Cutting Up Books (Paperback)

Ania Malinowska

ISBN 10: 1835953786 / ISBN 13: 9781835953785

Published by Intellect, 2026

About this Item

Paperback. Cutting Up Books - A Writing Method In Critical Thinking is an experimental exploration of writing, creativity, and knowledge-making through the radical act of cutting up books. Blending theory, practice, and art, it proposes textrapolation: a method of critical composition that uses destruction as a form of discovery. Drawing on traditions of the cut-up, collage, and automatic writing, the book turns the materiality of text into a thinking tool, showing how breaking and reassembling language can generate new modes of understanding.Thematically, it connects literary experimentation with philosophy, media theory, and the crisis of creativity in the age of artificial intelligence. It reconsiders authorship, education, and the function of books in a culture increasingly defined by templates, automation, and cognitive fatigue. Combining academic reflection with poetic fragments and visual-textual compositions to move between the scholarly and the personal, the analog and the algorithmic.Over six months, Ania Malinowska dismantled over 400 books, reframing their content into 111 poetic epigrams and combining conscious methodical experimentation with the spontaneity of automatic writing. Cutting Up Books addresses the crisis of creativity in contemporary academic and cultural practices while responding tocontemporary challenges, including the crises in education and the perceived threat posed by largelanguage models. The result is both a manifesto and a manual: a hybrid text that invites readers to become practitioners. It encourages intellectual play, intuition, and embodied experimentation as ways of reanimating writing and thought. At once critical and performative, the book demonstrates how cutting up can be a method of thinking, creating, and living differently. Explores writing as experiment and destruction as discovery. Blending theory, art, and practice, it introduces textrapolation: a cut-up method that reimagines creativity, authorship, and knowledge-making in the age of artificial unintelligence. Encourages intellectual play, intuition, and embodied experimentation to reanimate writing and thought. Shipping may be from our Sydney, NSW warehouse or from our UK or US warehouse, depending on stock availability.

Seller Inventory # 9781835953785

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Cutting Up Books (Paperback)
• Publisher: Intellect
• Publication Date: 2026
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1835953786
• ISBN 13: 9781835953785
• Binding: Paperback
• Condition: new

About this title

Synopsis

An experimental exploration of writing, creativity, and knowledge-making through the radical act of cutting up books. 

Over six months, Ania Malinowska dismantled over four hundred books, reframing their content into 111 poetic epigrams and combining conscious methodical experimentation with the spontaneity of automatic writing. Blending theory, practice, and art, her new book champions this practice of “textrapolation,” framing it as a method of critical composition that uses destruction as a form of discovery. At once a manifesto and a manual, Cutting Up Books addresses the crisis of creativity in academic and cultural practices while responding to contemporary challenges, including crises in education and perceived threats posed by large language models. 

Drawing on traditions of the cut-up, collage, and automatic writing, the book turns the materiality of text into a thinking tool, showing how breaking and reassembling language can generate new modes of understanding. Thematically, it connects literary experimentation with philosophy, media theory, and the crisis of creativity in the age of artificial intelligence. It reconsiders authorship, education, and the function of books in a culture increasingly defined by templates, automation, and cognitive fatigue. 

About the Author

Ania Malinowska is a cultural theorist, experimental writer, and professor of media and cultural studies at the University of Silesia in Katowice, Poland.