Friday, November 14, 2008

re.press: Independent and Open Publishing

(Courtesy of وب‌لوگ)

re.press

In a global environment marked by timidity and laxness in thought, re.press publishes outstanding work in contemporary philosophy. A dedicated philosophy press—one of the very few active in the Anglophone world today—re.press is committed to publishing rigorous philosophy that doesn’t give way on its desire. At once exclusive and egalitarian, re.press seeks to support and disseminate such thought worldwide.

In line with this ambition, re.press is itself a new kind of publisher. Attentive to the latest developments in contemporary technologies, re.press publications are available globally, wherever there is access to the internet. We seek to make as many of our publications as possible available as open-access files, free to anyone who wishes to download them. Our hard-copy books are print-on-demand, minimizing waste and cost. Yet our publications also maximize design values, boosting clarity and aesthetic qualities.

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re.press aims to publish the best philosophical works available, whether these emerge from well-established or from previously unknown thinkers, whether they are from the North or the South, the East or the West, whether they are Platonists or Hegelians, materialists or idealists. True thought is global, universal, transformative, shredding ideologies and opinions like the statues of old dictators. But true thought also begins locally, in images and signs that may as yet have no recognisable reference or import. re.press' head offices are located in the city of Melbourne, Australia. And Melbourne is, as the art-critic Norbert Loeffler has remarked, one of the great art-cities of the world - without anybody knowing it. Lacking the established power, media and reputation of traditional centres of world art, Melbourne forces its artists to sustain themselves otherwise. Aware of contemporary work from all over the world, local artists transmute it for their own, often-obscure purposes, into unprecedented forms. re.press seeks, like an insatiable kleptoparasite, to draw off some of this aesthetic power for its own ends, by using their images for its cover-art.

Link to Statement

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Thank you for the link. re.press has recently published Cyclonopedia by Reza Negarestani, the Iranian theorist and SF writer. We are still waiting to receive that.

Michael said...

Esmail,

I was completely blown away by the possibilities of Cyclonepedia based upon its descriptions... I'm planning on buying a copy myself.

Thanks for introducing me to re.press ... a great publishing collective!