públicos fantasma: el colectivo no reconocido en la transformación contemporánea de la circulación de ideas

Abstract

Publishing has always ghosted the 'public'. It is only a question of the manner of haunting.As with many ghosts, however, in the past publishing as a process (as opposed to the contents published) has tended to be seen, only occasionally, out of the corner of one's eye. It has been conveniently ignored the rest of the time by most people, with the exception of 'experts, specialists and professionals'.That all this has now changed is well known. Everyone is now a publisher. Indeed, we are all increasingly forced to publish, whether in refereed academic journals or on Facebook.The crises that have arisen are many: about the nature of the new forms of haunting; about which publics are haunted by which new forms of publishing and vice versa; and about who gets to be the publicly validated expert, specialist or professional (the 'journalist', the 'academic', the 'activist', the 'intellectual', the 'artist'). Most importantly, perhaps, the opening up of the processes of publishing has led to a series of institutional crises (in universities, in newspapers and other in mainstream media, in museums, in the sciences and in political organisational forms as basic as the party).Here I will briefly sketch a series of ideas that unashamedly attempt to describe some general principles by which to approach the contemporary state of 'publishing'. I am particularly concerned with publishing's relation to what I am calling the 'unacknowledged collective' that I see as crucial to the transformation of the circulation of ideas.