Small forms
An invitation to join our unpsychology pamphlet project
Introduction
As outlined in our post Steps forward. Steps back, a couple of week ago, we - the Unpsychology editorial team - are now moving forward with a new set of small projects and collaborations.
Rather than curating and editing a magazine - as we have for the past 10 years – we've decided to explore some fresh paths which relate to the themes, processes and practices that Unpsychology taps into – and which will help us nurture ourselves, each other and the community that has grown around the magazine.
Each editor will be curating a different project, or creative 'nub'. This one is
’s invitation. Find ’s project nub HERE and ’s nub invitation will be published next week.
In praise of pamphlets
Some of the best pieces of writing are in small or short form or published in small books or pamphlets. Take an essay, idea or story and wrap it in a cover, with little embellishment. Or at any rate, keep it simple, with a DIY ethos. The ‘product’ – it might be a one-off or a short print run publication – is often something special and intriguing. A small and powerful piece of transient beauty.
Some of the best ‘imaginings’ come in small packages. The pamphlet – or short form piece – isn’t a pretentious thing. It doesn’t try to explain, over-explain and explain again. The pamphlet is happy to leave its words and ideas resting there, in a small physical volume, or even a humble PDF, to be picked up, discovered and devoured in a sitting or two…
Long form is paradoxically a medium of both the intellectual and the populist. There’s cultural power and prestige to be garnered, I guess, in publishing a long tome that purports to explain the meaning of everything, but also in receiving an invitation to be interviewed for hours by some podcast bro’ with millions of subscribers.
We can, of course, enjoy and become immersed in long form fiction (for me, particularly, speculative fiction!), or lost in learning whilst reading brilliantly written, intelligent non-fiction (for me, particularly, popular science). On the other hand, a pithy essay, short book or pamphlet can be a joy to pick up, read and flick through. And, ideas-wise, It can be enough.
As a creator, you don’t write a mere pamphlet if you’re trying to suss out the meaning of life or the theory of everything. Nor do you think – more to the point – that you’re the kind of guy who can undertake such a Heroic Task (it’s usually guys, it has to be said…).
There is something about the economy of words and the urgency of ideas in the short form. It says:
“This might only be short, but it’s real and necessary. Not the only real and necessary thing of course, but here it is. Here. Now.”
It is a form with humility rather than hubris. It says:
“Listen, maybe I only have this one small idea or theme or story to offer and explore, but I think it might be worth consideration. How about it? Let me know what you think…”
It’s seldom a power play. That small book or pamphlet sits there waiting for our attention and solidarity, and says:
“Look. I think I know where power lies, and I just want to show you too. Let’s do this together…”
It can only ever inhabit a small niche of the ideas ecosystem, but there’s often a seed in there waiting to grow and get tangled up in all the living systems that make up our planet. Learning. Together.
Or, to use a different image, maybe there’s a poem in there that could be spoken in a bar somewhere, downtown in the city, that starts a quiet revolution…
So, without casting shade on all those authors, writers and thinkers who have spent years crafting their long form novel, thesis or hoped-for magnus opus, I am here putting out an invitation to those writers and artists of smaller ambition – you quiet poetic revolutionaries – to join this unpsychology project, Small forms…
The invitation…
I’m looking to produce and publish a small set of pamphlets that address and respond to themes, issues and practices that relate in some way to ‘unpsychology’ (have a delve around our Substack to get a feel, or flick through some back issues of the magazine to get a flavour).
Please note, that this is not a submissions invitation for already produced work. In the first instance, I’ll be inviting expressions of interest in being involved with the project idea rather than asking for already existing pieces. The plan is to then work collaboratively with a small number of ‘unpsychological’ ideas, selecting a few to be worked up into pamphlets over the coming months.
The curation and editing of the project will be undertaken by myself, with support from others in the unpsychology ecosystem and editing team. Word count, page number and so on will depend on the short form pieces we land upon, but I would envisage that each piece might be between 24 and 48 pages long – plus or minus a bit – depending on format and size.
The themes considered could lead to…
fictional, non-fictional, poetic or visually artistic pieces – or combinations of all of some of these;
collaborations between writers and artists (of various kinds!);
writers working with other writers, psychologists, unpsychologists, activists etc.;
ideas or foundations for real-life projects, campaigns or manifestos;
voice being given to the lived experience of those who might need allies right now;
pieces of fictional world building as the basis for a speculative fiction project;
projects based around music, video and/or other creative cultural forms;
consideration, reflection or dialogue on ‘unpsychological’ themes;
self-contained essays that could stand alone - or be collected together;
a series of meditations, aphorisms or maxims.
What I might be looking for…
The pieces will probably have some overall connection to each other (even if its just ‘unpsychology’) but I hope they will also stand as short works in their own right:
I’m wondering what might happen if we pull on a psychological or unpsychological thread or two, and follow the labyrinth down;
I’m looking for pieces and voices that are fresh, distinctive and diverse;
I’m less interested in ideas that are being recycled and revisited in existing ‘alternative’ and ‘counter-cultural’ spaces;
I’m more interested in how ideas of mind, culture, identify and pathology can be explored within imaginative, integrative and/or transcontextual frames;
I’m interested in how radical, neurodiverse, queer and otherwise progressive ideas and practices might be recontextualised for the breaking times we live in;
I’m interested in how new stories (fictional, perhaps, but not necessarily) can help us tap into what it means to be human in these days;
I’m thinking there might be a mix of forms and genres across and within the series as a whole.
At this stage, I am unsure how many pamphlets there might be in the series, nor exactly how they will be produced or published. We might work with a design template (with some flexibility for artistic ideas), maybe producing DIY PDF publications and/or publish physical booklets with a series ‘look and feel’.
If you are interested in this small forms unpsychology project nub, I invite you to initially get in touch with me by email (steve@unpsychology.org). If you’re an artist, interesting in supporting the design and illustration of the pamphlets, please also get in touch.
I will then set up an orientation workshop on Zoom. In that session, I will explain more about the inspiration for the pamphlets project, what I am envisaging and give space to discuss some examples of short works that could, in turn, inspire these and ideas for these small form pamphlets.
There will also be an opportunity during the session to share your own existing ideas – if you have them – though the deadline for final ideas to be formulated will be a few weeks later – and we can develop new ones as we go on.
I look forward to hearing from you…
Just coming across this now so not sure if you're still seeking more people to join but it sounds like a terrific next step for Unpsychology.
It sounds like a fantastic project. Thank you for thinking of it.