Performative Publications

This article is a print rendition of a web-based publication which reflects upon and at the same time is itself an example of performative publishing. A performative publication wants to explore how we can bring together and align more closely the material form of a publication with its content. Making use of hypothes.is software, the web-version of this article has been written ‘in the margins’ of the performative publication it reflects upon, entangling itself with this project at various points. The reflections written in hypothes.is extend the performative publication both theoretically and practically by examining the correlation between performative publishing and technotexts (Hayles), performative materiality (Drucker), liberature (Fajfer), and feminist design (McPherson), and the ethical and political challenges towards academic publishing these kinds of concepts and practices pose. The web-version of this article stresses the collaborative and processual nature of scholarship, where, through hypothes.is both annotators and reviewers have become active participants in this evolving publication, which is both open-ended in time and collaborative in authorship.