COMMON TONGUE
Making Learning Creating Doing
Why We're Here
Common Tongue is a non-disciplinary publisher that aims to encompass the outside. We believe in the radical potential of knowledge and the importance of encouraging everyone to expand their spheres of understanding. We champion those pursuing knowledge production outside the bounds of traditional structures. We welcome you to join us in our ambition to create a space for more making, learning, creating and doing.
Common Tongue’s flagship publication is a para-academic journal of the same name. Articles are published first in print, and then released open access online.
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Who is the Para-Academic?
Put simply, you. If you want to be. You, with ideas that slip the constraints of the traditional forms. You, who loves the traditional forms but has no place in the academy. You, who has worked at a University for more years than you can count and sees its flaws and failings but believes, despite it all, in the goodness of knowledge. You, who can’t give it up. You, who never got a chance. You, with things you wish to say.
The radical possibilities of academia have become subsumed into nothing but business interest, departments are getting hit with catastrophic and complete cuts.
The University is broken, and we can’t sit and wait for a salvation that may not come soon enough for us. This para-academic journal is the flagship publication of Common Tongue, and we hope to be able to harness the knowledge that exists outside of the bounds of the academic machine. We hope to encompass everyone unable or unwilling to be a part of the academy as it currently stands.
We reserve the right to change our minds. To reinvent, maybe not the wheel, but perhaps the spoke. This is an exploratory space, a transient and ephemeral space, if that is what you need. Students are being failed, Academics are being failed, we the people are being failed by this neoliberal cult of higher salaries that seeks profit over progress and curiosity. This system is a many headed monster, and I hope that one day it changes for the better. You cannot wait for that day.
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Common Tongue is not the solution to the problems of the Academy; it is the escape.