Janneke Adema, "Living Books: Experiments in the Posthumanities" (MIT Press, 2021)

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In Living Books: Experiments in the Posthumanities (MIT Press, 2021), Janneke Adema proposes that we reimagine the scholarly book as a living and collaborative project -- not as linear, bound and fixed, but as fluid, remixed, and liquid, a space for experimentation. She presents a series of cutting-edge experiments in arts and humanities book publishing, showcasing the radical new forms that book-based scholarly work might take in the digital age. Adema's proposed alternative futures for the scholarly book go beyond such print-based assumptions as fixity, stability, the single author, originality, and copyright, reaching instead for a dynamic and emergent materiality. Our conversation highlights the performative nature of publishing, the possibilities and limitations of open access, balancing experimentation with fixity, and how publishing practices are intertwined with neoliberalism, scholarly identity, technology, and culture. In addition, we discuss the different forms that this work has manifested as, including the digital open access version on PubPub, as well a call for researchers, publishers, and institutions to make room for more experimentation in their academic performances. Sarah Kearns (@annotated_sci) reads about scholarship, the sciences, and philosophy, and is likely over-caffeinated.