Diaphanes

Diaphanes has been active as a publisher since 2001, with its headquarters in Zurich and a project space in Berlin. Editorial care and sophisticated design are the main coordinates of a multilingual book production oriented to enduring relevance in the interconnection of discourse and fiction, art and the humanities, literature and philosophy. As open to the new as to the forgotten, Diaphanes wishes to offer a lively place of publication outside the dominant mainstream, and to give productive resonance to a wide variety of forms of knowledge and expression. With a classical print production and an innovative online palette, Diaphanes addresses an open and critical reading public, for whom books remain an indispensable tool of intellectual interchange. An available backlist of over 500 titles in German, English, and French, together with an annual program of around 50 new publications in worldwide distribution, make Diaphanes one of the most prominent independent publishers.

Diaphanes is also, since 2017, the name of a quarterly English-, German-, multi-language magazine with a focus on contemporary art, critical discourse, and multilingual fiction.
 
Zurich / Berlin
 
163 titles
Series:
 
Reiner Schürmann - Des hégémonies brisées
2017
French edition
The posthumous publication of the German philosopher: a major work on the collapse of Western philosophy and on the necessity to rethink the past to build the future.
No New Kind of Duck - Would I know how to say what I do?
2017
English edition
How to talk about his art as an artist? A series of discussions with Jan Verwoert and artists and composers of the Graduate School at the Berlin University of the Arts. In parallel, the book presents a careful selection of original artistic contributions by the participants.
Diaphanes - Fatal Conjunctions
2017
bilingual edition (English / German)
This 2nd issue is dedicated thematically to the conjunctive binding of individuals within groups, collectives and swarms in the interplay between art and society, utopia and theater (with Artur Żmijewski, Mohamed Bourouissa, Jelili Atiku, Aernout Mik, Alexander García Düttmann, Mário Gomes, Eric Baudelaire, Agnieszka Kurant, Beni Bischof, Public Movement, Ann Cotten, Diane Williams, Stephen Barber, Clémentine Deliss, Milo Rau).
Diaphanes
2017
bilingual edition (English / German)
Diaphanes is a new bilingual English-German quarterly magazine with a focus on contemporary art, critical discourse, and multilingual fiction. This first issue features a special section dedicated to the work of Pierre Guyotat, including excerpts, an interview with Donatien Grau and drawings by Paul McCarthy. Also in this issue: Mike Wilson; Ute Holl; Haus Am Gern; Aya Momose; Mário Gomes; Marcus Quent; Julien Maret; Jason Swartz; Julian Röder; Peter Ott; Tyler Coburn; Francisco Sierras Malerei; Yves Netzhammer; Giovanna Marmo; Luc Meresma…
Nathalie Novi - Dr. Freud, Fish Whisperer
2017
English edition
Discovering the id, ego, and superego with Dr. Freud (an illustrated philosophy book for children).
Anne-Margot Ramstein - Albert Einstein\'s Bright Ideas
2017
English edition
The young Albert Einstein has a very important job: he must deliver electricity to the big Oktoberfest celebration in Munich. As he hurries from one merry-go-round to another, nothing seems to be going as planned. With his sister, Maja, Heinrich the dog, and Niels Bohr, a qualified dwarf-thrower, can he win a battle against the laws of the universe? The key just may lie in the question of whether a dumpling can fly faster than light (an illustrated philosophy book for children).
Vincent Sorel - Diogenes the Dog-Man
2017
English edition
Diogenes as a dog (an illustrated philosophy book for children).
Visualizing Portuguese Power - The Political Use of Images in Portugal and its Overseas Empire (16th–18th Century)
2016
English edition
This publication offers new insights into the broad and differentiated spectrum of functions images could assume in political contexts in those areas dominated by the Portuguese in early modern times. How were objects and artifacts staged and handled to generate new layers of meaning and visualize political ideas and concepts? And what were the respective reasons, means, and effects of the visualization of Portuguese power and politics?
Judith Butler - Dépossession
2016
French edition
Taking the form of a dialogue between the philosopher Judith Butler and the anthropologist Athena Athanasiou, this thought-provoking book seeks to elaborate our understanding of dispossession outside of the conventional logic of possession, a hallmark of capitalism, liberalism, and humanism.
Joseph Vogl - De l\'indécision
2016
French edition
An “anti-history” of the indecision in which Joseph Vogl probes the literary figures of Oreste, Wallenstein, Joseph K., Bartleby, or the man without qualities.
Yves Netzhammer - Concave Thoughts - 357 Digital Drawings
2016
English edition
An entry point into the Swiss artist's imagery through a collection of 357 digital drawings in black & white.
Vision in Motion - Streams of Sensation and Configurations of Time
2016
English edition
An impressive collection of essays offering a critical examination of representations of vision in motion—from early illustrations of plants to the avant-gardes, from gesture to cinema, from decapitation to dance, from David Hume to Bergson and Deleuze.
Annabelle Buxton - Wittgenstein\'s Rhinoceros
2016
English edition
1914. Europe is at war. The experts on deciphering code and secret writing are wild with excitement: What in the world can be the meaning of those incomprehensible notes scribbled by secret agent Ludwig Wittgenstein? The young scholar himself is unable to help them—he is hunting a wild beast, a figure of dubious existence… (an illustrated philosophy book for children).
Laurent Moreau - Professor Kant\'s Incredible Day
2016
English edition
What can I know? What should I do? What may I hope? What's for dinner? More than two hundred years ago, on a day that takes quite a peculiar course, Professor Kant is working hard to give an answer to all these questions. Not only the morning papers, but also a slightly perfumed letter get in his way however. As a result, he even forgets to go out on his regular digestive walk—and everything goes off the rails… (an illustrated philosophy book for children).
Social Media - New Masses
2016
English edition
The emergence of the new digital technologies and social media has transformed the very concept of the mass gathering. The present volume brings together a collection of studies that analyze this transformation and seize the opportunity to reevaluate the cultural and medial historiography of the masses.
Colin Crouch - L\'étrange survie du néolibéralisme
2016
French edition
The new impact of corporations on both the state and the market as the new paradigm of neoliberalism.
Elisabeth Bronfen - Mad Men, Death and the American Dream
2016
English edition
Elisabeth Bronfen gives a clever analysis on one of the most influential show of the 21th century, arguing that, beyond the retro-revival, Mad Men builds a comment on the state of the US nation and on the mirage of the American Dream.
Alexander Kluge - Le raid aérien sur Halberstadt le 8 avril 1945
2016
French edition
Filmmaker and writer Alexander Kluge combines fiction and reality to deliver one of the most striking testimonies that have been written about the bombing of German cities by the Allies.
Cybernetics - The Macy Conferences – 1946-1953 – The Complete Transactions
2016
English edition
Between 1946 and 1953, the Macy Conferences brought together a diverse and interdisciplinary community of researchers who together developed the basics of the new science of cybernetics. This publication contains the complete transcription and protocols of all contributions of one of the most important event in the contemporary history of science.
François Schwoebel - Mister Descartes and his Evil Genius
2016
English edition
On a long, cold winter night, more than three hundred years ago, Mister Descartes is suddenly beset by profound doubts: Can I trust my senses, or am I fooled by illusions? Is there an Evil Genius behind all things? What if the outside world is only a dream? Is my own existence nothing but the product of my imagination? (an illustrated philosophy book for children).
Clémence Pollet - Hannah Arendt\'s Little Theater
2016
English edition
Hannah Arendt is not at all keen to build an edifice of ideas or to develop abstract concepts. Rather, she gets on to the stage herself! To enter the scene of her little theater means to take matters into her own hands, take responsibility, to act. In short: Thinking is acting! Whereas the bureaucrats can conceive of only one thing: to build a world out of paper (an illustrated philosophy book for children).
Tom McCarthy - Recessional - Or, the Time of the Hammer
2016
English edition
British novelist Tom McCarthy questions the specific obsession with time in modern and contemporary literature, examining the works of Thomas Pynchon, J. G. Ballard, Maurice Blanchot, Thomas Mann, Joseph Conrad, James Joyce, and William Faulkner. The essay is followed by a conversation with the author in which he discusses his own practice of writing.
Reiner Schürmann - Origins
2016
English edition
currently out of stock
The semi-autobiographical account of the life of a young German in the 1960s, between Germany, Israel, and The United States. First translation of philosopher Reiner Schürmann's only literary work, originally published in French in 1976.
Art and Contemporaneity
2015
English edition
Publication gathering a team of thinkers that confront one of the most crucial questions when dealing with the very definition, concept and operativity of art: How to link art to the concept of the contemporary?
Neighborhood Technologies - Media and Mathematics of Dynamic Networks
2015
English edition
This collection of essays seeks to comprehensively address the concept of “neighborhood technologies” by establishing a platform for the thorough discussion of neighborhood concepts and notions across scientific cultures—e.g., computer science, mathematics, sociology, media and cultural studies, theater studies, and architecture.
Donatien Mary - The Ghost of Karl Marx
2015
English edition
The ghost of Karl Marx makes a solemn vow to give the story of the class conflict a happy ending by fighting the Market, that infernal magician (an illustrated philosophy book for children).
Jean-Paul Mongin - The Death of Socrates
2015
English edition
For those who look for truth: On the origins of Western philosophy (an illustrated philosophy book for children).
Georges Didi-Huberman - The Cube and the Face - Around a Sculpture by Alberto Giacometti
2015
English edition
Renowned French art historian and philosopher Georges Didi-Huberman conducts a careful analysis of Cube—Giacometti's only abstract sculptural work.
El Hadji Sy - Painting, Performance, Politics
2015
English edition
(last copies available!)
The first art-historical survey on the multidimensional work of Senegalese artist, curator, and cultural activist El Hadji Sy.
The Public in the Picture - Involving the Beholder in Antique, Islamic, Byzantine, Western Medieval and Renaissance Art
2015
texts in English and in German
The invention of depicting figures participating in an event marks an important change in the ways artists addressed the beholder of the artworks themselves. The contributions of this volume describe this moment from a diachronic and transcultural perspective, while each of them focuses on a specific group of works revealing a new moment in this history.
Siegfried Kracauer - Kracauer - Photographic Archive
2014
English edition
The photography book Kracauer. Photographic Archive is a collection of previously unpublished photographic material from the estate of the sociologist, philosopher, journalist and film and photograph theorist Siegfried Kracauer.
Siegfried Kracauer - The Past\'s Threshold - Essays on Photography
2014
English edition
Siegfried Kracauer was a leading intellectual figure of the Weimar Republic and one of the foremost representatives of critical theory. This volume brings together for the first time all of Kracauer's essays on photography that he wrote between 1927 and 1933. It includes a foreword by Philippe Despoix, and a curriculum vitae illustrated with photographs from the Kracauer estate.
Timing of Affect - Epistemologies, Aesthetics, Politics
2014
English edition
Affect, or the process by which emotions come to be embodied, is a burgeoning area of interest in both the humanities and the sciences. For Timing of Affect, Marie-Luise Angerer, Bernd Bösel, and Michaela Ott have assembled leading scholars to explore the temporal aspects of affect through the perspectives of philosophy, music, film, media, and art, as well as technology and neurology.
Multiples in Pre-Modern Art
2014
texts in English and German
This collection of essays explores the making and the reception of artifacts before the nineteenth century. It addresses media such as metal, wax, plaster, terracotta, textiles, marble, ivory, porcelain, canvases and tables in an attempt to re-assess the current identification of the mediality of prints with that of pre-modern “multiples” in general.
Foreign Exchange (or the stories you wouldn\'t tell a stranger)
2014
English edition
This publication investigates the historical accumulation and commodification of artefacts and the representation of the human body as seen on ethnographic photographs. New material developed out of artistic research in the Weltkulturen Labor is presented together with unpublished scientific photography. Extended conversations between internationally renowned anthropologists, art historians, curators and artists offer new connections between past and present. Foreign Exchange responds to current interest in the remediation of ethnographic collections, colonial history, historical archives, and interdisciplinary curatorial practice.
Daniel Tyradellis - Qu\'appelons-nous penser ?
2013
French edition
The two philosophers share a dialogue on the representation of thought.
Hans-Jörg Rheinberger - Itérations
2013
French edition
Six conferences on Franco-German epistemology—from Gaston Bachelard to Bruno Latour, Martin Heidegger, and Jacques Lacan—held by biologist Hans-Jörg Rheinberger from 1994 to 2007. The title pays homage to the thought of French philosopher Jacques Derrida.
Joseph Vogl - Crédit et débit
2013
French edition
Collection of interviews with author and filmmaker Alexander Kluge and philosopher and professor of literature Joseph Vogl, specially produced by Kluge for German television.
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