Common Notions emerges from, and renews, a long line of writers and readers; editors and publishers; as well as independent bookstore buyers and bookstore lovers—who recognize the power of the printed word to inspire cultural shifts through the bold ideas of a new society emerging within the existing world.

We at Common Notions recognize this moment as a time of tremendous change. There is hope and possibility, challenge and reward, opportunity and responsibility in the air—and with our community of authors and readers—we seek to steward a safer and more just world.

We are intergenerational and international, diverse in our backgrounds and brazen in our shared belief that the common notions of our times bend toward freedom. We run our press collectively and practice the visionary, transformative democracy we seek in the world in our office and in all of our relations—with each other, our authors, and our readers.

We are deeply committed to publishing books that provide timely reflections, clear critiques, and inspiring strategies that amplify movements for social justice. Our publishing program reflects the lessons we’ve learned as members of worker collectives, labor and tenants rights campaigns, higher ed struggles, #blacklivesmatter, no border and New Sanctuary movements, anticapitalist arts organizations, antiwar actions, climate justice camps, and the Palestinian solidarity movement.

We are based in the Interference Archive in Brooklyn, NY; and at Making Worlds Bookstore and Social Center in Philadelphia. We often collaborate with editorial houses, political collectives, militant authors, and maverick designers around the world. 

We are excited to bring our work into a world in search of a good book and a free society.

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Our titles are distributed to the trade by Consortium Books and Sales Distribution (Ingram Publisher Services). Click here for full order and distribution options, including small distros, educational and organizational discounts, and bulk orders.

Movements are sustained by people like you, whose fugitive words, deeds, and dreams bend against the world of domination and exploitation. Movement publishing is much the same! Please become a monthly sustainer and help us publish the necessary and timely words, deeds, and dreams that our movements and our worlds need.

Common Notions Press is a proud signatory on the US Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (USACBI) list.

USACBI is a U.S. campaign focused on a boycott of Israeli academic and cultural institutions, responding to the call of Palestinian civil society to join the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement against Israel. We believe it is time to take a public, principled stance in support of equality, self-determination, human rights (including the right to education), and true democracy.

Common notions, as assemblages, are a practical pivot, building blocks that arise on the terrain of the imagination to constitute reason.

The production of common notions shows that there is a “curious harmony” between the imagination and reason. However, there remains a real difference between them. No matter how strong or intense the imagination may be, we continue to regard it in a possible or contingent way. The specific property of reason is to consider things as necessary.

Common notions transform the fluctuation and contingency of imagination into the permanence and consistency of reason. Necessity, presence and frequency are the three characteristics of common notions.

Reason is the imagination that returns, the refrain. It is an intensified imagination that has gained the power to sustain its imagining by means of the construction of common notions. 

Common notions are ontological mechanisms that forge being out of becoming, necessity out of chance. It is the ontological assemblage whereby the chance joyful encounter is made adequate; the joyful encounter returns. From the beginning, common notions and its process of assemblage are part of an ethical project (becoming active, becoming adequate, becoming joyful), but how can we recognize this process in properly political terms? 

Adapted from Michael Hardt, Gilles Deleuze: An Apprenticeship in Philosophy, 1993 (102–103, 107)