Open Humanities Press is pleased to announce the publication of Ecological Rewriting: Situated Engagements with The Chernobyl Herbarium, edited by Gabriela Mรฉndez Cota.
Like all Open Humanities Press books, Ecological Rewriting is available open access (it can be downloaded for free):
https://www.openhumanitiespress.org/books/titles/ecological-rewriting/
Book description
Ecological Rewriting: Situated Engagements with The Chernobyl Herbarium is the first book in the Combinatorial Books: Gathering Flowers series. Supported by the COPIM project, it is the creation of a collective of researchers, students and technologists from the Universidad Iberoamericana in Mexico City. Led by Gabriela Mรฉndez Cota, this group of nine (re)writers annotate and remix The Chernobyl Herbarium: Fragments of an Exploded Consciousness by the philosopher Michael Marder and the artist Anaรฏs Tondeur (originally published in OHPโs Critical Climate Change series) to produce what is a new book in its own right โ albeit one that comments upon and engages with the original.
In the Mexican context, experiments with art, writing and technology have a history that is tied less to academic publishing or avant-garde scholarship and more to community-building and grassroots organising. It is important, then, that in creating Ecological Rewriting the collective led by Mรฉndez Cota are inspired by locally influential Cristina Rivera Garzaโs theorization of re-writing as dis-appropriation, rather than appropriation of anotherโs work. Alongside philosophical concepts such as Jean-Luc Nancyโs โliterary communismโ, Rivera Garzaโs ethical poetics is here turned into the proposition that the reuse of open access materials does not need to be understood as appropriation or reappropriation of โknowledgeโ. Instead, it can be conceived as a creative exercise in โunworkingโ or โdisappropriatingโ academic authorship which responds to The Chernobyl Herbariumโs invitation to think through (vegetal) exposure and fragility. Thus, the authors challenge property and propriety by creating singular, fragmentary accounts of Mexicoโs relation with Chernobyl. In the process they explore ways of bearing witness to environmental devastation in its human and non-human scales, including the little-known history of nuclear power and the anti-nuclear movement in Mexico โ which they intersect with an experimental history of plant biodiversity. The resulting book constitutes both a practical reflection on plant-thinking and a disruptive intervention into the conventions of academic writing.
Ecological Rewriting: Situated Engagements with The Chernobyl Herbariumย exists as an online version (https://doi.org/10.21428/9ca7392d.07cdfb82) and as a print version (forthcoming). The online version is an experimental publication with links to the original sections of The Chernobyl Herbarium that the writers responded to, so that the reader can follow an associative trail between the two publications.
Authors
Gabriela Mรฉndez Cota, Etelvina Bernal Mรฉndez, Sandra Hernรกndez Reyes, Sandra Loyola Guรญzar, Fernanda Rodrรญguez Gonzรกlez, Yareni Monteรณn Lรณpez, Deni Garciamoreno Becerril, Nidia Rosales Moreno, Xรณchitl Arteaga Villamil, Carolina Cuevas Parra
Editor Bio
Gabriela Mรฉndez Cota is a lecturer and researcher in the Department of Philosophy at Universidad Iberoamericana, Ciudad de Mรฉxico. Inspired by deconstruction, psychoanalysis and technoscience feminism, her research explores the subjective and ethical dimensions of technological/political controversies in specific contexts. Her books include Disrupting Maize: Food, Biotechnology and Nationalism in Contemporary Mexico (Rowman & Littlefield, 2016). Among other places, her work has appeared in New Formations, Media Theory, Womenโs Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal, and the Routledge Handbook of Ecocultural Identities (2020). With Rafico Ruiz, she co-edits the open access journal of culture and theory, Culture Machine (culturemachine.net). Between 2019 and 2021 she led a practice-based educational initiative on critical/feminist/intersectional perspectives of open access, which included a collaboration with the COPIM project led by the Centre for Postdigital Cultures at Coventry University, UK, and resulted in a collective rewriting of The Chernobyl Herbarium (Open Humanities Press, 2015).
Series
Ecological Re-writing is published as part of the Combinatorial Books: Gathering Flowers series, edited by Janneke Adema, Simon Bowie, Gary Hall and Rebekka Kiesewetter:
http://www.openhumanitiespress.org/books/series/liquid-books/
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Experimental Books โ Re-imagining Scholarly Publishingย
Exploring Archival Data Performances, Re-using as Re-writing, and Computational Booksย
An Online Conference in Three Partsย
Monday 20 February, Thursday 9 March, & Monday 13 March 2023
Community-led Open Publication Infrastructures for Monographs (COPIM)ย
Experimental Publishing and Reuse Work Packageย final conferenceย
Register here (free): https://experimentalbooks.pubpub.org/ (please note that places for the workshops are limited)ย
This three-part conference โย including talks, roundtables, and workshops โย will discuss alternative publishing options for theย humanities by showcasing some of the experiments that are currently taking place in the realm of academic book publishing. It aims to inspire authors, publishers, technology developers and others, to (continue to) speculate on new collaborative futures for open humanities research and publication. It also aims to discuss how these book experiments could sit within more standardised or established workflows for print and online book production, dissemination, and preservation.ย
The conference will engage with questions including:ย
For more information on the conference and the programme please visit the conference website https://experimentalbooks.pubpub.orgย
The conference will be organised around three book typologies that we have explored and experimented with over the last 3.5 years in the context of the COPIMย project. These are Data Books, books where a database of resources forms the central element (i.e., not as an enhancement to a text-based book) around which the book is formed; Combinatorial Books, books based on the re-use (for example, through re-writing, adaptation, remix, or forking) of already existing books published under an open license; and Computational Books, books that include or incorporate code as part of their critical content or that execute or run code as part of their knowledge production or publication process.
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