The “zine;” what is it? What’s it for? Trite questions, to be sure. Janice Radway’s presentation, "Zines: Then & Now" and the zines’ role in grrl culture, was not so much concerned with answering the questions, instead choosing to pose the inquiry over and over again in compoundingly confusing ways.
It was hot and crowded in there, at 4pm in Union 212; several servicey tipsters pointed out that, as part of their ongoing asault on fun, womens’ studies majors showed up at Radway’s lecture for class credit. The more the merrier!
Her lecture, nominally about something fun and zany, immediately descended into a turgid academic tarpit. "Zining is nothing if not generative." "Zines were involved quite literally in the practice of utopian social construction." "The self constructed within the zine is an intersubjective self."
At first I was afraid; I was petrified. Well, I was anxious. There was barely any time to write this stuff down, let alone take a second and contemplate wtf she just said. But maybe you’re not supposed to. Maybe you’re just supposed to sit back and let the lecturer’s dodecasyllabic prose colonise your mind, coil around your neurons until you’re a theory drone worshipping the Hive Queen. As the minutes ticked by, it felt like my theory-induced trance was indeed bringing me closer and closer to a useful truth: Go to sleep, you’re not actually missing much.
A trite criticism, to be sure. Professor James Machor, at the reception, pointed out that this is necessary of academic work, this translation of ‘low culture’ into ‘high culture.’ Fine and dandy, but this feels kinda pervey and voyeuristic, like a tourist lost on the wrong side of town. The translation robs the zine (and any underground culture) of an essential element: it’s zingy voice, its undergroundey soul. Without capturing this, any attempt to convey wtf a zine is will falsify its findings.
What were the findings?
1. Riot grrls.
2. "Zining is nothing if not generative." People read a zine and react by making another zine. Kind of like blogging.
3. "MySpace and Friendster are very interesting permutations of wht zines were about."
4. The social activity of circulation and citation is at least as important to zining as the material, reified zine. Kind of like life.
5. Zinesters are primarily upper-middle class white kids. Like hippies! And hipsters! And hip-ocrites (see what I did there?)!
Later, Professor Machor asked me what I thought of a so-called progressive, underground movement being confined to said demographic (whites). I’m sure he meant well, but I had other things to think about. Like what’s going up on my next ZineSpaceBookster!
