OA Advocacy and the Future of Scholarly Publishing: or, What are the Digital Posthumanities?

Gary HallCoventry University

www.garyhall.info

‘We must reckon as if there were no books in the world’ (Giambattista Vico, New Science, 1725)

www.livingbooksaboutlife.orgSeries editors:

Clare Birchall, Gary Hall, Joanna Zylinska

An examination of the licenses used on two of the largest open access book publishing platforms reveals:

- on the OAPEN platform 2 of the 966 books are licensed CC-BY, and 153 CC-BY-NC

- on the DOAB 5 of the 778 books are licensed CC-BY, 215 CC-BY-NC

(Janneke Adema and Gary Hall, ‘The PoliticalNature of the Book: On Artists' Books and Radical Open Access’, New Formations, 78, Summer, 2013)

‘Monographs are an intrinsically important mode of academic production and must not be sacrificed on the

altar of open access.’

‘Adoption of the untrammelled CC-BY licence is not appropriate for monographs and book chapters.’

Nigel Vincent, Vice-President for Research & Higher Education Policy, British Academy, ‘The

Monograph Challenge’, in N. Vincent and C. Wickham, eds, Debating Open Access (British Academy, 2013)

The Posthumanities and the Posthuman The Posthumanities and the Posthuman

‘posthuman theory is a generative tool to help us re-think the basic unit of reference for the

human in the bio-genetic age known as “anthropocene”, the historical moment when

the Human has become a geological force capable of affecting all life on this planet’ (p5)

Rosi Braidotti, The Posthuman (2013)

‘To speak of the humanities, then, is to imply a model of

unity based on a certain idea of the human, whether as

opposed to the divine (medieval, scholastic

humanism) or to the non-human animal world....

The unity of the university remains profoundly bound

up with the notion of a universally valid essence of

the Human’

Samuel Weber, ‘The Future of the Humanities:

Experimenting’, Culture Machine 2, 2000

‘The image of the philosopher as the legislator of knowledge and the judge of truth – a model rooted in the Kantian school – is the exact

opposite of what posthuman critical theory is arguing for: post-identitarian, non-unitary and

transversal subjectivity based on relations with human and non-human others’ (p172)

‘This calls for the re-definition of the aims and structures of critical thought and it ultimately

comes to bear on the institutional status of the academic field of the Humanities in the

contemporary university’ (p186)

Rosi Braidotti, The Posthuman (2013)

‘Reed Elsevier, Springer, Wiley-Blackwell, and Taylor & Francis/Informa... publish about 6,000 journals between them’, somewhere between a quarter and a fifth of all peer-reviewed journals.

‘For-profit publishers have a stake in 62% of all peer-reviewed scholarly journals.’ (Ted Striphas, ‘Acknowledged Goods’ , Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies, 2010)

Some companies enjoy ‘profit margins as high as 53 per cent on academic publishing. That compares with 6.9 per cent for electricity utilities, 5.2 per cent for food suppliers and 2.5 per cent for newspapers.’ (Simon Lilley, ‘How Publishers Feather Their Nests on Open Access to Public Money’, Times

Higher Education, 1 November, 2012)

‘Posthumanities situates itself at

a crossroads: at the intersection of “the humanities” in its current

academic configuration and the challenges it faces from

“posthumanism” to move beyond its standard parameters and

practices. Rather than simply reproducing established forms

and methods of disciplinary knowledge, posthumanists

confront how changes in society and culture require that scholars

rethink what they do—theoretically, methodologically,

and ethically.’

Series Editor: Cary WolfeUniversity of Minnesota Press

‘this distinction is crucial to intellectual property law, as it amounts to the

distinction between idea and expression, with the expression as that which can be

protected. Under this logic, such protection is appropriate because it is the expression, not the idea or the process of

making, which has the value (value creation in transaction determined by

consumer market).’

James Leach, ‘“Step Inside: Knowledge Freely Available”. The Politics of (Making) Knowledge Objects’, in P. Baert and F. D. Rubio (eds), The

Politics of Knowledge (London: Routledge, 2010) p.84.

The idea of the modern author as proprietor first emerged in Britain in the

eighteenth century. It was invented by London

booksellers as part of their struggle against the

booksellers of the provinces. It still dominates today.

‘There can be no such thing as free access to academic research. Academic research is not something to which free access is possible. Academic research is a process – a process which universities teach (at a fee).’

(Robin Osborne, ‘Why Open Access Makes No Sense’, in N. Vincent and C. Wickham, eds, Debating Open Access (British Academy, 2013)

Pirate Philosophy

Pirate… from the Latin pirata (-ae; pirate)… transliteration of the Greek piratis (pirate) from the verb pirao (make an attempt, try, test, get experience, endeavour, attack).

In modern Greek… piragma: teasing… pirazo: tease, give trouble

•.V£R$O

‘With the rise of the Web, writing has met its photography. By that, I mean writing has encountered a situation similar to what happened to

painting with the invention of photography.…

It appears that writing’s response… could be mimetic and replicative, primarily involving methods of distribution, while proposing new

platforms of receivership and readership. Words very well might not only be written to be read but rather to be shared, moved, and

manipulated...

While traditional notions of writing are primarily focused on ‘originality’ and creativity’, the digital environment fosters new skill sets that include ‘manipulation’ and ‘management’ of the heaps of

already existent and ever-increasing language’.

‘the conditions for renewed political and ethical agency... have to be generated affirmatively and creatively by efforts geared to creating possible futures by mobilizing resources and visions that have been left untapped and by actualizing them in daily practices of interconnection with others.’

(p191)

Rosi Braidotti, The Posthuman (2013)

Open Humanities Press

• Non-profit

• Open Source

• Collective

• Gifts (rather than sells) Labour

• Non-rivalrous