re.press is a Melbourne based open access publisher of contemporary philosophy

Contemporary philosophy

Contemporary philosophy is the present period in the history of Western philosophy beginning at the end of the 19th century with the professionalization of the discipline and the rise of analytic and continental philosophy....

 (and some theory and poetry

Poetry

Poetry is a form of literary art in which language is used for its aesthetic and evocative qualities in addition to, or in lieu of, its apparent meaning...

). re.press is an independent publisher that seeks to promote philosophical

Philosophy

Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems, such as those connected with existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. Philosophy is distinguished from other ways of addressing such problems by its critical, generally systematic approach and its reliance on rational...

 ideas through making many of its works available for free in electronic form (PDF downloads) in addition to hard-copy paperbacks.

History

re.press began publishing in 2006 with the edited collection “The Praxis of Alain Badiou” and since then has published authors such as Alain Badiou

Alain Badiou

Alain Badiou is a French philosopher, professor at European Graduate School, formerly chair of Philosophy at the École Normale Supérieure . Along with Giorgio Agamben and Slavoj Žižek, Badiou is a prominent figure in an anti-postmodern strand of continental philosophy...

, G.W.F. Hegel, Graham Harman

Graham Harman

Graham Harman is a professor at the American University in Cairo, Egypt. He is a contemporary philosopher of metaphysics, who attempts to reverse the linguistic turn of Western philosophy...

, Andrew Benjamin

Andrew Benjamin

Andrew Benjamin is an Australian philosopher and Professor of Critical Theory at Monash University, Melbourne, Australia. Benjamin first came to critical attention with his writings in continental philosophy, writing articles and editing books on the thinking of Martin Heidegger, Theodor Adorno,...

, Reza Negarestani and the poet Attar.

Open Access

re.press was one of the first publishers to offer books as open access or free downloads. There has been some discussion of the “re.press model” on the blogging network and whether this is a sustainable model.

Series

re.press publishes in three series: Anamnesis, Transmission and Anomaly. Anamnesis and Transmission publish philosophy and Anomaly publishes other works including poetry and speculative fiction. The Open Access free downloads seem to be confined to the Anamnesis and Transmission series.

Cover Art

According to re.press’ website they are committed to “maximizing design values, boosting clarity and aesthetic qualities”. This commitment is expressed through the use of Melbourne based artists on their covers. According to their website:

“re.press aims to publish the best philosophical works available, whether these emerge from well-established or from previously unknown thinkers, whether they are from the North or the South, the East or the West, whether they are Platonists or Hegelians, materialists or idealists. True thought is global, universal, transformative, shredding ideologies and opinions like the statues of old dictators. But true thought also begins locally, in images and signs that may as yet have no recognisable reference or import. re.press' head offices are located in the city of Melbourne, Australia. And Melbourne is, as the art-critic Norbert Loeffler has remarked, one of the great art-cities of the world - without anybody knowing it. Lacking the established power, media and reputation of traditional centres of world art, Melbourne forces its artists to sustain themselves otherwise. Aware of contemporary work from all over the world, local artists transmute it for their own, often-obscure purposes, into unprecedented forms. re.press seeks, like an insatiable kleptoparasite, to draw off some of this aesthetic power for its own ends, by using their images for its cover-art.”