Notes on ‘Organic IP’ & Underground Publishing: Alternative Book Worlds in Latin America

Abstract

The print book today, far from being dead, is an ‘old’ medium being made anew. In Latin America – a context virtually invisible in book studies – the remaking of the print book is most evident in the explosion of small alternative presses that have multiplied over the last two decades, accompanying a massive wave of popular mobilizations. Alternative presses are contributing to a remaking of the print book, materially and politically, as a tool for theorizing and promoting emergent political practices among autonomous and anti-capitalist movements. The presses – which are part of a broader trend of alternative political-economic projects aimed at developing non-capitalist modes of production and social relations – produce books that are not intended to be commercial products and that are meant to be as open and accessible as possible. In this article I argue that the alternative copyright practices deployed by these presses contribute to a reconceptualization of the print book – as well as its ‘digital alter egos’ – as an open and ongoing process, rather than a private and bound object. The article first analyzes the range of intellectual property (IP) practices present at an alternative book fair in Buenos Aires, before following the varied IP approaches that accompany two specific titles as they travel across the continent, being re-edited and re-printed in different countries. In doing so, I argue that what these underground worlds of political books reveal is not the existence or consolidation of alternative IP models or institutions, but rather what could perhaps be called ‘organic IP’, which disperses modes of attribution through decentralized practices of production, distribution, and consumption.