“Planktos” (πλαγκτός), the Greek term from which the English term “plankton” derives, refers to drifting or wandering. Plankton drift with currents, winds, and tides. These ecological forces also shape where and how plankton act as a generator of food for ocean life, and of the oxygen we breathe. Each plankter reflects the ocean structure that it inhabits.
Planktos Press broadens this insight. Just as the activity and identity of a plankter is enacted by its environment, our publications explore the idea that what we each call our “own” or “personal” thoughts, actions, and identity, are actually the products of impersonal structures, that don’t originate with ourselves individually. When we think and act we are like drifting plankton, encountering ourselves.
Philosophically, our publications participate in (1) structuralist understandings of the interproduction of nodes in a system, (2) phenomenological understandings of the objective conditions within subjective experience, and vice-versa, and (3) Stoic understandings that every individual mind is physical, and a trace of the entire physical world.
Within these themes, Planktos Press also publishes original translations into English of select French language philosophical works.
Planktos Press is located in Bondi Beach, Sydney, Australia.