punctum books

spontaneous acts of scholarly combustion

This word is set down so that you may understand that this whole time totum saeculum, which to us seems so long while it is rolling along, is really a moment punctum.

—Augustine, Ennarations on the Psalms

This time it is not I who seek it out . . . it is the element which rises from the scene, shoots out of it like an arrow, and pierces me. A Latin word exists to designate this wound, this prick, this mark made by a pointed instrument . . . This element which will disturb the studium I . . . call punctum; for punctum is also: sting, speck, cut, little hole—and also a cast of the dice.

—Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida

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FOUNDING DIRECTOR

Eileen A. Joy. Old and Middle English Literature, Cultural Studies, Poetry/Poetics, Historiography/Intellectual History, Queer Studies, Violence/Ethics, Post/humanisms, Embodiments/Affect, Speculative Realism, Para-Academia. BABEL Working Group. Santa Barbara, California. USA.

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CO-DIRECTORS

Chris Piuma. Languages, Grammar, Paragraphs, Sentences, Words, Letters, Scribbles; Form, Pattern, Queers, Error, Confusion, Translation, Poetry. eth press: postmedieval poetries. Toronto, Canada.

Vincent W.J. van Gerven Oei. Philology, Art/Politics, Linguistics, Nubian Studies, Deconstruction, Poetry, Monuments, Translation, Albanian Socialist Realism, Philosophy. The Department of Eagles, Uitgeverij, Dotawo. Tirana, Albania.

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DIRECTOR for Printing/Distribution + Library Relationships @Studium

Dan Rudmann. Translation, Religious Studies, Language and Literature, Sanskrit, Sound, Critical Theory, Civics, Alternative Pedagogy. Punctum Records. Human Sciences. Austin, Texas. USA.

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ASSOCIATE DIRECTORS

Arthur Russell. Medieval Literatures, Manuscripts and Sensoriums. Commentaries, Compilations, and Collaborations. Tall Tales and Dinner Parties. Cleveland, Ohio. USA.

Marget Long. Visual Arts. Photography/Photographic Technologies. Artbooks. Video. Sensory Politics. Visual Cultural Studies. Archival Theory & Practice. Mirages. New York City, New York. USA.

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EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

Andrew Doty. English and American Literary Studies. Creative Writing. Media Writing. Music/Composition. Metal. Saint Louis, Missouri. USA.

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ASSOCIATE EDITORS

Kamillea Aghtan, Brisbane, Queensland. Australia.

Bert Fuller, Toronto, Ontario. Canada.

Eli J. Massey, Chicago, Illinois. USA.

Kristen McCants, Santa Barbara, California. USA.

Paul Megna, Santa Barbara, California. USA.

Michael Munro, Edmonds, Washington. USA.

Troy O’Neill, New York, New York. USA.

Anthony Opal, Chicago, Illinois. USA.

Tyann Prentice, Seattle, Washington. USA.

Emily Russell, Washington, DC. USA.

Natalia Tuero, New York, New York. USA.

Jake Valente, Chicago, Illinois. USA.

Henry Fulton Winship, New York, New York. USA.

WEB DEVELOPERS

Alli Crandell, Conway, South Carolina. USA.

Tristan Denyer, San Francisco, California. USA.

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VISION STATEMENT>

punctum books is an open-access and print-on-demand independent 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, with an emphasis on books that fall length-wise between the article and the monograph—id est, novellas, in one sense or another. 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.

punctum books encourages projects that profit from formal risks and possibly engage with supposedly outmoded or ‘quaint’ genres—the abcedarium, (auto)commentary, summa, bestiary, dialogue, case study, compendium, speculum/mirror, conduct manual, letter/address, apologia pro vita sua, hagiography, elegy, postcard, telegraph/telegram, inter-office memo, encyclopedia, forgery, hidden writing, source-fiction, natural history, leechbook, atlas, colloquium, colophon, commonplace book, telephone book, rolodex, field report, romance, dialogue, dream vision, catalogue, sonnet cycle, poetics, treatise, manifesto, prosody, calendar, morality play, marginalia, interlinear translation, digest, microfiche, concordance, book of hours, pastoral/eclogue, polemic, epigram, broadsheet, flyer, note-book, breviarium, collationes/collectio, book of nature, testament, proof, manual, pamphlet, miscellany, chapbook, captivity narrative, penny dreadful, testament, manual, discography, catena, liner notes, autopsy, exegesis, rule, antiphonary, legend, fax, travelogue, etymologiae, lai, excerpt, curiosity cabinet, disputation, computus, comedy of errors, soliloquy, essay, bulletin, evangeliary, gloss, meditation, fable, florilegium, myth, fairy tale, purchase order, carbon copy, transcript/transcryptum, blueprint, psalter, micrologue, lyric, daytimer, inventory, annal/chronicle, pipe roll, receipt/invoice, watch-list, charter, canon, and so on ad infinitum. Surprise yourself.

The word ‘punctum’ is intended to summon and ignite several registers of discourse and address. First, in the sense of the punctures made by the pointed awls or spikes used to rule or ‘prick’ the vellum pages of premodern manuscripts and thereby unfurl the blank lines of writing (and thinking), punctum medievally invokes the founding of textual work upon perverse and paradoxical openings. punctum books seeks to curate the open spaces of writing or writing-as-opening, the crucial tiny portals on whose capacious thresholds all writing properly and improperly takes place. Pricking, puncturing, perforating = publishing in the mode of an unconditional hospitality and friendship, making space for what Eve Sedgwick called “queer little gods” – the “ontologically intermediate and teratological figures” of y/our thought.

Second, through Augustine’s point about time, punctum stabs home the fact that, whatever the temporalities we inhabit at any given time, whatever we think regarding the perhaps unthinkable totum saeculum whole time, whatever our commitments or indifferences to future and past, the ‘word’ immediately knows time as always and beautifully momentary. punctum books seizes without freezing the momentary, promoting punctual writing that emerges in the moment, that is all of a sudden presently free to carry and to be carried away by other times, its own time, and both at once. punctum books seeks writing that does not let go of its own time, its adjacency to what is immediate and intimate, as well as writing that abandons time and lights out for other territories.

Finally, by way of Barthes’s affective photographic concept, punctum indicates thought that pierces and disturbs the wednesdayish, business-as-usual protocols of both the generic university studium and its individual cells or holding tanks. Further, punctum signifies text that wounds and pricks and cuts and pierces. This is to encourage writing as risk, adventure, a going-forth without ‘papers’ or guarantees: falling through the hole/punctum, a falling down, freefall. punctum books solicits and pimps quixotic, sagely mad engagements that generate and satisfy noetic-erotic need, textual thought-bodies that give pleasures only to be possessed in their presence.

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ADVISORY BOARD>

Jane Bennett. Political Theory, Political Ecology, Object-Oriented Materialisms, Ethics. Johns Hopkins University, USA

Kathleen Biddick. Medieval European History, Critical Historiography/Theory, Studies in Medievalism. Temple University, USA

Nandita Biswas Mellamphy. Political Science, Political Philosophy, Post/humanisms, Zoontotechnics, War/Globalization. University of Western Ontario, Canada

Paul Bowman. Cultural Theory, Popular Culture, Film & Media Studies, Martial Arts. Cardiff University, UK.

Jen Boyle. Early Modern Literature, New Media Studies, Technoculture/Technoscience Studies, Sexuality Studies. Coastal Carolina University, USA

Jeffrey J. Cohen. Medieval Comparative Literature, Queer Studies, Gender/Sexuality Studies, Post/humanisms. George Washington University, USA

Paul J. Ennis. Contemporary Continental Philosophy, Speculative Realism, Metaphysics, Neurophilosophy, Bleak Theory. Dublin, Ireland.

Ruth Evans. Middle English Literature, Gender/Sexuality Studies, Feminist Theory, Memory/Mindware Studies. Saint Louis University, USA

Aranye Fradenburg. Medieval Comparative Literature, Clinical Psychoanalysis, Gender/Sexuality Studies, Cognitive Literary Studies. University of California-Santa Barbara + New Center for Psychoanalysis, Los Angeles, USA

David Hadbawnik. Medieval Literature, Poetry/Poetics, Translation, Historical Linguistics, Digital Humanities. eth press: postmedieval poetries, Habenicht Press. Kuwait City, Kuwait

Jonathan Gil Harris. Early Modern Culture, Drama, Shakespeare, Globalizations, Temporality/Motion. George Washington University + Shakespeare Quarterly, USA

Geraldine Heng. Comparative Literature, Global Middle Ages, Transcultural Medieval Studies, Middle Eastern Studies, Women’s Studies, Premodern Race Studies, Digital Humanities. University of Texas at Austin, USA

Ed Keller. Architecture, Design Criticism/Research, Social Media, Transdisciplinary Design. Parsons The New School of Design, USA

Anna Kłosowska. Medieval and Early Modern French Literature, Gender/Sexuality Studies, Queer Theory, Critical Theory. Miami University of Ohio, USA

Katerina Kolozova. Feminist Philosophy, Political Philosophy, Gender Studies, Non-philosophy, Speculative Realism. Institute of Social Sciences and Humanities-Skopje, Macedonia

Dan Mellamphy. Comparative Literature, Continental Philosophy, Media Technology, Post-Humanism, Speculative Fiction. University of Western Ontario, Canada

Timothy Morton. Ecology, Philosophy, Literature, Romantic Period, Sound, Food. Rice University, USA

Reza Negarestani. Independent Philosopher and Writer. New York City, USA

Michael O’Rourke. Early Modern Studies, Queer Studies, Gender/Sexuality Studies, Theory. Institute for Social Sciences and Humanities, Skopje, Macedonia

Simon O’Sullivan. Art History, Visual Culture, Art Theory, Psycho/schizoanalysis, Subjectivity, Goldsmiths College, University of London, UK + Plastique Fantastique

Steven Shaviro. Cultural Theory, Film Studies, New Media, Science Fiction, Speculative Realism. Wayne State University, USA.

Michael Snediker. Poetry/Poetics, 19th/20th-Century American Literature, Modernism, Aesthetics, Temporality, Queer Theory, Disability Theory. Queen’s University, Canada

Karl Steel. Comparative Medieval Literature, Critical Animal Studies, New Materialisms, Post/humanisms, Eco-studies. Brooklyn College, City University of New York, USA

Eugene Thacker. New Media/Technology Studies, Philosophy of Science, Philosophy of Horror. The New School for Social Research, USA

Scott Wilson. Cultural Studies, Critical Theory/Psychoanalysis, Audiology, Metal Studies. Kingston University + London Graduate School, UK

Valerie Vogrin. Creative Writing, Fiction, Literary Editing. Southern Illinois University Edwardsville + Sou’wester, USA

Julian Yates. Early Modern Studies, Material Culture, Object-Oriented Studies, Science Studies. University of Delaware, USA

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Here then, is what we would call, in order to call upon it, the unconditional university or the university without condition: the principal right to say everything . . . to publish it.

—Jacques Derrida, “The University Without Condition”

globally positioned at Earth, Milky Way