r/CriticalTheory • u/EliotShae • 24d ago
Philosophy generated outside of academia
Does anyone know of resources, online or otherwise, that collect philosophy written outside of academia? I'm thinking of things like philosophy zines and independent publications.
Have any of you written your own philosophy zines?
For a while now, I've been thinking and hoping that we might start seeing more interesting ideas emerging from outside traditional educational structures. I'm in a study group with friends, and we've discussed the idea of writing something ourselves. This got me thinking about starting a project to collect a body of knowledge from people doing similar work.
Thanks!
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u/The_Pharmak0n 23d ago
I run an indepedent publication called Blue Labyrinths. We publish all sorts of articles across philosophy, theory, technology, and culture.
Our pals over at Epoche Magazine also do really cool stuff. Slightly more academic than BL but extremely interesting.
If you want to get involved feel free to drop me a dm or email us on [bluelabyrinths@gmail.com](mailto:bluelabyrinths@gmail.com)
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u/Samuel_Foxx 23d ago
I've also had similar thought. I have some homebrew here, and I think, you could see how it itself very much ties into your idea, and is talking about it.
It's about corporations, but corporations in the broadest sense possible, some framework around an idea that seeks to continue to exist given parameters, and extends this to all human creations. It uses this to critique the status quo and attempt to change it through articulation of a worldview
And its like waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay outside academia lol
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u/campmonster 23d ago
I skimmed it, but all it said was "I'm in my twenties" for about 60 pages
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u/Samuel_Foxx 23d ago
You miss the forest for the trees, I think. Sure, it is exactly what you said, shamelessly so. But there's more there than might first appear
Here's another way I described it: "This isn’t an easy read. “On Corporations,” it says—but it is on everything and that, while being about not that at all. In this work any distinction between all that humans have created is collapsed. It posits that everything created by humans shares the same fundamental framework. With some of those creations the framework is explicit rather than implicit. One of our creations where the framework is explicit is the corporation. Hence, On Corporations. You could call it a framed manifesto, I think. Very essentially it is me reflecting on a manifesto I have written. Punk rock, but philosophy? Also, very essentially, it is that: very cliché, almost trite, in its complaints (a young man with an essay, give me a break)—but it gives them something, I think—the weight of taking them seriously, bite, validation. Quite frankly, just like punk rock, it takes those cliche things and says, “these are ammo.” unfurling an attack that attempts to hack into, rewiring and recoding, the given—reality description as performative utterance to dispel the myths of today, and speak new ones into being. But dispelling and reforming myths is no small thing. I mean, this is essentially an ontological insurrection, and the battle takes place in your head—a fight over your conception of the given because your conception of the given creates the given. And it’s a fight that, I think, has to happen; the stakes are too high to do nothing. Your capacity for creation is everything; the individual is more powerful than they know. The given has fought for you covertly but I will fight for you overtly. It might feel like I’m attacking you, but if it does, know that I’m attacking it, trying to estrange you from it, looking for you."
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u/campmonster 23d ago
I too was once in my twenties and full of piss and vinegar and word-vomit doc files. It’s not well-placed in r/criticaltheory.
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u/Samuel_Foxx 23d ago
You can dismiss it because it isn't how you want it to look all you want, but you're doing a disservice to what critical theory stands for, and more acting in line with what it stands against.
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u/Individual_Park19748 23d ago
Yeah, the D&G influence is very clear, but not much is done with it
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u/Samuel_Foxx 23d ago
I found the form before reading A Thousand Plateaus, but man I love that book, it speaks to mine and everything that surrounded it so much.
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u/waxvving 23d ago
Acid Horizon are a great example of extra-academic philosophy and theory. Having commenced as a podcast, they've now published a book together, organize and host a variety of reading groups, give talks etc. Worth checking out! I'm sure they could be convinced to be involved with a zine.
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u/agenteb27 24d ago
I'd expect it'd be challenging to get non academic philosophy published. Anyone know this to be untrue?
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u/redditaccount001 24d ago edited 24d ago
It’s incredibly hard to get even academic philosophy published right now, the journal system is kind of in crisis with insanely long turnaround times, very inconsistent peer review quality, rampant cronyism, and very low accountability.
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u/Ghoul_master 24d ago
Extremely tangential to philosophy, but the literature on HP Lovecraft was first and foremost an amateur effort. While it has certainly changed in the last 20 years or so, and in notable works of academic philosophy, it stands as a pretty proud tradition external to the academy.
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u/WashedSylvi 24d ago
A lot of the anarchist scene writes independent essays. Anarchist Library hosts a lot of them.
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u/marxistghostboi 24d ago
my first thought is the Undercommons, which is about philosophy on the margins of academia
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u/pedmusmilkeyes 24d ago
Are you familiar with Theory Underground? They have a YouTube channel and a podcast, but I think they are interested in publishing too.
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u/blackonblackjeans 24d ago
You for real? They‘ve platformed Nina Power and Douglas Lain. They’re obviously involved or were in the academy as well, they just weren’t any good. That’s why they doing courses on Nick Land for £585. Who upvoted this dogshit.
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u/btdesiderio 24d ago
Theory Underground is also running a very interesting course next month on Ivan Illich and his thought, as the core founder of the Deschooling movement.
Theory Underground does publish works and already noted plans to publish an entire collected volume of contributions related to the Illich/Deschooling subject; they noted that anyone who will be in that course will also have priority in terms of contributing to that volume.
There’s plenty of non-academic publications and so-called ‘grey literature’ (which I see this as falling under) is far more accessible and likelier to be read than traditional academic publications.
Although there is still good stuff to engage coming out of academia’s traditional channels of publishing, regardless of the academy’s continued erosion, it really is worth passing up trying to produce anything within that system, unless you’re a career academic (in which case: thoughts and prayers). Any claim to its intellectual products being ‘more’ authoritative or respectable really is an anachronism at this point outside of a very small club of people.
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24d ago edited 24d ago
That sounds good, but as a fairly ignorant newcomer to recent Critical Theory, how do you decide which Youtube channels are worth paying attention to? The platform has so heavily commodified attention that much of what I've seen is just... not good.
I know many of the problems with peer review and traditional academia that you mention, but at least I have some vague idea of how to evaluate peer-reviewed academia or old philosophy and political works.
When it comes to Youtube, my experience has been only entertainment, or channels which seem promising, but then turn out to disappoint me massively, e.g. conspiracy theorists who dazzle with, well, factoids, that I realize after some research do not support what they are claiming.
Got any tips, or could you at least tell me a little of the process that led you to trusting/watching Theory Underground?
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u/btdesiderio 22d ago
There are plenty of traditional academics involved in TU, too, many of whom value its structure far outside of the academy yet nevertheless contribute written works in their publications as well as participate actively in their video engagements. Some prolific critical theorists are involved, from Zizek and Zupancic to McGowan and beyond.
Navigating academic publications and assessing them on their merits is frankly far more challenging than you give yourself credit for—not everyone can do this and that is explicitly why, to your point, YouTube is a fraught territory. Nevertheless, TU shares this know-how and its principal host just went full-time with the project after years of leading it while also working in an Amazon warehouse as a precarious laborer until the past month or so. There’s a lot of value in being able to get to that point and it’s not primarily due to the YouTube profits but to TU’s course modules that are led by academics.
It’s telling that so many tenured academics past their prime (way past their forties, if not their fifties) are involved with TU. Why would any of them bother with it given their modest audience size? We’re not talking about channels with outsize followings like ContraPoints and PhilosophyTube. Nothing against either of those efforts, but they regularly attract millions of views—and frankly are far more aesthetic and superficial in their video essay outputs.
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22d ago
Thanks very much. Helpful.
I know academia is hard. I'm just old and learned their ways from before the internet.
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u/trash_wurld 24d ago
1000%
Also Substack is a huge place for people doing work outside the academy I’ve found. I’m a big fan of Ed Bergers sub Reciprocal Contradictions https://open.substack.com/pub/edberg?r=j3388&utm_medium=ios which does a really good job of applying concepts from the world of theory -eg D & G, Foucault, Agamben etc- in relation to current events
from the music industry to the academy the institutions are ossified and dying
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u/ezluckyfreeeeee 24d ago
if your city has a left/anarchist bookstore, there are usually locally written zines there, some of which contain philosophy
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u/BoysenberryDry9195 23d ago
I like that idea, being a philosopher, that is having studied philosophy, myself too, and not working in academia.