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
 
166 titles
Series:
 
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.
Peter Kurzeck - Un été sans fin
2013
French edition
Alternately compared to Joyce, Proust, and Döblin, German writer Peter Kurzeck is nonetheless underestimated. Dedicated to Kurzeck's childhood, this autobiographical publication restores the seductive magic of Frankfurt in the late 1950s, through a reflection on the poetic force of memory. The original narrative was released in 2007 as a German audio-book.
George Tabori - Autodafé - Mémoires
2013
French edition
Autobiography of Hungarian stage director and playwright George Tabori: a collection of memories oscillating between pathos and drama, delivering a lucid picture of the rise of Nazism.
Niklas Luhmann - La réalité des médias de masse
2013
French edition
This essay offers a careful analysis of the mass media system and the simplifying selections it operates within the complexity and contingency of the world.
Hyman P. Minsky - L\'hypothèse d\'instabilité financière - Les processus capitalistes et le comportement de l\'économie
2013
French edition
An introduction to Minsky's seminal theory on financial instability.
Joseph Vogl - Le spectre du capital
2013
French edition
In the context of a pervasive and long-standing financial crisis, Joseph Vogl questions the capitalist system, its secrets, its modus operandi, and the way it perpetuates itself. One of the most noteworthy books on the economic crisis in Europe.
Colin Crouch - Post-démocratie
2013
French edition
Starting from the deep malaise and the violent crisis of confidence in state institutions in modern democracies, this essay analyzes the growing influence and power of the multinational corporations in modern democracies.
Thinking – Resisting – Reading the Political
2013
English edition
The essays collected in Thinking – Resisting – Reading the Political engage with political phenomena in their interrelations with arts as well as with recent theoretical and philosophical perspectives on the very meaning of politics, the political, and community.
Gerhard Richter - Décembre
2012
French edition
Painter Gerhard Richter and filmmaker and writer Alexander Kluge composed a collection of 39 stories in connection with the history of the 20th century and the month of December, illustrated with 39 photographs.
Howard Rouse - Egocracy - Marx, Freud and Lacan
2011
English edition
A confrontation of the works of Marx, Freud, and Lacan.
From Science to Computational Sciences - Studies in the History of Computing and its Influence on Today\'s Sciences
2011
English edition
A collection of texts on the history of computing and its influence on science, in particular as a simulation tool.
Beyond Potentialities? - Politics between the Possible and the Impossible
2011
English edition
This volume assembles articles that investigate the question of the possible and the impossible in politics. Discussing thinkers such as Agamben, Badiou, Foucault, and Debord, Beyond Potentialities? explores different perspectives and highlight the relevance of this issue for contemporary political thought.
Documenta 12 Education - Vol. 1 – Engaging audiences, opening institutions – Methods and strategies in education at documenta 12 (+ DVD)
2009
English edition
This publication provides in two illustrated volumes a basis for developing theory and praxis of gallery education: an ideal resource for people working in the fields of curating exhibitions, youth work and cultural policy. The first volume gives a comprehensive and richly illustrated survey of formats and models of education and collaboration with the public at documenta 12.
Documenta 12 Education - Vol. 2 – Between Critical Practice and Visitor Services – Results of a Research Project
2009
English edition
This publication provides in two illustrated volumes a basis for developing theory and praxis of gallery education: an ideal resource for people working in the fields of curating exhibitions, youth work and cultural policy. The second volume focuses on a theory of gallery education, its methods and contexts, and reflects theoretically on examples presented in volume 1.
Kathrin Thiele - The Thought of Becoming - Gilles Deleuze\'s Poetics of Life
2008
English edition
A philosophical essay reflecting on ethics and poetics through the thought of Gilles Deleuze.
Artur Żmijewski - How to Teach Art?
2022
English edition
sold out
How to teach art / can we become an artist?
Natura - Environmental Aesthetics After Landscape
2018
English edition
sold out
Interdisciplinary study gathering critical essays and visual contributions attempting to rethink environmental aesthetics beyond the idea of landscape.
Power of Material / Politics of Materiality
2018
English edition
sold out
In recent years, most diverse disciplines have been stressing the importance of matter within the web of relationships of culture and nature. This publication focuses on this new material phenomena in arts in relation to the humanities and social sciences and brings together contributions by academic staff at the cx centre for interdisciplinary studies at the Academy of Fine Arts Munich as well as selected artistic work by students.
Disabled Theater
2015
English edition
sold out
Using Jérôme Bel's Disabled Theater as the basis for a broad, interdisciplinary discussion of performance and disability, this series of essays explores the intersections of politics and aesthetics, inclusion and exclusion, and identity and empowerment. Including interviews with Jérôme Bel and with the actors of Zurich's Theater HORA.
Dieter Mersch - Epistemologies of Aesthetics
2015
English edition
sold out
A pioneering study in which professor of media theory Dieter Mersch paves the way for a methodology of aesthetics that would move beyond the “linguistic turn” to create a new scientific discourse that would create a better conceptual understanding of art-based research.
Dance, Politics & Co-Immunity
2013
English edition
sold out
This volume brings together multidisciplinary essays dedicated to the question of how dance, both in its historical and in its contemporary manifestations, is intricately linked to conceptualisations of the political.
Going Public - Creating Visibility in the Field of Art
2025
English edition
forthcoming
A call-to-arms for creatives to make their work widely accessible as a political and communal act.
Ines Weizman - Avant et après - L\'architecture du désastre
2025
French edition
forthcoming
Eyal and Ines Weizman explore the history of the before-and-after image, from its origins in 19th-century Paris to today's satellite surveillance.
Thierry de Duve - Come On, Men, One More Effort… - Anthropogenesis, Christianity, Sexuation
2025
English edition
forthcoming
In this essay, Thierry de Duve leaves the aesthetics and history of the art to approach, under the religious prism, two anthropological questions that the mutation of the symbolic order in progress makes pressing: the difference of the sexes and the future of the politics of emancipation.
Reiner Schürmann - Heidegger\'s De(con)struction of Metaphysics
2025
English edition
forthcoming
The Heideggerien deconstruction of metaphysics by Reiner Schürmann.
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