Zines in Third Space: Radical Cooperation and Borderlands Rhetoric

by Adela C. Licona

Develops third-space theory by engaging with zines produced by feminists and queers of color.

Zines in Third Space develops third-space theory with a practical engagement in the subcultural space of zines as alternative media produced specifically by feminists and queers of color. Adela C. Licona explores how borderlands rhetorics function in feminist and queer of-color zines to challenge dominant knowledges as well as normativitizing mis/representations. Licona characterizes these zines as third-space sites of borderlands rhetorics revealing dissident performances, disruptive rhetorical acts, and coalitions that effect new cultural, political, economic, and sexual configurations.

“Zines in Third Space throws light upon an important and often neglected space of alternative culture by looking at the media generated by people of color, who both use the subcultural media to explore and articulate their ideas and lives in a way they feel cannot be done through more mainstream channels, yet also understand (and articulate) the ways in which the white, middle-class dominated subcultures create new sets of constraints and limitations. Within subcultural studies, and media studies in general, this is a critical area of study. The author knows the world of which she speaks.” — Stephen Duncombe, author of Notes from Underground: Zines and the Politics of Alternative Culture

207 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 2012

Reviews

[Jason · Rating 4 out of 5]

Licona articulates a theory of third space through hermeneutical readings of zines from the 1990s (obtained primarily through Duke’s special collections). She borrows heavily from Gloria Anzaldúa to articulate how zines make use of “borderlands rhetorics” -- discursive and visual rhetorical innovations from everyday lives -- that circulate in a third space, “a space that materializes what borders serve to divide, subordinate, and obscure.” These rhetorics operate within a politics of articulation (i.e. identity as becoming, knowing, etc. rather than essential) by parlaying “e-motion” (anger and love) to action, appropriating texts and images for “reverso” (reversals or refractions of normative gazes), reclaiming histories, “queer-y-ing” via “the creative and critical inquiry and class-consciousness performed in many third-space zines” (100), questioning expert voices, and otherwise using material rhetorics to “break from the tyranny of alienating practices and the power of normativating discourses” (59). They seek to imagine a different way of knowing and being and use those images to cultivate a coalitional consciousness that builds solidarity across difference in the name of social justice. Although Licona considers zines an “oppositional technology” that subverts traditional networks and protocols of publishing (as “[t]hey do not wait for permission or acceptance to write”), because nearly all of her samples come from the 1990s, she is unable to consider a more current understanding of print culture in the digital age. That is, she often makes use of terms like "circulation" while employing a more traditional hermeneutical analysis of them, limiting a more contemporary understanding of third-space zines (such as those circulated by the POC Zine Project, to give one example). Still, her discussion of third-space theory and borderlands rhetorics provide us with a more specific understanding counterpublics and how they form.

[Meli Muniz · Rating 4 out of 5]

soooo gooooood