balibar in Adema & Hall 2013
artists’ books as
presented above, might it not be helpful to think of open access less as a project and
model to be implemented, and more as a process of continuous struggle and critical
resistance? Here an analogy can be drawn with the idea of democracy as a process. In
‘Historical Dilemmas of Democracy and Their Contemporary Relevance for
Citizenship’, the political philosopher Etiènne Balibar develops an interesting analysis
of democracy based on a concept of the ‘democratisation of democracy’ he derives
59
For a list of predatory OA publishers see: http://scholarlyoa.com/publishers/
This list has increased from 23 predatory publishers in 2011, to 225 in 2012.
60
See the reference to the research of Peter Murray Rust in Sigi Jöttkandt, ‘No-fee OA
Journals in the Humanities’.
61
Nicholas Knouf, ‘The JJPS Extension: Presenting Academic Performance Information’,
Journal of Journal Performance Studies, 1 (2010).
33
from a reading of Hannah Arendt and Jacques Rancière. For Balibar, the problem
with much of the discourse surrounding democracy is that it perceives the latter as a
model that can be implemented in different contexts (in China or the Middle East, for
instance). He sees discourses of this kind as running two risks in particular. First of
all, in conceptualizing democracy as a model there is a danger of it becoming a
homogenizing force, masking differences and inequalities. Second, when positioned
as a model or a project, democracy also runs the risk of becoming a dominating force
– yet another political regime that takes control and power. According to Balibar, a
more interesting and radical notion of democracy involves focusing on the process of
the democratisation of democracy itself, thus turning democracy into a form of
continuous struggle (or struggles) – or, perhaps better, continuous critical selfreflection. Democracy here is not an established reality, then, nor is it a mere ideal; it
is rather a permanent struggle for democratisation. 62
Can
hat some perceive as the
failure of artists’ books to contribute significantly to such a critical struggle after the
1970s to the fact that ultimately they became (incorporated in) dominant institutional
settings themselves – a state of affairs brought about in part by their inability to
address issues of access, experimentation and self-reflexivity in an ongoing critical
manner?
62
Etienne Balibar, ‘Historical Dilemmas of Democracy and Their Contemporary Relevance
for Citizenship’, Rethinking Marxism, 20 (2008).
34
Certainly, one of the advantages of conceptualizing open access as a process of
struggle rather than as a model to be implemented would be that doing so would
create more space for radically different, conflicting, even incommensurable positions
within the larger movement,
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