An entire book could and should be devoted to the influential sensibility showcased in Fag Rag. (7)

Hmmmm…

Moore, Patrick. Beyond Shame: Reclaiming the Abandoned History of Radical Gay Sexuality. Boston: Beacon Press, 2004.

Brouwer, Daniel. “Counterpublicity and Corporeality in HIV/AIDS Zines.” Critical Studies in Media Communication 22.5 (Dec. 2005): 351-371.

Does this mean that we have constituted ourselves as, in the words of a detractor, “the School of Resentment”? Not at all: we are, if anything, rather inclined to piety. Nonetheless, any attempt at interpretation, as distinct form worship, bears a certain inescapable tinge of aggression, however much it is qualified by admiration and empathy. Where traditional “close readings” tended to build toward an intensified sense of wondering admiration, linked to the celebration of genius, new historicist readings are more often skeptical, wary, demystifying, critical, and even adversarial. This hermeneutical aggression was initially reinforced for many of us by the ideology critique that played a central role in the Marxist theories in which we were steeped, but, as we were from the beginning uncomfortable with such key concepts as superstructure and base or imputed class consciousness, we have found ourselves, as we will discuss at some length in this book, slowly forced to transform the notion of ideology critique into discourse analysis. Moreover, no matter how thoroughgoing our skepticism, we have never given up or turned our backs on the deep gratification that draws us in the first place to the study of literature and art. Our project has never been about diminishing or belittling the power of artistic representations, even those with the most problematic entailments, but we never believe that our appreciation of this power necessitates either ignoring the cultural matrix out of which the representations emerge or uncritically endorsing the fantasies that the representations articulate. (8-9)

Gallagher, Catherine, and Stephen Greenblatt. Practicing New Historicism. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2000.

The Davis archives are amazing. Once they get everything archived, they’ll have the largest LGBT archives in the country. I was particularly interested in their radical 1970s zine collection, particularly Fag Rag (out of Boston), but also Gay Sunshine (out of San Francisco) and a few others. I’m not sure if Fag Rag or any of the queer rags from the 70s described themselves as zines per se, but they fit the bill.

Raina Lee, publisher of the zine 1-Up, describes zines in the bookWhatcha Mean, What’s a Zine? The Art of Making Zines and Mini-Comics:

Zines to me became an instantaneous paper rebellion. Anyone with a pen, paper, and impassioned thought could make one, rich, poor, skilled, or not. Zines are for people with something to say, right now. Zines are for people who don’t see themselves represented in mainstream media or disagree about what is being said. Zines are for those who go beyond conventional writing and opt for a melody of word and pictures, vision and thought – cut out, glued, photocopied, and all stapled together. (16)

Lee’s description gets at the multiple ways in which zines can look and act (messy or neat, a mixture of media), but also shows a limited view of them (they don’t have to be cut out, glued, or stapled). But, overall, I think it’s a pretty good description.

I’ve been reading zines since I was 17, and doing one of my own since I was 22 (starting about a year before I began blogging), though, like most zinesters, I’d like to publish my zine more often and regularly. The way zines and blogs work are somewhat similar, as I hinted at in Lisa Ede and my talk at the New Research Summit last year. They both are often about advocating for an individual’s or group’s voice, both are often written about in revolutionary terms, and both are a bit DIY (do-it-yourself). Also, and perhaps key, they both usually lack polishing and have multiple modes of communication (drawing, sketches, paintings, essays, poems, rants, letters, pictures, comics, etc.).

Lee, Raina. “A Personal History of Zines.” Whatcha Mean, What’s a Zine? The Art of Making Zines and Mini-Comics. Mark Todd and Esther Pearl Watson. Boston: Graphia, 2006. 16-18.