by EILEEN JOY
I’m truly excited [am I ever not excited? should I be less excited sometimes? what’s wrong with me?] to announce that on TUESDAY, APRIL 17th, starting at 7:00 pm, punctum books and The Public School New York will be co-hosting in Brooklyn, at Observatory, a panel discussion on para-academic publishing and also a “show your wares” party. The participants will comprise representatives from punctum books [me and Nicola Masciandaro], the totally rad new alt-lit-cult journal continent. [Paul Boshears], Sequence Press [Katherine Pickard and Miguel Abreu], Cabinet Magazine [Sina Najafi], Whiskey & Fox + PELT [Daniel Remein], and Peanut Books [Valerie Vogrin]. Here is how we describe the event [and go HERE for TPSNY’s web-page on the event, where you can also sign up to attend]:
The term ‘para-academic’ captures the multivalent sense of something that fulfills and/or frustrates the academic from a position of intimate exteriority. Para-academia is that which is beside academia, a place whose logic encompasses many reasons and no reason at all (para-, “alongside, beyond, altered, contrary,” from Greek para-, “beside, near, from, against, contrary to,” cognate with Sanskrit para “beyond”). The para is the domain of: shadow, paradigm, daemon, parasite, supplement, amateur, elite. The para-academic embodies an unofficial excess or extension of the academic that helps, threatens, supports, mocks (par-ody), perfects and/or calls it into question simply by existing next to it. Following a series of classes organized through The Public School New York on the subject of “Para-Academia and Theory Fiction,” this event brings together a group of editors whose work in publishing falls within the para-academic, in one sense or another. Presenters will address the practice and theory of para-academic publishing, its relation to various areas of life (art, pedagogy, politics), and present some of their recent titles.
Pursuant to this forthcoming “springtime in New York!” event, I would also like to share with everyone that we have some exciting titles forthcoming and already published from punctum books’s Dead Letter Office, Glossator Special Editions, and Oliphaunt imprints, and you can see more about that HERE.