TY - JOUR
AU - Clark-Parsons,, Rosemary
AB - Abstract Zines have made a resurgence in the United States. What functions do these humble, self-published booklets perform in the current media landscape, where digital reigns supreme? This article explores the political salience of zines for feminists, whose social media tactics have pushed feminism into popular culture and yet who continue to make zines. While much has been written about feminist zines, little research has considered their relevance in the digital age, nor have researchers grappled with the complex relationship between digital and print activist media. Drawing on interviews with zinesters, I argue that feminist zines and online feminism are not materially polarized outlets, but practices with distinct yet symbiotic advantages working in tandem within a repertoire of feminist media tactics. On an unbearably hot August afternoon in 2015, approximately 50 zine-makers, or zinesters, and distributers (distros) pack into the Rotunda, a university-owned community center in West Philadelphia, for the annual Philly Zine Fest, their handcrafted pamphlets and other homespun goods spread across a few dozen folding tables. In an age of the ubiquitous Internet, the death of print, and the monopolization of commercial media, perusing an exhibitor’s photocopied and stapled paper magazines, typically exchanged through barter or trade, feels like a throwback to simpler times for activist life in the United States. The festival’s broad selection of feminist-inspired media, for example, harkens back to the Riot Grrrl punk zines of the late 1980s and 1990s, their historical roots stemming forth from the alternative presses of the Civil Rights Era and even reaching as far back as the pamphleteers of the suffrage movement. And yet, in fleeting moments, a paradox manifests: Zinesters use iPhones to snap photos and share their displays on Instagram; distros hand out business cards directing future consumers to their websites; organizers update the festival’s Facebook event page and Twitter hashtag in hopes of boosting attendance; readers who have up to this point only purchased zinesters’ work through Etsy shops meet their favorite makers in person for the first time; unclickable URLs and e-mail addresses printed across inside covers direct readers to connect with zinesters online. Underlying the zine fest’s commitment to alternative print media and the tangible communities and face-to-face encounters they foster are digital networks whose virtual connective tissue enabled the logistical execution of the day-long event, distributed the call for exhibitors far and wide, and brought attendees from the Philadelphia area and beyond. Over the last decade, zines, or self-published booklets ranging dramatically in style and content, have made a resurgence. It is impossible to estimate the number of contemporary zinesters in the United States, whose subversive, hodgepodge texts are not catalogued in the Library of Congress or issued ISSNs, but recent mainstream news headlines have heralded their comeback: “Zines Have a Resurgence Among the Web-Savvy” (Wortham, 2011); “Are Zines Making a Comeback, Too?” (Bose, 2014); “How Zines Survive in the Internet Age” (Carville, 2015); “Yes, Zines Still Exist, and They’re Not Antiques” (Berube, 2013). Today, there are more than 60 active zine festivals (Stolen Sharpie Revolution, 2016b), dozens of distros and stores (Stolen Sharpie Revolution, 2016a; Stolen Sharpie Revolution, 2016c), and nearly 120 zine libraries and archives across the United States (Barnard Zine Library, 2016). The humble do-it-yourself (DIY) zine perseveres, in spite of, but perhaps more accurately, because of the meteoric rise of blogging and social media platforms. Why are zines making a comeback now? What function do zines perform in the current U.S. media environment, where digital reigns supreme? In this article, I explore these questions specifically in relation to U.S. feminists, whose energetic adoption of social media has pushed feminist ideas into mainstream media, creating a cultural moment that Sarah Banet-Weiser (Banet-Weiser, 2015) has called “popular feminism,” and yet who continue to produce zines and host zine festivals across the country. Why do feminists zine when they can, and have with great success, blog? How do zines, despite their intrinsically limited audience, advance feminist goals? While much has been written about feminist zines, little research has considered the continued relevance of zines for feminists in the digital age, nor have researchers grappled with the complex relationship between digital and print activist media. I draw on interview data with zinesters alongside the theoretical frameworks of media as practice (Couldry, 2012; Williams, 1977), counterpublics (Fraser, 1992; Warner, 2002), and material culture (Barassi, 2013) to begin developing answers to these questions. Feminist zines and online feminism are not, I argue, materially polarized outlets, but practices within the same repertoire of contemporary feminist media activism. Whereas existing scholarship positions zines and digital media in tension with one another, my interviewees’ experiences illuminate a symbiotic relationship between the two genres. Zine-making is a digitally networked feminist practice, in which social media platforms act as porous yet protective boundaries, providing access to the zine community, but not to the actual content of zines themselves. The relationship between feminists’ print and digital media practices fosters a supportive, safe, subaltern counterpublic, open to newcomers but closed off from the harassment that tends to plague online spaces. Putting these practices in conversation with one another highlights both the political salience of print media and the democratic shortcomings of digitally mediated activism. Theorizing feminist zines in the age of online feminism The existing research on feminist zines is broad in depth and breadth, offering a range of studies across multiple geographic and cultural contexts but nevertheless weaving a coherent narrative about the functions zines fulfill within feminist movements. Feminist zines open up productive third spaces for authors who, ranging widely in age, gender identity, race, and sexual orientation, fall outside the boundaries of White, heterosexual masculinity and who, consequently, lack access to or representation in media outlets (Licona, 2005). Stemming from broader DIY lifestyles and movements (Kempson, 2014), the exchange of zines forges communal bonds that encourage the collective formation of critical feminist subjectivities (Harris, 2003). Through the processes of inter- and intrapersonal subjectivity formation, zines offer space for the negotiation of complex feminist identities that allow for wide-ranging expressions of gender (Piepmeier, 2009). This feature has been especially empowering for adolescent girls weighing feminine desires against first encounters with feminist politics (Guzzetti & Gamboa, 2004). Feminist zines create accessible venues for self-expression, unfettered by the restrictive norms encoded into commercial media representations of gendered, racialized, and sexualized bodies (Chidgey, Payne, & Zobl, 2009). Feminist zinesters often do the important work of making those encoded norms visible, cutting and pasting dominant images from commercial print media to critique them and offer alternatives, a vital form of countercultural production (Zobl, 2009). Moreover, feminist zinesters’ politics extend beyond content to infuse the production and circulation processes, which typically unfold through alternative economic practices that subvert capitalist marketplace norms and blur the boundaries between producers and consumers (Chidgey, 2009). The democratic exchange and, more recently, the diligent efforts to archive these feminist ephemera have created a vibrant, rhizomatic record of feminist history grounded in the work of grassroots activists and makers, whose extrainstitutional voices are typically underprivileged within dominant discourse (Chidgey, 2013; Eichhorn, 2013). The question remains—why do feminists continue to produce zines? The push-button publishing platforms of Web 2.0 streamlined all of the aforementioned qualities of photocopied and hand-stapled zines; like the zinesters of previous decades, feminists have coopted digital media platforms, especially blogs and Twitter, to create accessible, participatory spaces for alternative expressions, activist communities, and the formation of critical subjectivities. The longevity and, more importantly, the apparent resurgence of zines within U.S. feminism suggest that (DIY) print media, despite their limited circulation, serve a need left unfulfilled and/or potentially exacerbated by the Internet. To date, however, the dynamics between feminist zines and online feminism remain largely underexplored, with the exception of historical analyses situating zines as the precursors to the feminist blogosphere (Keller, 2016; Piepmeier, 2009) and cursory allusions to digital networks’ facilitation of zine production and circulation (Bayerl, 2000). Research that brings digital media and zines into conversation together often polarizes them on opposite sides of the digital/print binary, juxtaposing their respective material compositions instead of tracing the connections forged between them in practice. For example, Alison Piepmeier (Piepmeier, 2008), author of the earliest academic writing on feminist zines, argues that zines “leverage their materiality into a kind of surrogate physical interaction and offer mechanisms for creating meaningful relationships,” producing “embodied communities” (p. 215) in stark contrast to the “disembodied format of electronic media” (p. 224). This material/virtual binary logic, however, dangerously parallels the cyberutopian promise of leaving the body behind, as if sex, gender, sexuality, race, ethnicity, ability, religion, and so on do not reinscribe oppressive power relationships online (Brophy, 2010), a feminist fantasy ruptured by recent high-profile cases of online harassment against women (Hess, 2014). Significantly for this project, the polarization of zines versus blogs also precludes a more nuanced framework that positions zine-making as a feminist practice working in conjunction with digital media, distinct but symbiotic discursive strategies for coping with structures of power that privilege some bodies while marginalizing others within the public sphere. As Piepmeier’s own groundbreaking fieldwork suggests, many feminist zinesters also blog or use other forms of social media, indicating a need to theorize the relationship between digital media and zines. To move toward a more nuanced theory of zines in the digital age, I work from an understanding of media as not simply materials, tools, or texts but as social practices, as habits, techniques, values, and relationships that emerge from the conventions, resources, and needs of a particular cultural context. In his essay, “From Medium to Social Practice,” Raymond Williams (Williams, 1977) argues that a medium is more than the materials of which it is composed. Rather, according to Williams, a medium is a “practice, which has always to be defined as work on a material for a special purpose within certain necessary social conditions” (p. 160). Conceptualizing zines within Williams’s framework of “material social practice” highlights both the material and the social, cultural, political, and economic relationships and conditions, including the broader media environment, which both give rise to and are enacted through zine-making. Nick Couldry’s (Couldry, 2012) “media as practice” framework directs researchers toward a media sociology approach that “is concerned with the specific regularities in our actions related to media and the regularities of context and resources that make certain types of media-related actions possible or impossible, likely or unlikely” (p. 33). Media sociology takes a user-centric approach that identifies what people do with media and the social conventions and needs yielding particular media practices. I draw on such an approach here to understand the full breadth of feminist zinesters’ media practices, each of which stem from particular conditions, foster different relationships, fulfill distinct needs, and act in tandem with other media practices. Rather than opposing digital media against zines on the basis of their materiality, a media-as-practice approach sheds light on their coexistence within a broader repertoire of feminist media tactics. Paralleling the emphatically social nature of the media as practice model, much research on feminist zine-making and online feminism draws on counterpublic theory to frame both practices as performing subversive community-building work (e.g., Keller, 2016; Zobl, 2009). Nancy Fraser’s (Fraser, 1992) critique of the Habermasian public sphere advances the notion of subaltern counterpublics, “parallel discursive arenas where members of subordinated social groups invent and circulate counterdiscourses, which in turn permit them to formulate oppositional interpretations of their identities, interests, and needs” (p. 123). Counterpublics mitigate the many informal impediments restricting marginalized groups’ access to discourse within more mainstream publics while also creating an outlet through which the subaltern might broadcast her claims to broader audiences. Michael Warner’s (Warner, 2002) work highlights the role media texts play in the formation of publics and counterpublics through their circulation and the discursive exchanges they inspire. I draw on Fraser’s and Warner’s work to consider the ways in which feminist print and digital media, through both their production and circulation, bring communities into being. But what particular needs do feminist print and digital media fulfill within today’s feminist counterpublics? Social movement researchers’ struggle to keep up with advances in digital media erases the particular work print media continue to perform within contemporary movements. Barassi’s (Barassi, 2013) ethnographic analysis of the role magazines play among activist organizations in Britain and Spain importantly draws attention to print within the web-centric literature on social movement media. Drawing on anthropological theories of material culture and exchange, Barassi frames activist magazines as “objects of mediation” (p. 138), whose material not only conveys content, but also plays “a fundamental role in the construction of relationships through processes of ownership and exchange” (p. 145). She also notes the interplay between digital and print media, which “do not replace one another, but enable different and at times contrasting communication and social processes” (p. 148) within movements. Barassi’s theorizing of activist material cultures offers a helpful framework for considering the persistent relevance of feminist print media practices in the digital age. Taken together, these three theoretical resources—media practices, counterpublics, and material cultures—provide a robust methodological approach and interpretive framework for exploring the functions feminist zine-making fulfills in the digital age. The media-as-practice framework calls for a user-centric approach to the study of zines, one grounded in practitioners’ own words and experiences, in order to understand why Internet-savvy feminists continue to make and read print media and how print media relate to their digital media tactics. Heeding this call, I describe my interview-based method in the following section. Then, connecting counterpublic theories with the relationships fostered through the exchange of print materials among activists, I consider how my interviewees’ media practices contribute to the feminist goals of community-building and free expression. Ultimately, I argue that feminist zine-making is a digitally networked practice that combines the authenticity and privacy granted through zines’ materiality with the accessibility and reach of online platforms. Method This project stems from a broader ethnographic inquiry into grassroots feminist media making in the city of Philadelphia. As a participant observer, I have worked with a network of feminist collectives whose activism involves the production of both print and digital media. My experiences producing and circulating media alongside these feminist practitioners inspired the research questions motivating this current project: Why do feminists continue to make zines in the digital age? What functions do zines fulfill? How do feminists’ print media practices relate to their digital media practices? Given that both “feminist” and “zine” are highly contested, difficult to define terms, I drew my sample of interviewees from a zine exhibition with an explicit link to feminism—the Philly Feminist Zine Fest (PFZF). Held most recently in June 2014 and distinct from the more general annual Philly Zine Fest, PFZF is one of the three most visible feminist zine exhibitions in the United States, alongside NYC Feminist Zine Fest and Feminist Zine Fest Pittsburgh (Stolen Sharpie Revolution, 2016c). I invited each of the more than 50 PFZF exhibitors listed on the 2014 fest’s website to participate via e-mail. Twelve exhibitors agreed to participate, and I conducted each interview through the medium of the participants’ choosing: via e-mail or face-to-face in a public setting. Table 1 lists the interviewees, their recent zine titles, and the interview format. Two interviewees requested anonymity and appear under pseudonyms in this article; others requested to be referred to by their actual names or their pen names in order to retain attribution for their work. Table 1 Participants Interviewee . Zine titles . Interview format . Adelaide Barton (pen name) I Just Can’t Have This Conversation Anymore; Lady Gardens; Menstrual Cup: A Love Story; Non Monogamy 101, Stop Telling Women To Smile; So You Found Me Running; You Should Know About Zines E-mail Annie Mok No No No: A Guide to Girling Wrong + Mija’s Mirrors: Two Stories; Shadow Manifesto; Worst Behavior + Like a Lighthouse: Two on Creativity and Trauma In-person Christine Stoddard Quail Bell Magazine E-mail Dre Grigoropol Dee’s Dream, She Magazine, Lupa Cachula’s Life E-mail Candice Johnson Permanent Wave Philly In-person Dee (pseudonym) Permanent Wave Philly In-person Jenny (pseudonym) Permanent Wave Philly In-person Katie P. Bennett Sticking Around, Cakes on the Loose: Free Cake for Every Creature’s First Tour, Eating Love: In the Kitchen with Katie & Mom; Kid Katie on the Microcassette In-person Kerri Radley Deafula E-mail Moose Lane (pen name) Don’t Put Trash in my Toilet; Get the Fuck Outside; Stuck; Truck Stops E-mail Nicole Rodrigues Bump-Ins; Cave Royalty; Incognito Jams; Level Up; Nola Travelogues Book; Quake Remains; Watch Over; Which Way? In-person Sky Kalfus Analytical Girl Manifesto In-person Interviewee . Zine titles . Interview format . Adelaide Barton (pen name) I Just Can’t Have This Conversation Anymore; Lady Gardens; Menstrual Cup: A Love Story; Non Monogamy 101, Stop Telling Women To Smile; So You Found Me Running; You Should Know About Zines E-mail Annie Mok No No No: A Guide to Girling Wrong + Mija’s Mirrors: Two Stories; Shadow Manifesto; Worst Behavior + Like a Lighthouse: Two on Creativity and Trauma In-person Christine Stoddard Quail Bell Magazine E-mail Dre Grigoropol Dee’s Dream, She Magazine, Lupa Cachula’s Life E-mail Candice Johnson Permanent Wave Philly In-person Dee (pseudonym) Permanent Wave Philly In-person Jenny (pseudonym) Permanent Wave Philly In-person Katie P. Bennett Sticking Around, Cakes on the Loose: Free Cake for Every Creature’s First Tour, Eating Love: In the Kitchen with Katie & Mom; Kid Katie on the Microcassette In-person Kerri Radley Deafula E-mail Moose Lane (pen name) Don’t Put Trash in my Toilet; Get the Fuck Outside; Stuck; Truck Stops E-mail Nicole Rodrigues Bump-Ins; Cave Royalty; Incognito Jams; Level Up; Nola Travelogues Book; Quake Remains; Watch Over; Which Way? In-person Sky Kalfus Analytical Girl Manifesto In-person Open in new tab Table 1 Participants Interviewee . Zine titles . Interview format . Adelaide Barton (pen name) I Just Can’t Have This Conversation Anymore; Lady Gardens; Menstrual Cup: A Love Story; Non Monogamy 101, Stop Telling Women To Smile; So You Found Me Running; You Should Know About Zines E-mail Annie Mok No No No: A Guide to Girling Wrong + Mija’s Mirrors: Two Stories; Shadow Manifesto; Worst Behavior + Like a Lighthouse: Two on Creativity and Trauma In-person Christine Stoddard Quail Bell Magazine E-mail Dre Grigoropol Dee’s Dream, She Magazine, Lupa Cachula’s Life E-mail Candice Johnson Permanent Wave Philly In-person Dee (pseudonym) Permanent Wave Philly In-person Jenny (pseudonym) Permanent Wave Philly In-person Katie P. Bennett Sticking Around, Cakes on the Loose: Free Cake for Every Creature’s First Tour, Eating Love: In the Kitchen with Katie & Mom; Kid Katie on the Microcassette In-person Kerri Radley Deafula E-mail Moose Lane (pen name) Don’t Put Trash in my Toilet; Get the Fuck Outside; Stuck; Truck Stops E-mail Nicole Rodrigues Bump-Ins; Cave Royalty; Incognito Jams; Level Up; Nola Travelogues Book; Quake Remains; Watch Over; Which Way? In-person Sky Kalfus Analytical Girl Manifesto In-person Interviewee . Zine titles . Interview format . Adelaide Barton (pen name) I Just Can’t Have This Conversation Anymore; Lady Gardens; Menstrual Cup: A Love Story; Non Monogamy 101, Stop Telling Women To Smile; So You Found Me Running; You Should Know About Zines E-mail Annie Mok No No No: A Guide to Girling Wrong + Mija’s Mirrors: Two Stories; Shadow Manifesto; Worst Behavior + Like a Lighthouse: Two on Creativity and Trauma In-person Christine Stoddard Quail Bell Magazine E-mail Dre Grigoropol Dee’s Dream, She Magazine, Lupa Cachula’s Life E-mail Candice Johnson Permanent Wave Philly In-person Dee (pseudonym) Permanent Wave Philly In-person Jenny (pseudonym) Permanent Wave Philly In-person Katie P. Bennett Sticking Around, Cakes on the Loose: Free Cake for Every Creature’s First Tour, Eating Love: In the Kitchen with Katie & Mom; Kid Katie on the Microcassette In-person Kerri Radley Deafula E-mail Moose Lane (pen name) Don’t Put Trash in my Toilet; Get the Fuck Outside; Stuck; Truck Stops E-mail Nicole Rodrigues Bump-Ins; Cave Royalty; Incognito Jams; Level Up; Nola Travelogues Book; Quake Remains; Watch Over; Which Way? In-person Sky Kalfus Analytical Girl Manifesto In-person Open in new tab Interviews were semistructured, with a loose agenda open to participants’ directions and interests, and included questions related to participants’ zinester biographies, motivations for zine-making, processes of zine production and circulation, understanding of zines’ political roles, reach, and efficacy in comparison to and in conjunction with digital networks, and experiences within feminist zine publics. Using NVivo, I coded interview transcripts following Miles and Huberman’s (Miles & Huberman, 1994) two-level qualitative coding scheme: a general etic level of coding including categories related to the three key analytics outlined above (practices, publics, and material cultures) and a specific emic level of coding grounded in participants’ own terminology for describing their experiences. To develop a holistic understanding of participants’ media-making practices, I also analyzed print copies of their zines and, when applicable, zinesters’ websites or online zine shops. Zines as digitally networked feminist practice While zines vary widely in content, genre, aesthetic, size, length, form, and purpose, my interviewees consistently pointed toward fundamental elements and norms signature to zine-making as whole: For these makers, zines are handcrafted, self-published, self-funded, physical ephemera, usually resembling a magazine or book, on any topic that interests the author(s) and can be shared with few or many readers. Moose Lane explained, “What separates zines from other self-publications is a commitment to do-it-yourself ethics (or do-it-together ethics) and the prioritization of the spread of ideas and art over making money” (personal communication, 29 March 2016). While my interviewees’ zines are often explicitly feminist in content, dealing with questions related to gender-based inequities, the zine-making process itself prefigures feminist ideals in ways that mainstream commercial media outlets simply cannot. Christine Stoddard observed that Zines are about as approachable as media-making gets. As long as you have a pen and paper, you can make a zine. If you have access to a copier, you can make multiple copies of it…You can be the writer, artist, and publisher. Because the barrier to entry is low, making zines is very empowering. Anybody can make their voice heard…Traditional media is full of barriers and, historically, those barriers have been less amendable to female creators. Those barriers don’t exist in the zine world. (personal communication, 26 March 2016) Feminist zine-making, in other words, constitutes an alternative media practice, whose production, circulation, and consumption processes eschew marketplace values, democratize access to media outlets, subvert the producer/consumer binary, and foster counterpublic discourse and communities (Sandoval & Fuchs, 2010). As Stoddard and other participants made clear, it is the materiality of zine-making practices—the pen, the paper, and the photocopier—that imbues the humble ephemera with such political affordances. Still, none of my interviewees described turning to zine-making as an act of digital media refusal; rather, the Internet, along with computer software, factors centrally into both the material and social practices of zine production and consumption. Consequently, Moose Lane pointed to the need to trouble the digital/print binary in the discourse surrounding zines: I don’t think it’s an “us versus them,” “digital versus print” debate. Most zinesters do both. Zines are just a different format, just like published books are a different format from zines. As are blogs, Twitter, radio, podcasts, YouTube, public art installations, punk rock bands, newspapers, comic books, etc. They all allow different kinds of expression, in different media, with different levels of exposure and creator-control of content. And moreover, there are different types of communities surrounding each. (personal communication, 29 March 2016) In what follows, I cite my interviewees’ experiences and practices as evidence that feminist zine-makers’ print and digital mode of production, circulation, and consumption work in tandem to produce a particular kind of networked counterpublic, one whose material social practices forge protected but porous boundaries around feminist spaces for free expression. This protected counterpublic fulfills needs for feminists unmet in the broader media landscape and the boundary work invested into its maintenance gestures toward the democratic strengths and shortcomings of both digital and print media. Production As a testament to zines’ accessibility and flexibility, the tools and materials zinesters use to practice their craft range in degree of professionalism, from paper, pens, Sharpies, glue sticks, scissors, and stolen time on the office’s Xerox machine to cardstock, artist-grade inks and paints, silk screens, lithographs, letterpresses, Photoshop, and professional printers. The costs of producing a zine vary along with this range of artistic practices. But while each of my interviewees makes different upfront investments into their zines, taken collectively, their experiences shed light on the strengths of zine-making as medium for feminist discourse. Repeatedly, participants described zines as an outlet for open expression, free of censorship, limitations, and interruptions. “Zines are a medium where it is easy to express ideas without (much) fear of repercussion, or without bending to outside influence,” Moose Lane explained. “This makes it a good medium for feminists to express personal experiences, stories, theories, etc.” (personal communication, 29 March 2016). With the zinester as author, editor, and producer, she subverts the producer/consumer binary and is not beholden to filter her work through the perspectives and expectations of anyone else. This is crucial for contemporary feminists, given, as Fraser (Fraser, 1992) observed, the “informal impediments to participatory parity that can persist even after everyone is formally and legally licensed to participate” (p. 119) within public sphere discourse. Adelaide Barton’s gendered experiences as a woman zinester speak to this: “There’s something about the expression of a zine which doesn’t allow for interruptions. I feel that as a woman, I’ve been socialized to tolerate interruptions, even when it results in me not being able to finish articulating my point” (personal communication, 6 April 2016). The materiality of zines enables this uninterrupted freedom of expression. Zines, unlike digitally mediated expressions, are not easily traceable back to their authors, granting zinesters the option to publish under true anonymity. As Dee, a member of the grassroots feminist collective Permanent Wave Philly, explained, “With zines, you have a little more control than the Internet. Google is a helpful tool, and also a very hurtful tool. There are things that you can write about in zines, various hard things, that you don’t want Google-able, that you don’t want associated with your name” (personal communication, 24 May 2015). Zines, as ephemera, are temporary and potentially anonymous material artifacts, providing zinesters an outlet for deeply personal stories and the freedom to experiment with feminist identities and theories without worrying about damage to their future reputations. Moreover, several of my participants related to Moose Lane’s observation that “Digital media also tends to reward short pieces or snippets, where zines can really be as long as you want” (Moose Lane, personal communication, 29 March 2016). Free from digital surveillance, the capitalist value of fast production and consumption, and the approval or resources of a commercial host, zines offer feminists an unrestricted and unregulated medium for expression. Zine-making, as an accessible DIY media practice that operates outside of both marketplace logic and sociopolitical constraints, enables the invention and circulation of counterdiscourses that might otherwise find no outlet within the commercial media landscape. Almost all of my participants described zines as affording them more authentic, intimate, or personal expressions than other media outlets. According to Kerri Radley, for example, “Digital expression is much looser and less controlled, more exhibitionist and a curated expression of the self. Zines are more intimate and truer to the self” (personal communication, 19 April 2016). The unfiltered, slow, and low-risk process of zine production lends itself to personal meditations one might not otherwise share publicly. As Candice Johnson, a Permanent Wave Philly member, explained, the materiality of zines also offers a degree of personalization not readily accessible through digital platforms: “There’s more of a human imprint on a zine, because you can see the way that they chose to type it and design it, whether it’s collage or there’s doodles and drawings and stuff. It feels personal, and its tangible, so you can have it and refer back to it and keep it in a collection” (personal communication, 24 May 2015). The topics considered across my interviewees’ zines attest to the medium’s intimate nature: personal experiences with street harassment, disability, sexism in academia, menstruation, sexual health, gender identity, familial relationships, trauma, and more all find an outlet in their handcrafted booklets. In addition to sharing stories from their personal lives, some participants also found zines to be a productive space for social critique via representation. Confirming previous research, contemporary feminist zinesters continue to use the medium to represent bodies and subjectivities excluded from dominant discourse or commercial media. Moose Lane’s zine series, Get the Fuck Outside (GTFO), focuses on exploring the great outdoors and represents a diversity of characters in the process: “The illustrations in GTFO are centered around ladyfolk, though the content is for anyone. I do this deliberately because, socially, men tend to have easier access to the outdoors, either due to social expectations growing up, or due to perceived dangers for women of traveling alone in remote places” (personal communication, 29 March 2016). Generating visibility through alternative media representation is especially important to Kerri Radley, whose zine, Deafula, shares her experiences navigating the world as a deaf woman: Deafula has garnered a wider reach than I ever expected or thought possible, reaching into the thousands annually. Given how near and dear the topics I cover in Deafula are to my heart, and how important it is to me to increase visibility for deaf and disabled folks, my zine having reach is meaningful to me. (personal communication, 19 April 2016) While a commercial outlet, such as a corporately owned social media platform or an advertiser-supporter glossy magazine, would undoubtedly provide feminist zinesters with greater visibility, their DIY ethics prioritize what many of my interviewees referred to as “personal impact” over readership numbers. Christine Stoddard, who runs a popular online magazine that generates ad revenue, also makes zines in small runs, producing no more than 100 copies of a single title. “I’m not looking to communicate en masse with a zine,” Stoddard said, “that’s what the Internet is for. I’m looking to make that personal impact, to give someone a print artifact to cherish and remember” (personal communication, 6 April 2016). Moose Lane, who also publishes work on a Tumblr blog, expressed a similar sentiment: I’m on Tumblr, and I post a lot of art there, as well as reblog puns and cat pictures. A lot of what I post isn’t all that personal, and the stuff that is feels like shouting into the void. Sometimes, that’s what I want—self-expression without examination or response. But I don’t use zines in the same way. (personal communication, 29 March 2016) Zines’ materiality also makes the texts inherently scarce and, as Adelaide Barton explains in her zine, You Should Know About Zines [emphasis added], “not easy to spam, so folks are more likely to actually read them and consider what they have to say” (Adelaide Barton, personal communication, 6 April 2016). Other interviewees also framed zines as objects of mediation that, in comparison to digital media, foster more authentic relationships between makers and readers: So much web content is meant to be consumed quickly. People usually are clicking around too much to really focus on any single piece for too long. Zines require a longer time commitment. They engross you in a way that most web content does not. That alone can impact the reader very personally and make your message resonate with that person for years to come. (Christine Stoddard, personal communication, 26 March 2016) Feminist zinesters do not describe their goals in marketplace terms, but instead, in terms of inter- and intrapersonal connections. Feminist zines call a counterpublic into being that legitimizes the intimate politics of everyday life through discursive representations and fosters deep, rather than far-reaching but fast, engagement through uninterrupted expression. Zines’ material nature combined with the DIY ethics behind their production is crucial to these processes. Circulation and consumption But how do feminist zinesters connect readers with their content in order to foster these counterpublic bonds? While zines’ materiality provide feminist makers with a wide range of political affordances, the countercultural paper-based goods have an intrinsically limited reach, making the accessible DIY practice ironically inaccessible to readers not yet acquainted with the zine world. Several of my participants, though passionate about zine-making, expressed some cynicism about the degree of countercultural capital that, since their inception, has been required to access zines. Stephen Duncombe (Duncombe, 2008) documents the history of zinesters’ potentially exclusive countercultural circulation practices. During the 1980s and 1990s, makers mailed their zines to Factsheet Five (F5), itself a handmade periodical regularly published by future computer programmer Mike Gunderloy, for review. Never turning down a request for a review, F5 grew to catalog thousands of zines and their creators’ mailing addresses with each issue. In the decades prior to e-mail and social media, F5 became a vital network hub for zinesters and readers. As Duncombe argues, however, most F5 subscribers were already producing and consuming zines, and the periodical simply gave shape to what he calls a pre-existing, “self-ghettoized” (p. 176) unsustainable, and even “elitist” (p. 174) underground network. This is especially problematic given that many zinesters are not inspired to start making zines until they get their hands on someone else’s self-published work (Piepmeier, 2008); repeatedly in interviews, feminist zinesters reported that it was a serendipitous first encounter with zines in an offbeat bookstore, a public library, or a classroom that sparked their zine-making careers. Digital media have democratized access to zines and, as several interviewees speculated, may have much to do with zines’ apparent resurgence. Christine Stoddard reported that “the Internet has made it so much easier to discover new titles and zine festivals” (personal communication, 26 March 2016). In contrast to the underground F5, mainstream social media platforms have become central to feminist zinesters’ circulation practices. While, true to their roots, interviewees reported selling zines at alternative bookstores, 10 out of 12 interviewees also sell their zines online, through their own personal websites or through shops on Etsy, a popular craft website that attracts approximately 170 million visitors per month (SimilarWeb, 2016). Others send their zines to distros, who sell and ship zinesters’ work, almost always through an online store, to readers for a portion of the cover price. All interviewees have blogs linked to their zine projects, usually hosted on Tumblr, which has garnered a reputation as a platform for leftist “social justice warriors” (Brandt & Kizer, 2015). Importantly for the zine community as a whole, social media have also facilitated what my interviewees described as the recent surge in zine festivals. While, like all aspects of zine culture, the history of zine fests has not been well documented, interviewees suggested that these exhibits and pop-up shops, often hosted in community centers and open to zinesters who pay small tabling fees, are a recent phenomenon. “I have seen more zine fests pop up in the last half-decade and many more are continuing to go strong,” Moose Lane observed, suggesting parallels between the rise of zine fests and the development of Web 2.0 (personal communication, 29 March 2016). For my interviewees, modern-day zine-making is a material social practice channeled in large part through digital media, mirroring the structure of what danah boyd (boyd, 2008) called networked publics, or “spaces and audiences that are bound together through technological networks” (p. 125). Feminist zinesters, readers, and newcomers to the zine world use digital media to facilitate interactions online and face-to-face. While Factsheet Five, the once-primary resource for circulating zines, “ghettoized” (to use [Duncombe, 2008] terminology) zine discourse, social media platforms have contributed to what Rauch (Rauch, 2015) calls “a converged media environment” (p. 126), blurring the boundary separating zinesters’ alternative discourse from the mainstream. Nonetheless, the boundary remains, and feminist zine communities, while networked, are counterpublics, purposefully formed in juxtaposition to wider publics, whose formal and informal impediments marginalize the discourse of women, trans* and queer folks, and people of color. The boundary encompassing feminist zine counterpublics, while made permeable via digital networks, is protected through many zinesters’ strict policies against scanning and publishing their zines online. Kerri Radley, for example, never shares digital copies of her zines: I’m a firm believer in my zines remaining in physical form and on paper only and I do not allow any of my zines to be digitally archived…Even though I can never truly 100% control what happens to my zines or their content, keeping them out of the digital sphere does allow me better control over what happens to my writing—where it’s shared, who it’s shared with, who it’s attributed to, and who makes money off of it. (personal communication, 19 April 2016) In addition to this desire to maintain control over the dissemination of their work, interviewees also reported that their zines lose value once published online: “Once something is freely accessible online, the majority of folks who want to read it will not pay for it. I feel that making my content available digitally to the masses will make it immediately less valuable by 95%” (Adelaide Barton, personal communication, 6 April 2016). Feminist zines, as a material social practice that often involves the sharing of personal experiences and politics typically silenced in wider publics, are valuable and, as such, require a certain degree of protection. To ensure this, most of my interviewees only make their zine content available to those who take the steps necessary to acquire physical copies, through online shops or in-person festivals. Anyone interested in a feminist zinester’s work is likely to be granted access, as zines, following DIY ethics, are often made available at low prices, on a sliding scale, or for barter or trade, but the reader must first invest energy into obtaining a copy of her work. Feminist zinesters merge digital and print media practices to cultivate a distributive communication structure (Rentschler, 2015), forging network ties with new readers, maintaining relationships with existing readers, and connecting with one another. Digital networks, then, constitute a boundary space between zine-makers and readers, providing entry to the feminist zine counterpublic, but not immediate access to feminist zines, themselves. In contrast to feminist zinesters’ practices, existing research on alternative media suggests that activists should aim to produce highly visible discourse that engages directly with political opponents. Sandoval and Fuchs (Sandoval & Fuchs, 2010), for example, argue that “the success of alternative media depends on their ability to gain public visibility for their critical media content…to do more than to ‘preach to the converted,’ they have to try to increase their public visibility and to attract as many recipients as possible” (p. 148). Reaching wide audiences and preaching to the unconverted, however, are not the primary purposes that zines fulfill within feminists’ repertoire of media practices; like Christine Stoddard said, “that’s what the Internet is for.” Rather, in conceptualizing feminist zines as networked counterpublics, it is important to keep in mind Kearney’s (Kearney, 2006) reminder that networks not only extend outward to broadcast media messages, but can also draw people inward, together, for community-building purposes. This latter function of networks maps on to Fraser’s (Fraser, 1992) argument that counterpublics, in addition to offering “training grounds for agitational activities directed toward wider publics,” also “function as spaces of withdrawal and regroupment” (p. 124) for marginalized individuals alienated from one another within wider publics. Several of my interviewees suggested that, given the politics behind the DIY ethics that inform zine production and circulation, people who show an interest in reading zines are likely to share at least some of their makers’ political values: “The zine community, for the most part, is such a welcoming and supportive space, that it makes sense that feminists have been drawn to the medium,” Kerri Radley explained. “It’s a space that is generally safer, one in which they have a voice and can be heard” (personal communication, 19 April 2016). The feminist zine counterpublic, in other words, is a space for engaging with fellow converts, who share similar experiences and politics, whereas, for my participants, digital feminist counterpublics offer spaces for planning and executing broader outreach. As boundary spaces, digital networks democratize access to zines, while also throwing in sharp relief the democratic failures of the Internet for feminist political engagement. Digital networks may be crucial to feminist zine-makers’ and readers’ circulation and consumption practices, but zinesters’ refusal to share content online indicates that zines offer particular political affordances unavailable online. This has implications for the democratic and feminist politics of the Internet. In addition to the previously mentioned strengths of zines as a medium for feminist expression, the difficulty to “troll” or harass zinesters factored centrally into my participants’ turn to zine-making and refusal to publish zine content online. It is precisely zines’ intrinsically limited audience that makes the genre so attractive to feminists in an age where reaching large audiences is easier than ever, but often comes at the cost of harassment, violent threats, and hate speech. In Adelaide Barton’s experience, “Zines don’t really provide a platform for abusive comment sections. Anyone who wants to harass a feminist zine-maker must put in more effort to do so, and do so in a way that is not immediately attached to their zine” (personal communication, 6 April 2016). Moreover, as Moose Lane observed, zine communities also take steps to create productive discursive spaces free of harassment: “In the Internet era, zines are also a place much freer of harassment than online feminist spaces. Most zine fests have safer space policies, and most of the rabid misogynists/transphobes/homophobes/racists/etc. you meet online don’t read zines” (personal communication, 29 March 2016). If, as Williams (Williams, 1977) and Couldry (Couldry, 2012) argue, media are practices that emerge in response to users’ needs within a particular context, zine-making practices supplement feminists’ digital media repertoire with a networked counterpublic free of the harassment and vitriol that has characterized web 2.0 platforms. Zines’ resurgence comes at a time when feminists are seeking alternatives to digital media platforms, where violent threats and hate speech continue to suppress marginalized voices. Conclusion Christine Stoddard, a feminist media maker whose practices bridge the presumed gap between digital and print, reflected on her decade as both a highly successful blogger and zinester in an interview: I still remember zines I read when I was 14. There’s not much web content I remember from that age. I love that people will pick up a Quail Bell zine that’s three or four years old and send me an e-mail or even write me a letter about how much it made them think or feel. Touching people’s minds and hearts is how you begin to build communities. (personal communication, 26 March 2016) Drawing on the experiences of 12 U.S.-based feminist zinesters, I have explored the political affordances of zines as a material social practice whose personal touches foster deep and authentic connections between makers and readers. Digital media, I argue, enable these points of contact, as zinesters and their readers connect through social media, online shops, and digitally organized and promoted zine fests. Given this, zines and digital media should not be seen as materially polarized outlets on opposite sides of the digital/print binary, but as practices with distinct yet symbiotic advantages working in tandem within a broader repertoire of feminist media tactics. Feminist zines, as practices that bridge print and digital media outlets for marginalized voices, constitute a networked counterpublic. The Internet serves as a porous boundary space around this counterpublic, simultaneously providing access to the zine world while also protecting feminist discourse, since many zinesters refuse to publish zine content online. The boundary work invested into the maintenance of this networked but protected counterpublic sheds light on the limitations of the Internet as a space for feminist discourse and democratic participation. Among the many benefits that stem from zines’ materiality, interviewees reported that freedom from harassment at the hands of online “trolls” is the most important contribution zines make to feminist media praxis. While the words of my participants no doubt underscore the continued significance of zines, they also offer an opportunity for critical reflection on marginalized users’ experiences online and the political constraints and challenges facing digitally networked feminism. Analyzing online feminism and feminist zines as two practices that coexist within the repertoire of contemporary feminist media tactics sheds light on the political affordances of each medium, which productively compliment one another. Although social media may constitute the most visible activist media tactics, future research should draw on ethnographic methods and take user-centric approaches to trace the full breadth and complexity of feminists’ media practices. Research that destabilizes web centrism within social movement scholarship leads the way toward more nuanced theorizing at the intersection of media and activism. Acknowledgments I am deeply grateful to the twelve feminist zinesters who generously shared their passion, work, and experiences with me. I would also like to thank Victor Pickard, Guobin Yang, and Jessa Lingel as well as the two anonymous reviewers for their feedback on early drafts of this article. References Banet-Weiser , S . ( 2015 , 21 January). 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TI - Feminist Ephemera in a Digital World: Theorizing Zines as Networked Feminist Practice
JO - Communication Culture and Critique
DO - 10.1111/cccr.12172
DA - 2017-12-01
UR - https://www.deepdyve.com/lp/oxford-university-press/feminist-ephemera-in-a-digital-world-theorizing-zines-as-networked-yVi2FS0h06
SP - 557
VL - 10
IS - 4
DP - DeepDyve
ER -