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

Forthcoming Titles

New Developments in Anarchist Studies

Papers from the 5th Conference of the North American Anarchist Studies Network (La Red Norteamericana de Estudios Anarquistas / Le Réseau Nord-Américain d'études Anarchistes) Anarchism is experiencing a remarkable resurgence in the new millenium. Not only ...

Who Killed the Berkeley School? Struggles Over Radical Criminology

The Berkeley School of Criminology stands, to this day, as one of the most significant developments in criminological thought and action. Its diverse participants, students and faculty, were true innovators, producing radical social analyses (getting ...

The Spectacle of the False Flag: Parapolitics from JFK to Watergate

Eric Wilson’s work poses crucial challenges to social theory, unsettling our understanding of the nature of the liberal democratic state. In The Spectacle of the False Flag, he urges the reader to examine the, often ...

Siting Futurity: The “Feel Good” Tactical Radicalism of Contemporary Culture in and around Vienna

Forthcoming

Siting Futurity: The "Feel Good" Tactical Radicalism of Contemporary Culture in and around Vienna shows how cultural practitioners in and around Vienna draw on their historical knowledge of locality to create rousing productions designed to ...

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.

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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