AUTONOMEDIA PRESS BIOGRAPHY

Autonomedia is one of the main North American publishers of radical theoretical and political works, based in Williamsburg, Brooklyn and managed by Publisher Jim Fleming. For over two decades, Autonomedia was the publishing arm of Semiotext(e), one of the major sources for English-language translations of French post-structuralist literature.

Semiotext(e) was founded in 1974 by Sylvère Lotringer, the French scholar working for Columbia University who introduced the Paris of '68 philosophers to America.   Amongst the prominent authors that have been translated and published are such icons as Jean Baudrillard, Francois Lyotard and Michel Foucault.

Autonomedia functioned as the the umbrella book company for both the Autonomedia imprint as well as Semiotext(e) throughout the 1980s and 1990s.  In early 2001 Semiotext(e) was formally incorporated into the MIT Press and Autonomedia continued a separate and independent existence.

Autonomedia publishes books on a wide variety of provocative and radical topics, such as anarchism, autonomist and extra-parliamentary politics, the literature of psychedelics, queer fiction, etc.

Well-known Autonomedia authors have included Antonio Negri, Peter Lamborn Wilson, Hakim Bey, Silvia Federici, PM, John Moore, and others. Autonomedia is well known in alternative political circles for its cult "Autonomedia Calendar of Jubilee Saints," in which every day of the calendar recalls a deceased hero of autonomist or progressive movements.

Autonomedia is dedicated to a role as an autonomous zone for arts radicals in both old and new media.  Autonomedia looks to publish books on radical media, politics and the arts that seek to transcend party lines, bottom lines and straight lines. 

Autonomedia also maintains the  Interactivist Info Exchange, an online forum and blog on progressive politics.

 Autonomedia books can be ordered through our secure online bookstore, as well as through AK Distribution,  Small Press Distribution, and outside of North America,  Pluto Press . In New York City, most of our books are available at  Bluestockings Books,172 Allen Street in Manhattan.

 Amongst the current top-selling titles in Autonomedia’s booklist are the following, all available through Amazon:

Conversations with Durito: Stories of the Zapatistas and Neoliberalism (Subcomandante Marcos)

Soon after the Zapatistas emerged into public view in January, 1994, Subcomandante Marcos replied to a letter from a young girl in Mexico City with a tale of a tobacco-stealing beetle who was angry about the recent military invasion and the threat of so many soldiers’ boots to such small creatures as himself. The beetle, Don Durito de la Lacondon, tells Marcos that he is “studying neoliberalism and its strategy of domination for Latin America” in order to discover how long the Zapatista struggle, and by extension his own, would last. This marks the beginning of a long series of letters and communiqués between Marcos and Don Durito, a correspondence shared with various national newspapers and magazines, inventively explaining the shifting politics of the Zapatista struggle and their history as an organization and movement.

The Durito stories are some of the most literary and complex Zapatista communiqués. Their narratives combine political critique, satire, historical debate, literary seduction, and poetry, and regularly change register from elevated theoretical language to popular Mexican word play oralbures, indigenous and foreign languages, archaic and peninsular Spanish, and Caló (a hybrid language spoken along the U.S.-Mexico border). While other Marcos collections have excerpted these stories from the communiqués in which they originally appeared, Conversations With Durito         contextualizes each one within the original communiqué, presenting them not simply as stories, but as documents of particular moments in the Zapatista struggle. To further this understanding, the comuniqués are supplemented with a lengthy historical overview, brief introductions to each story, integrated footnotes and bibliographic resources, all adding critical political, historical, and cultural information to this vital and contemporary literature of resistance.

ISBN 1570271186

$16.95 : 352 pages 

The Temporary Autonomous Zone, Ontological Anarchy, Poetic Terrorism Hakim Bey

The underground cult bestseller carried in a thousand backpacks. Essays that redefine the essence of personal autonomy for the contemporary radical audience.  Recipes for “poetic terror, anarcho black magic, post-situ psychotropic surgery, denunciations of spiritual addictions to vapid infotainment cults,” etc.   Hallucinatory prose that brings the spirit of Burroughs to the quest for Walden.

$9.95

ISBN: 1570271518 

Red Genes, Blue Genes: Exposing Political Irrationality (Guillermo Jimenez)

Modern science postulates that our political predispositions can be traced to our genes. To some extent, there is such a thing as “red-state” or “blue-state” DNA. Our brains likewise bear the evolutionary imprint of hundreds of thousands of years of political wiring — for biased partisanship. The result is a political landscape characterized by irrationality and hostility.

Americans today, like citizens of many other countries, find themselves trapped in hostile “red” vs. “blue” political warfare. While liberals and conservatives fight each other for power and influence, the world’s problems go unsolved.

Using recent scientific evidence from neuroscience, behavioral genetics, and evolutionary and cognitive psychology, Red Genes, Blue Genes is the first book to take a comprehensive look at the phenomenon of political irrationality. 

Proposes innovatice citizen-based democratic mechanisms that will enable us to reduce mass political irrationality and elite bias.

ISBN 978-1-57027-203-5 : price $16.95 : 299 pages