Publishing Activism within/without a Toxic University: new open access booklet

Announcing the latest title in Open Humanities Press' Combinatorial Books: Gathering Flowers series, which is edited by Janneke Adema, Simon Bowie, Gary Hall and Rebekka Kiesewetter:

Publishing Activism within/without a Toxic University

edited by the Radical Open Access Collective

https://www.openhumanitiespress.org/books/titles/publishing-activism-within-without-a-toxic-university/

Co-published by Post Office Press (POP) (https://hcommons.org/members/pop/) and Open Humanities Press, this experimental booklet brings together reflections from Radical Open Access (https://radicaloa.postdigitalcultures.org/) members on publishing activism and its relationship to the neoliberal university. Created as a side project to the Radical Open Access III: From Openness to Social Justice Activism conference (https://radicaloa.postdigitalcultures.org/conferences/radicaloa3/), it explores how publishing can respond to the ongoing crisis in higher education. The authors ask: How can we – as scholars, publishers and activists – engage with a university in perpetual crisis? How can we practice publishing activism within/without a toxic institution?

Inspired by the cadavre exquis technique of the Surrealists, the booklet adapts and (ab)uses this method to foster collaborative, responsive writing. It shows how multiple, potentially conflicting voices can coalesce around a shared crisis and move activist strategies forward in new ways.

It draws from three key ROAC titles published under open licenses: The Undercommons (Minor Compositions: https://www.minorcompositions.info/), Luescher, Klemenčič, and Jowi’s Student Politics in Africa (African Minds: https://www.africanminds.co.za/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/9781928331223_txt.pdf), and Conio’s (ed.) Occupy: A People Yet to Come (Open Humanities Press: https://openhumanitiespress.org/books/download/Conio_2015_Occupy-A-People-Yet-To-Come.pdf). These works, reflecting on protest, activism and student politics, served as a starting point for examining higher education through the lens of social justice publishing activism. The first text in the booklet directly responds to these books, initiating a chain of responses, each written within ten days. Contributors extended the preceding response, engaging with the booklet’s theme and, optionally, the ROAC back-catalogue. Designed by Alex Trencianska, Mia Dawson, and Lisha Wang, the booklet was 'unfolded' during the 3rd Radical Open Access Conference.

Editor Bio

Formed in 2015, the Radical Open Access Collective is a community of scholar-led, not-for-profit presses, journals and other open access projects. Now consisting of more than 80 members, we promote a progressive vision for open publishing in the humanities and social sciences. What we have in common is an understanding of open access as being characterised by a spirit of ongoing creative experimentation. We also share a willingness to subject some of our most established scholarly communication practices to creative critique, together with the institutions that sustain them (the university, the library, the publishing house, and so on). The collective thus offers a radical ‘alternative’ to the conservative versions of open access that are currently being put forward by commercially-oriented presses, funders, and policy makers.

Like all Open Humanities Press titles, Publishing Activism within/without a Toxic University is available open access (and can be downloaded for free):

https://www.openhumanitiespress.org/books/titles/publishing-activism-within-without-a-toxic-university/

So that’s where theory’s got to — it’s living above the shop.

Metaphorically, the phrase 'living above the shop' carries several layered meanings:

1. A blurring of personal and professional life

2. Deep embeddedness in one’s practice

3. Precarity and hustle

4. Para-academic or DIY cultural spaces

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Last night, I was part of the audience for an event on the theme of ALTEREGOISM, asking: 'What are the consequences of "weirdness" entering the mainstream? How can the fluidity of identity online be used to increase play, connection, and experimentation rather than induce anxiety?'

Organised by the everyone is a girl collective in collaboration with APEX zine, it featured an exhibition of artwork, a durational performance, an open mic jam session and music, and began with a panel discussion featuring 'post-internet stars' Shumon Basar, Nella Piatek, Marisa Müsing, Zaiba Jabbar and Bailey Davis.

Not so long ago, a panel such as this - moderated by everyone is a girl's Ester Freider and Andrea Evgenieva from APEX, whose reference points, judging from the copy I picked up, include Timothy Morton, Mark Fisher, Sherry Turkle, Jean Baudrillard, Gilles Deleuze and Guy Debord — would have taken the form of a cultural theory or cultural studies seminar. It’d most likely have been found in a university setting — or, back in the 80s and 90s, an arts venue such as the ICA perhaps.

But ALTEREGOISM didn’t happen in an established, formal institution. It took place in a packed room above a vintage clothes shop called Bread & Butter in Shoreditch (it had to be East London!).

Nor did it involve just theory: it also brought together art, music, fashion, new media and performance. And it wasn’t only academics either but artists, designers, curators, writers, musicians, DJs, film-makers, publishers …

These are people who may be doing 'serious' research but — having grown up with social media — feel no need to wait until they’ve (nearly) got PhDs to start sharing their work and ideas. And when they do publish, it’s not (just) in academic spaces such as peer-reviewed journals. They’re used to publishing themselves — so they're creating their own journals, magazines, newsletters, podcasts, Tumblr communities, collectives and multi-media live events.

Of course, we shouldn’t get carried away about all this activity. It's not entirely new. There’s a long history of scholars and para-academics operating in 'third spaces' between the university and corporate mainstream, including small artists' bookshops, independent cafés and bars, and the back rooms of pubs. Nor should we get swept up by the romance of it all. A lot of this energy is about finding – or forging – a means for some kind of authentic personal expression of ‘who I really am’ in a cultural economy that increasingly refuses to offer secure, liveable wages for work that's interesting and fulfilling, let alone critical and creative. Consequently, it's not an arena free of ‘artrepreneurs’ either: people acting as entrepeneurs of themselves, their own lives and ideas. Nevertheless, events like this create a collective space to gather, to experiment, to have fun and play together — and so can be seen as a means of pushing back against the individualism and ‘main character energy’ that saturates much of cultural life, online and off.

At this point, it's tempting to try to come up with a spreadable phrase like 'universities are sooo over'. But that would be inaccurate. It'd also be unfair. Much of this would be impossible without higher education. Many of those involved are doing or have done MAs and PhDs as well as undergraduate degrees. If they're not currently employed in HE in some part- or full-time capacity, then they’re very much engaging with — and building on — the work academics continue to produce from within the university.

Still, for what are obvious reasons — job cuts, precarity, casualisation, managerialism, excessive workloads, the general shift away from theory to more conservative intellectual formations and frameworks — university events today often feel a lot less alive than what’s happening here above the shop.

Me and Bobby D

Yeah, right!

Apparently, Pirate Philosophy was an influence on Bob Dylan. Specifically, his track ‘Key West (Philosopher Pirate)’ from Rough and Rowdy Ways (2020), where the Nobel Laureate gives himself yet another moniker to set alongside all the rest: that of Pirate Philosopher.

As Steven Thwaits puts it: ‘Dylan’s borrowings from academics are … comedic skits of both admiration and mockery. He takes their work, which is often based in his work, creates something new, and sends it back.’

Never written on Dylan, so not sure how much it applies in this (very, very hard to believe) case. Still, can’t wait to see what he does with Masked Media.

See Steven Thwaits, ‘Bob Dylan’s Pirate Philosophy’, Substack, June 22, 2024, https://sjthwaits.substack.com/p/bob-d

What Do We Not Think About When We Think About Money?

The following is a version of a post to the Radical Open Access mailing list written in response to the Radical Open Access III: From Openness to Social Justice Activism conference. Organised by the Radical Open Access Collective, the conference was held at Cambridge University Library and online on 10-11 April, 2025.

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Just wanted to say a huge thank you to everyone involved in making the third Radical Open Access conference last week such a great success. It was fantastic hearing about everyone's projects. And the range of topics was inspiring: from the thoughtful provocations on infrastructural politics and the messy labour of maintenance (including those relating to recent developments with PubPub), to the generous comments on collaboration, community and collective care. I came away with a renewed sense of hope and possibility, and you can't ask for much more than that.

Thinking about it over the weekend, it has all left me with a question I'd like to raise by way of continuing the discussion with both those who were able to attend the conference and those who weren't.

It's a question about money.

I often worry about money, although not in the way one might imagine. I mean, when it comes to open access publishing projects, financial sustainability matters - of course it does. But, I wonder, to what extent has the toxic, 'neoliberal', 'managerialist' university shaped even us to focus on the money, funding and funding models, the business side of things, paid/free/volunteer/service/recognised & rewarded labour? Even how radical OA can capitalise on the current financial crisis of the university (at least in the UK and US)?

In common with many 21st century academics, I've been encouraged, over recent years especially, to think about money a lot and to ask questions such as: have I generated enough of it to keep my job? To keep the jobs of others? To do the things we really want to do (like organise conferences such as Radical OA III, or have the time to run OA journals and presses)? The toxic university has been very effective in making its problems our problems in that respect.

And this is only going to get worse as we move further into the current 'masks-off' era, where many employers have abandoned the pretense of making work attractive with free parking, nice 'creative' open-plan spaces, crayon-colored furnishings, coffee shops, mindfulness sessions, horizontal-ish management structures and an expressed concern for work-life balance. Instead, what we're seeing is a return to an overt emphasis on top-down micromanagement, hypersurveillance, monitoring and control - only now with the added bonus of AI that can check emails. (Hello, good you could join us!)

So, to repeat, money is extremely important, yes, I appreciate that. But what gets lost when it becomes one of the main lenses through which we view radical open access, including its relation to social justice activism? (Not the only one, but one of the main ones.)

I guess this is a variation on Naomi Klein's question: 'What aren’t we building when we are building our brands?' What might we not be thinking about when so many of us are so focused on thinking about how to financially sustain our OA projects?

Take social justice. Do we need to consider whether, these days, it's mainly activists and those in some way connected to institutions such as universities, museums and art galleries who strongly and overtly align themselves with social justice activism? In the US and the UK, many interpret Kamala Harris’s 2024 defeat by Trump as signalling the close of the era shaped by movements like Occupy, #MeToo, Black Lives Matter and the rise of DEI initiatives. Witness articles such as this one from just yesterday, arguing that an interest in social injustice and activism shows galleries like Tate Modern to be out of touch and is the reason why their visitor numbers are down. From this perspective, the dominant political divide is no longer so much left vs right, but insider vs outsider, between those who are part of the liberal establishment and those who are not.

If so, where does this leave us in the Radical Open Access Collective?

I appreciate we ourselves might argue in turn that the deeper issue remains the concentrated wealth and power of the 1% - financial institutions, multinationals (including academic publishers), Big Tech, BigAI, Musk, Zuckerberg, Bezos et al; and that the 'liberal elite' is just being used as a diversionary tactic so populist politicians and/or neoliberals can protect the rich and powerful while still presenting themselves as being on the side of 'ordinary' people.

Nevertheless, the question stands, given that in the above 'liberal establishment' insider v outsider framing that is now dominant in numerous places around the world, many of us - as highly educated professionals involved in publishing works that are often of specialist, minority interest - are no longer seen as necessarily being on the side of the angels, simply because we're on the left: How do we respond? How can we respond?

Of course, I understand all this is probably raising issues far larger than anything we can realistically resolve in terms of radical open access. Still, I'd be interested to learn what people think.

Thanks again to all those involved for such an intellectually stimulating and fruitful event.

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Publishing Activism Within/Without a Toxic University, an experimental booklet bringing together a series of short reflections from members of the Radical Open Access Collective on publishing activism and its relationship to the neoliberal university, and co-published by Post Office Press (POP) and Open Humanities Press to accompany the Radical Open Access III conference, is available here: https://works.hcommons.org/records/jg2as-46424

Thinking with AI: new open access book

Announcing the latest title in Open Humanities Press's Technographies series:

Thinking with AI, edited by Hannes Bajohr:

https://www.openhumanitiespress.org/books/titles/thinking-with-ai/

This edited volume explores a novel approach to the intersection of artificial intelligence and the humanities, proposing that instead of merely writing about AI, scholars should think with AI. Rather than treating AI as an external subject of study, the essays explore how concepts from artificial intelligence, machine learning, and data science can provide ways to rethink core humanistic questions of meaning, representation, and culture.

Critical AI Studies typically focuses on AI’s societal implications—its role in surveillance, exclusion, and global capitalism. This volume extends that critique, but also explores how AI brings our already existing understanding of aesthetics, language, history, and knowledge into relief and stands in an often productive conflict with them. AI’s pattern recognition and generative capabilities, for example, provokes new ways to grasp aesthetic unity, reimagine language as an autonomous system, and reconsider the boundaries between text and image.

The essays illustrate how AI can be used as a productive metaphor and intellectual tool for the humanities. From formalizing concepts like Stimmung and vibe to challenging traditional distinctions between writing and thought or between history and data, the book shows how AI can be not just an object of study but a conceptual catalyst that ignites unexpected connections to long-standing humanistic concerns. By engaging AI in this way, scholars can not only critique it but also expand the horizons of their own fields.

With essays by Peli Grietzer, Leif Weatherby, Mercedes Bunz, Hannes Bajohr, Fabian Offert, Lev Manovich, Babette Babich, Markus Krajewski, Orit Halpern, Christina Vagt and Audrey Borowski.