Cutting scholarship together/apart. Rethinking the political-economy of scholarly book publishing

The act of cutting media and the concept of “the cut” form an essential aspect of remix theory and remix practice. Remix can be seen as being “supported by the practice of cut/copy and paste.” Yet, on a larger scale, cutting can also be understood as an essential aspect of the way reality is structured and defined. The first part of this chapter will provide an analysis of the way the cut and the practice of cutting have been theorized in remix studies, mostly from within a representationalist framework. This analysis will then be juxtaposed and entangled with a diffractive reading of a selection of critical theory, feminist new materialist and media studies texts. These specifically focus on the act of cutting from a performative perspective, from which I will explore what a posthumanist vision of remix and the cut might look like. In the second part of this essay, I will examine how the potential of the cut and related to that, how the politics inherent in the act of cutting, can affirmitively be applied to scholarly book publishing. How can we account for our own ethical entanglements as scholars in the becoming of the book? After analyzing how the book functions as an apparatus, a material-discursive formation or assemblage which enacts cuts, I will explore two publishing projects—Living Books about Life and remixthebook—that have tried to re-think and re-perform the apparatus. Both projects specifically take responsibility for the cuts they make in an effort to “cut well.” How have these projects established an alternative politics and ethics of the cut that is open to change, and what are their potential shortcomings?