reflections and discussions that illuminate the current state of scholarly publishing. It highlights the field's ongoing commercial and technological consolidation, evolving under the rhetoric of internationalisation, excellence and modern capitalist progress as an unequivocal benefit. The issue includes analyses of the wide-ranging geopolitical, epistemic, social and cognitive effects of this evolution, marked by a focus on quantifiable outcomes, productivity- and visibility-driven metrics of success, and individual achievement.

Beyond its diagnostic and analytical scope, Publishing after Progress explores the tension between contemporary institutional expectations related to publishing (including research, writing, editing, reviewing, designing and licensing), and how individuals and communities actually want to – or already do – engage in their work, based on their values, expertise and understanding of their writing's needs in light of persistent inequalities in scholarship and scholarly publishing, as well as planetary crises and emergencies.

Publishing After Progress tentatively maps out emergent types of 'resistant' research, publishing and scholarship, unveiling diverse and ongoing stories from activist, artistic and academic authors. These contributors have begun to address the conflict between institutional expectations and their own situated visions of what their work requires in an increasingly troubled and troubling world. Collectively, the articles grapple with the possibility of a politics of engagement in publishing beyond a prevailing capitalist ethos of competition and individual performance evaluation – celebrated by many contemporary institutions as 'progress' – while practically facilitating spaces to experiment with what such politics could entail.

In guest-editing this special issue – at a time when disparities in academia and scholarly communication persist alongside environmental and humanitarian emergencies – Kiesewetter has endevoured to underscore the importance of continuously rethinking the value, scope and purpose of scholarly publishing as well as scholarship more broadly, while remaining committed to fostering intellectual questioning, rigor, debate and the radical democratisation of knowledge creation processes in the sake of knowledge equity and diversity. In this spirit, Publishing after Progress invites its readers to engage with their own writing, editing, review, design and publishing activities: not merely as competitive producers of knowledge, but as active participants in collaboratively shaping the present and future conditions of academic publishing and academic work more broadly. 

Please share this special issue with anyone who may be interested in it.