Wednesday, July 22, 2009

Against academic hierarchy & homogeneity of discourse

[Open access can help solve much of this problem. So can streamlining various procedures as both re.press and zerO are doing, each in its own way. an obvious problem with traditional publishing
from Object-Oriented Philosophy by doctorzamalek. And ultimately, this is going to be one of the big threats to the academic world as we have known it, because a surprising amount of academic hierarchy is closely tied to the prestige pecking-order of various publishers. Carefully controlled admission to book publishing, with manuscripts often vetted by the same handful of experts in every field, led to much homogeneity of discourse. Things will also change once the major market for academic books is no longer academics, as I think is starting to happen… There are so many highly educated people these days working well outside academia who want to read philosophy books. Once philosophy publishing isn’t dominated by and for professors, it will also start to be written less with professors in mind, which presumably means a clearer and more provocative style will be in the offing, less dominated by the technical language and professional caution that is a natural feature of the academy. Philosophy books will start to look more like philosophy blogs, or at least the successful books will.]

[Prince of Networks: Bruno Latour and Metaphysics
by Graham Harman This book is the first treatment of Bruno Latour specifically as a philosopher.
Reading Hegel: The Introductions
by G.W.F. Hegel (edited and introduced by Aakash Singh and Rimina Mohapatra)
Hegel’s brilliant Introductions, provided all together here, offer a panoramic overview of his grand system. 5:53 PM]

Open access philosophy books, like blogs, will obviously be a blessing. [TNM]

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