Anti-Book: On the Art and Politics of Radical Publishing

Description

Presenting what he terms "a communism of textual matter," Nicholas Thoburn explores the encounter between political thought and experimental writing and publishing. He takes a "post-digital" approach to a wide array of textual media forms, inviting us to challenge the commodity form of books-to stop imagining books as transcendent intellectual, moral, and aesthetic goods unsullied by commerce.

Nicholas Thoburn is senior lecturer in sociology at the University of Manchester. He is the author of Deleuze, Marx and Politics.

"Anti-Book makes a significant contribution to current scholarship by expanding the theoretical contexts for artists' books and media projects."-Patrick Greaney, author of Quotational Practices: Repeating the Future in Contemporary Art "Nicholas Thoburn's socio-material approach, rooted in political theory and critical thought, exposes the complicity between systems of signification in capitalism and books as expressive objects. Drawing on historical examples as well as those of supposedly post-digital print, Thoburn takes apart myths of avant-garde autonomy as well as worn-out claims about resistant media, showing that the 'anti-book' can (still) work as an alternative to commodified culture."-Johanna Drucker, University of California, Los Angeles "Thoburn invites us to challenge the commodity form of books-to stop imagining books as transcendent intellectual, moral, and aesthetic goods unsullied by commerce."-Monoskop Log "Anti-Book presents a rich and convincingly argued analysis of the disparate ways in which political works engage with and subvert their materiality." -Cultural Studies