Experimental Publishing as Collective Struggle. Providing Imaginaries for Posthumanist Knowledge Production

Experimental publishing in an academic setting entails, among other
things, a critical re-examination of how our systems and structures of
knowledge production are currently constructed and reproduced in
ways that are both exclusionary and legitimise the structural violence
of our neoliberal publishing institutions. Reimaging and, crucially,
reperforming the way we publish and make research public by
experimenting with alternative more critical and relational ways to
share our research, forms part of a wider attempt to create more
ethical and equitable scholarly forms, institutions, and practices.
This article expands existing research on experimental publishing by
making connections to current work done by critical feminist,
postcolonial, and anti-racist scholars. Drawing on this work and on
two recent publishing projects (Cita Press and the Combinatorial
Books book series) that are experimenting with republishing and
rewriting, this article puts forward the argument that experimental
publishing is an inherently interventionist and activist practice that
plays an essential role in firstly breaking through how knowledge is
disciplined, reproduced, and normalised, while secondly providing
imaginaries for how authors and publishers can start to make
interventions in the way they publish and share research.