Semiotext(e) is an independent publisher of

critical theory Critical theory is a social, historical, and political school of thought and philosophical perspective which centers on analyzing and challenging systemic power relations in society, arguing that knowledge, truth, and social structures are ...

, fiction,

philosophy Philosophy ('love of wisdom' in Ancient Greek) is a systematic study of general and fundamental questions concerning topics like existence, reason, knowledge, Value (ethics and social sciences), value, mind, and language. It is a rational an ...

art criticism Art criticism is the discussion or evaluation of visual art. Art critics usually criticize art in the context of aesthetics or the theory of beauty. A goal of art criticism is the pursuit of a rational basis for art appreciation but it is quest ...

, activist texts and non-fiction.

History

Founded in 1974, ''Semiotext(e)'' began as a journal that emerged from a

semiotics Semiotics ( ) is the systematic study of sign processes and the communication of meaning. In semiotics, a sign is defined as anything that communicates intentional and unintentional meaning or feelings to the sign's interpreter. Semiosis is a ...

reading group led by

Sylvère Lotringer Sylvère Lotringer (15 October 1938 – 8 November 2021) was a French-born literary critic and cultural theorist. Initially based in New York City, he later lived in Los Angeles and Baja California, Mexico.Hultkrans, Andrew"Bookforum talks with ...

at the

Columbia University Columbia University in the City of New York, commonly referred to as Columbia University, is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Churc ...

philosophy department. Initially, the magazine was devoted to readings of thinkers like

Nietzsche Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (15 October 1844 – 25 August 1900) was a German philosopher. He began his career as a classical philologist, turning to philosophy early in his academic career. In 1869, aged 24, Nietzsche became the youngest pro ...

and Saussure. In 1978, Lotringer and his collaborators published a special issue, ''Schizo-Culture'', in the wake of a conference of the same name he had organized two years before at Columbia University. The magazine brought together artists and thinkers such as

Gilles Deleuze Gilles Louis René Deleuze (18 January 1925 – 4 November 1995) was a French philosopher who, from the early 1950s until his death in 1995, wrote on philosophy, literature, film, and fine art. His most popular works were the two volumes o ...

Kathy Acker Kathy Acker (April 18, 1947 isputed– November 30, 1997) was an American experimental novelist, poet, playwright, essayist, critic, performance artist, and postmodernist writer, known for her idiosyncratic and transgressive writing that deal ...

John Cage John Milton Cage Jr. (September 5, 1912 – August 12, 1992) was an American composer and music theorist. A pioneer of indeterminacy in music, electroacoustic music, and Extended technique, non-standard use of musical instruments, Cage was one ...

Michel Foucault Paul-Michel Foucault ( , ; ; 15 October 192625 June 1984) was a French History of ideas, historian of ideas and Philosophy, philosopher who was also an author, Literary criticism, literary critic, Activism, political activist, and teacher. Fo ...

, Jack Smith, Martine Barrat and Lee Breuer. ''Schizo-Culture'' brought out connections between "high theory" and

underground culture Underground culture, or simply underground, is a term to describe various alternative cultures which either consider themselves different from the mainstream of society and culture, or are considered so by others. The word "underground" is used ...

that had not yet been made, and forged the "high/low" aesthetic that remains central to the Semiotext(e) project. As the group dispersed over time, issues appeared less frequently. In 1980, Lotringer began to assemble the Foreign Agents series, a group of "little black books", often culled from longer texts, to polemically debut the work of French theorists to US readers. He was aided in this by Jim Fleming, whose collective press

Autonomedia Autonomedia is a nonprofit publisher based in Williamsburg, Brooklyn known for publishing works of criticism. As of the mid-2000s, they were staffed by volunteers and had published over 200 books, usually with 3,000 of each run, and its best known ...

would be Semiotext(e)'s distributor for the next twenty-one years.

Jean Baudrillard Jean Baudrillard (, ; ; – 6 March 2007) was a French sociology, sociologist and philosopher with an interest in cultural studies. He is best known for his analyses of media, contemporary culture, and technological communication, as well as hi ...

’s ''Simulations'' was the first of these books to appear, followed by titles by

, Felix Guattari,

Paul Virilio Paul Virilio (; 4 January 1932 – 10 September 2018) was a French Culture theory, cultural theorist, Urban planning, urbanist, architect and aesthetic philosopher. He is best known for his writings about technology as it has developed in relation ...

Jean-François Lyotard Jean-François Lyotard (; ; 10 August 1924 – 21 April 1998) was a French philosopher, sociologist, and literary theorist. His interdisciplinary discourse spans such topics as epistemology and communication, the human body, modern art and p ...

and

, among others. ''Spin'' magazine cited the little black books as "Objects of Desire" in a 19XX design feature. In 1990, Chris Kraus proposed a new series of fiction books by American writers, which would become the Native Agents imprint. Kraus worked at the St. Marks Poetry Project and saw an overlap between the theories of subjectivity advanced in the Foreign Agents books and the radical subjectivity practiced by female first-person fiction writers. Designed to promote an anti-memoiristic "public I", the series published

, Barbara Barg, Cookie Mueller,

Eileen Myles Eileen Myles (born December 9, 1949) is an American poet and writer who has produced more than twenty volumes of poetry, fiction, non-fiction, libretti, plays, and performance pieces over the last three decades. Novelist Dennis Cooper has des ...

, David Rattray, Ann Rower, Lynne Tillman and many others. A third series, Active Agents, began in 1993 with the publication of ''Still Black Still Strong'' by Dhoruba Bin Wahad, Assata Shakur and

Mumia Abu-Jamal Mumia Abu-Jamal (born Wesley Cook; April 24, 1954) is an American political activist and journalist who was convicted of murder and sentenced to death in 1982 for the 1981 murder of Philadelphia Police Department, Philadelphia police officer C ...

, with the goal of presenting explicitly political, topical material. It has also published texts by Kate Zambreno, Bruce Hainley, and

. In 2001 ''Semiotext(e)'' changed its base of operations from New York City to Los Angeles, ceasing its involvement with Autonomedia to begin an ongoing distribution arrangement with

MIT Press The MIT Press is the university press of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), a private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The MIT Press publishes a number of academic journals and has been a pioneer in the Open Ac ...

. Hedi El Kholti, the Moroccan-born artist and writer who co-founded the now-defunct Dilettante Press, became Semiotext(e)’s art director. As the decade progressed, El Kholti saw a need to re-imagine the Semiotext(e) project beyond the small-format books of the series. Earlier titles would be republished as large-format books within the new History of the Present imprint. In 2004, El Kholti became

managing editor A managing editor (ME) is a senior member of a publication's management team. Typically, the managing editor reports directly to the editor-in-chief and oversees all aspects of the publication. United States In the United States, a managing edi ...

of the press. He, Kraus and Lotringer then became joint, list-wide co-editors. Semiotext(e)'s new goal was to advance its original conflation of literature and theory, and to expand the anti-bourgeois

queer theory Queer theory is a field of post-structuralist critical theory that emerged in the early 1990s out of queer studies (formerly often known as gay and lesbian studies) and women's studies. The term "queer theory" is broadly associated with the study a ...

presented in early issues of the Semiotext(e) journal. The purview of Native Agents expanded to include science fiction books by

Maurice Dantec Maurice Georges Dantec (; 14 June 1959 – 25 June 2016) was a French-born Canadian science fiction writer and musician. Biography Dantec was born in Grenoble, France, the son of a Journalism, journalist and a Sewing, seamstress. He grew up pri ...

and Mark von Schlegell and works by writers like Tony Duvert, Pierre Guyotat,

Travis Jeppesen Travis Jeppesen is an American novelist, playwright, poet, artist, and art critic. He is known, among other works, for his novels ''Settlers Landing'' and '' The Suiciders''; a non-fiction novel about North Korea, ''See You Again in Pyongyang''; a ...

, Grisélidis Real, Bruce Benderson, and Abdellah Taïa. Aware that the theorists he introduced in the 1980s had by now been absorbed into the academic mainstream,

turned his attention to Italy's post- Autonomia

, commissioning and publishing works by Franco 'Bifo' Berardi,

Paolo Virno Paolo Virno (; ; born 14 May 1952) is an Italian philosopher, semiologist and a figurehead for the Italian Marxist movement. Implicated in belonging to illegal social movements during the 1960s and 1970s, Virno was arrested and jailed in 1979, ...

Antonio Negri Antonio Negri (; ; 1 August 1933 – 16 December 2023) was an Italian political philosopher known as one of the most prominent theorists of autonomism, as well as for his co-authorship of ''Empire (Hardt and Negri book), Empire'' with Michae ...

Christian Marazzi Christian Marazzi (born 1951) is a Swiss economist and author. Biography He was born in Lugano, Switzerland in 1951. Education He graduated in political science from the University of Padua. He completed his master's degree in economi ...

r/small>, Maurizio Lazzarato and others. Semiotext(e) also became the English-language publisher for

Peter Sloterdijk Peter Sloterdijk (; ; born 26 June 1947) is a German philosopher and cultural theorist. He was a professor of philosophy and media theory at and Rector from 2001 to 2015 of the University of Art and Design Karlsruhe. He co-hosted the German tel ...

’s notable ''Spheres'' trilogy. Re-visioning New York's ‘last

avant-garde In the arts and literature, the term ''avant-garde'' ( meaning or ) identifies an experimental genre or work of art, and the artist who created it, which usually is aesthetically innovative, whilst initially being ideologically unacceptable ...

’ of the 1980s, Semiotext(e) published archival works by or about some of that era's most important artists, including

Penny Arcade ''Penny Arcade'' is a webcomic focused on video games and video game culture, written by Jerry Holkins and illustrated by Mike Krahulik. The comic debuted in 1998 on the website ''loonygames.com''. Since then, Holkins and Krahulik have establish ...

, Gary Indiana and

David Wojnarowicz David Michael Wojnarowicz ( ; September 14, 1954 – July 22, 1992) was an American painter, photographer, writer, filmmaker, performance artist, songwriter/recording artist, and HIV/AIDS activism, AIDS activist prominent in the East Village, Ma ...

. ''Semiotext(e)'' was invited to participate as an artist in the 2014

Whitney Biennial The Whitney Biennial is a biennial exhibition of contemporary American art organized by the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City. The event began as an annual exhibition in 1932; the first biennial was held in 1973. It is considered ...

, for which it produced twenty-eight pamphlets by writers and artists associated with the press. These included "new, commissioned works by Franco “Bifo" Berardi, John Kelsey, Chris Kraus,

Ariana Reines Ariana Reines is an American poet, playwright, performance artist, and translator. Her books of poetry include ''The Cow'' (2006), which won the Alberta Prize from Fence Books; ''Coeur de Lion'' (2007); ''Mercury'' (2011); and ''Thursday'' (2012). ...

, and Abdellah Taïa, among others, and previously unpublished texts by such influential twentieth-century figures as

Simone Weil Simone Adolphine Weil ( ; ; 3 February 1909 – 24 August 1943) was a French philosopher, mystic and political activist. Despite her short life, her ideas concerning religion, spirituality, and politics have remained widely influential in cont ...

, Julio Cortazar, and

Semiotext(e) Intervention Series

Semiotext(e) publishes the Intervention Series (2009—present), an ongoing series of short books on subjects related to

left-wing politics Left-wing politics describes the range of Ideology#Political ideologies, political ideologies that support and seek to achieve social equality and egalitarianism, often in opposition to social hierarchy either as a whole or of certain social ...

. Topics of the series include

anti-capitalism Anti-capitalism is a political ideology and movement encompassing a variety of attitudes and ideas that oppose capitalism. Anti-capitalists seek to combat the worst effects of capitalism and to eventually replace capitalism with an alternati ...

anti-authoritarianism Anti-authoritarianism is opposition to authoritarianism. Anti-authoritarians usually believe in full equality before the law and strong civil liberties. Sometimes the term is used interchangeably with anarchism, an ideology which entails opposing a ...

post-structuralism Post-structuralism is a philosophical movement that questions the objectivity or stability of the various interpretive structures that are posited by structuralism and considers them to be constituted by broader systems of Power (social and poli ...

feminism Feminism is a range of socio-political movements and ideology, ideologies that aim to define and establish the political, economic, personal, and social gender equality, equality of the sexes. Feminism holds the position that modern soci ...

, and economics. All books in the series are designed by Hedi El Kholti. The series is notable for its first installment: '' The Coming Insurrection'' by The Invisible Committee, a French

pseudonymous A pseudonym (; ) or alias () is a fictitious name that a person assumes for a particular purpose, which differs from their original or true meaning (orthonym). This also differs from a new name that entirely or legally replaces an individual's ow ...

author (or authors). Upon its release, the book was condemned by American conservative commentator

Glenn Beck Glenn Lee Beck (born February 10, 1964) is an American conservative political commentator, radio host, entrepreneur, and television producer. He is the CEO, founder, and owner of Mercury Radio Arts, the parent company of his television and rad ...

, who described it as a dangerous radical leftist

manifesto A manifesto is a written declaration of the intentions, motives, or views of the issuer, be it an individual, group, political party, or government. A manifesto can accept a previously published opinion or public consensus, but many prominent ...

. ''The Coming Insurrection'' is also known for its association with the legal case of the Tarnac Nine, a group of nine people, including Julien Coupat, who were arrested in Tarnac, rural France, on November 11, 2008, on suspicion of sabotaging French railways. The method of

sabotage Sabotage is a deliberate action aimed at weakening a polity, government, effort, or organization through subversion, obstruction, demoralization (warfare), demoralization, destabilization, divide and rule, division, social disruption, disrupti ...

actually used was similar to one suggested in the book, and members of the group were suspected to be members of the Invisible Committee. Coupat later co-founded '' Tiqqun'', a short-lived philosophical magazine whose work is also represented in the Intervention Series. Major topics of the series include French anarchism (The Invisible Committee, ''Tiqqun''), Italian Marxist economic criticism ( Maurizio Lazzarato,

Franco Berardi Franco "Bifo" Berardi (born 2 November 1949) is an Italian Marxist philosopher, theorist and activist in the autonomist tradition, whose work mainly focuses on the role of the media and information technology within post-industrial capitalism. ...

, Christian Marazzi) and violence in the context of the

Mexican Drug War The Mexican drug war is an List of ongoing armed conflicts, ongoing Asymmetric warfare, asymmetric armed conflict between the Federal government of Mexico, Mexican government and various Drug cartel#Mexico, drug trafficking syndicates. When the ...

( Sergio González Rodríguez, Sayak Valencia). Other topics discussed include

art history Art history is the study of Work of art, artistic works made throughout human history. Among other topics, it studies art’s formal qualities, its impact on societies and cultures, and how artistic styles have changed throughout history. Tradit ...

(Gerald Raunig, Chris Kraus), racism and the

criminal justice system Criminal justice is the delivery of justice to those who have been accused of committing crimes. The criminal justice system is a series of government agencies and institutions. Goals include the rehabilitation of offenders, preventing other ...

( Houria Bouteldja, Jackie Wang),

continental philosophy Continental philosophy is a group of philosophies prominent in 20th-century continental Europe that derive from a broadly Kantianism, Kantian tradition.Continental philosophers usually identify such conditions with the transcendental subject or ...

(

), and contemporary culture (

François Cusset François Cusset (; born 9 March 1969) is a writer, intellectual historian, and Professor of American Civilisation at the University of Nanterre. Cusset was a student at the Ecole Normale Superieure de Saint-Cloud. He has been an associate res ...

Jennifer Doyle Jennifer Doyle is a Professor of English at the University of California, Riverside. She is a queer theorist, art critic and sports writer. Doyle is the author of ''Campus Sex, Campus Security'' (2015), which explores the intersection of discou ...

). Although the series treats a variety of subjects in left-wing politics and culture, there are also commonalities and through-lines among the works. Several of the series' entries address the

2008 financial crisis The 2008 financial crisis, also known as the global financial crisis (GFC), was a major worldwide financial crisis centered in the United States. The causes of the 2008 crisis included excessive speculation on housing values by both homeowners ...

and the consequent protest movements of the early 21st century, particularly

Occupy Wall Street Occupy Wall Street (OWS) was a left-wing populist movement against economic inequality, capitalism, corporate greed, big finance, and the influence of money in politics that began in Zuccotti Park, located in New York City's Financial ...

and the

Arab Spring The Arab Spring () was a series of Nonviolent resistance, anti-government protests, Rebellion, uprisings, and Insurgency, armed rebellions that spread across much of the Arab world in the early 2010s. It began Tunisian revolution, in Tunisia ...

; these are compared by several of the series' authors with the French protests of May 1968 and the Italian Years of lead. In the context of these protest movements, authors in the series describe a tendency to refuse to seize political power, thus also refusing to engage with states, businesses, and traditional power entities in expected ways. This refusal of power is also described as "destituent". Twentieth-century continental philosophy is frequently cited by the series' authors, particularly the work of

Deleuze and Guattari Gilles Deleuze, a French philosopher, and Félix Guattari, a French psychoanalyst and political activist, wrote a number of works together (besides each having distinguished independent careers). Their conjoint works included '' Capitalism and Sch ...

, and

Giorgio Agamben Giorgio Agamben ( ; ; born 22 April 1942) is an Italian philosopher best known for his work investigating the concepts of the state of exception, form-of-life (borrowed from Ludwig Wittgenstein) and '' homo sacer''. The concept of biopolitic ...

. Several of the series' authors decry the

state of exception A state of exception () is a concept introduced in the 1920s by the German philosopher, jurist and Nazi Party member Carl Schmitt, similar to a state of emergency (martial law) but based in the sovereign's ability to transcend the rule of law in t ...

, a legal theory attributed to the German jurist

Carl Schmitt Carl Schmitt (11 July 1888 – 7 April 1985) was a German jurist, author, and political theorist. Schmitt wrote extensively about the effective wielding of political power. An authoritarian conservative theorist, he was noted as a critic of ...

(and later criticized and further theorized by Agamben as well as

Achille Mbembe Joseph-Achille Mbembe (; born 1957), is a Cameroon, Cameroonian historian and political theorist who is a research professor in history and politics at the Wits Institute for Social and Economy Research at the University of the Witwatersrand. He ...

), which posits that the state has authority to act outside the

rule of law The essence of the rule of law is that all people and institutions within a Body politic, political body are subject to the same laws. This concept is sometimes stated simply as "no one is above the law" or "all are equal before the law". Acco ...

in extreme circumstances (e.g. a

state of emergency A state of emergency is a situation in which a government is empowered to put through policies that it would normally not be permitted to do, for the safety and protection of its citizens. A government can declare such a state before, during, o ...

) in the name of the public good. Works in the series also criticize

Richard Nixon Richard Milhous Nixon (January 9, 1913April 22, 1994) was the 37th president of the United States, serving from 1969 until Resignation of Richard Nixon, his resignation in 1974. A member of the Republican Party (United States), Republican ...

's decision to remove the United States from the gold standard in 1971, and French television executive Patrick Le Lay who stated that his network's job was to sell

Coca-Cola Coca-Cola, or Coke, is a cola soft drink manufactured by the Coca-Cola Company. In 2013, Coke products were sold in over 200 countries and territories worldwide, with consumers drinking more than 1.8 billion company beverage servings ...

to its viewers via advertising, not provide content.

Notes

References

Bibliography

, "My 80s: Better Than Life," ''

Artforum ''Artforum'' is an international monthly magazine specializing in contemporary art. The magazine is distinguished from other magazines by its unique 10½ × 10½ inch square format, with each cover often devoted to the work of an artist. Notably ...

'', April 2003 * Hedi El Kholti Chris Kraus

: "SOMEWHERE IN THE UNFINISHED: The History of Semiotext(e) Part 2, Los Angeles,” Whitney Biennial Catalogue,

Whitney Museum of Art The Whitney Museum of American Art, known informally as "The Whitney", is a modern and contemporary American art museum located in the Meatpacking District and West Village neighborhoods of Manhattan in New York City. The institution was foun ...

, New York: 2014

External links