punctum books – An independent, open-access para-academic publisher

Forthcoming Titles

Resistance

Forthcoming

Resistance exposes a selection of overtly non-conformist positions in the contemporary visual art scene of Albania vis-à-vis the most recent social, political and economic turmoils in the Western Balkans – a region marked by the ...

Letters on the Autonomy Project

Forthcoming

In the face of rising authoritarianism and on the heels of urgent struggle, autonomy calls to us. How might we excavate the theory and history of autonomous politics to arrive at new possibilities for radical ...

Chaucer’s Comic Providence

Forthcoming

Chaucer’s Comic Providence presents readings of five of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales that dramatize sexual division and the lack of rapport between the sexes. These readings are founded on the psychoanalytic thinking of Jacques Lacan in ...

The Romanian Sentiment of Being

Forthcoming

The link between language and thought formed a major new exploration of the twentieth century philosophy. Languages nuance our ideas and perceptions. Though from various angles, Heidegger, Derrida, Wittgenstein forged new ways of understanding the ...

punctum books is an independent open-access publisher dedicated to radically creative modes of intellectual inquiry and writing across a whimsical para-humanities assemblage. We specialize in neo-traditional and non-conventional scholarly work that productively twists and/or ignores academic norms. We also take in strays. This is a space for the imp-orphans of your thought and pen, an ale-serving church for little vagabonds.

Browse our Titles

Testimonials

The release of art and knowledge from enclosure and hoarding into spirited circulation is punctum books’ great work. It is not just that punctum books refuses to reproduce class inequality by making our work free to the desiring. It is also that it is radically open to collaborative, dynamic, rigorous experiments in genre and thought’s forms.

Lauren Berlant

punctum books is the antidote to the Amazonification of publishing that many have been waiting for. But like the actual Amazon forest — and unlike Amazon.com — punctum books is essential for the health of our literary ecosystem. It is the lungs of a certain dispersed, but resonant, creative milieu. And what it lacks in scale, it more than makes up for in energy, enthusiasm, ingenuity, vision, commitment, and — well — joy!

Dominic Pettman

punctum books is conceptually the bravest and aesthetically the most inspiring publisher in the humanities I have encountered to date. And when I refer to aesthetics in this context I do not mean “illustration” of the text but punctum books’ insistence on form as an element of transformation — or simply formation — of semantics rather than its ornamental extension. The open access to their publications is a reflection of the spirit of generosity which offers more than just free books. Generosity is what makes their output a constant risk in experimentation that they take together with their authors. So, it is thanks to their generosity that their catalog seems like an incessant intellectual festival one always desires to return to.

Katerina Kolozova