MARCH 17, 2017 – FROM HERE TO THERE AND BACK AGAIN...
This week’s zine is #8 in the sample: “From Here To There And Back Again…” Published in August of 2005 out of Denver, Colorado. Throughout the zine, our one-named author, Shannon, details her experiences with love, gender, sexuality, body image, race, violence, and consent in intimate accounts and retellings. The zine is composed entirely of Shannon’s personal writing and reads, at times, much like a diary.
Shannon writes in the introduction that the “zine started out about [their] four months in Amsterdam and became about [their] body.” Although this issue is not entirely addressed – Shannon simply notes that they are “not sure how [it] happened” – it reflects the core principle of the writing within: that our experiences have implications on our identities, and that those implications are deeply intertwined with politics and socialization. Shannon may have begun to write about their time in Amsterdam, but those experiences, as we learn throughout the zine, impacted them in ways that needed to be teased out and unknotted… and what a better way to do that than through a zine?!
“From Here To There And Back Again…” has provided such wonderful insight into some awesome rhetorical and discursive representational tactics. Here are some of my favorites:
Real Life Events. Many zine authors, including Shannon, often take up ample space in their zines to document, analyze, or simply share a “real life event,” an experience of their everyday lives. Shannon shares moments of personal intimacy with a lover, of attending Camp Trans outside the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival, and of a frightening and violent experience in Amsterdam. The rhetorical move to share these experiences of day-to-day life is unprecedented in most other media forms. And despite the mundane nature of many of these accounts (though some are certainly anything but), they serve the important purpose of connecting the political – the socialization, the reinforcement of identity binaries, the oppression – to the personal. The idea that the personal is political is engrained in feminist theory and methodology, to see it enacted so easily is breathtaking.
Engaging Duality. The notion of engaging duality first appeared in “From Here To There And Back Again…”, but is has since come up in many of the other zines in my sample. Engaging Duality occurs anytime an author presents two conflicting, hypocritical and/or opposite ideas or thoughts within close proximity to one another (usually within the same page). For example, in Shannon’s introduction to the zine, they write mostly about feeling unsure about the final product, about feeling as if they left pieces out, about feeling selfish for writing so much about their “own shit.” However, situated in the margin of the page is what appears to be a photo strip of Shannon in a photobooth, making funny faces. The photos sit in direct contrast with the mood of the text. In engaging this “duality,” Shannon is able to land someplace else, not entirely conflicted, not entirely carefree. This other place might be between the two feelings, or somewhere else entirely. For this reason, engaging duality is an exciting rhetorical tactic that visualizes an idea of the “third space.”
(Re)Inventing Language. (Re)inventing language is one of many “(re)actions” I have found in my zine sample. The core concept of (re)inventing language is the creation of new language, or the use of existing language in ways that enable new understandings and definitions. As a great example of the (re)invention of language, Shannon writes a lot about their struggles with their body image. In this, they utilize the phrase “coming out” to describe moments when they are physically intimate and vulnerable with other people. Although they “wonder about this language appropriating [their] own queerness to talk about [their body],” they note that “it feels so right,” that using this language allows them to “name the pain and fear of rejection.” In this discourse, Shannon has co-opted “coming out,” a phrase typically reserved for the moment when non-heterosexual individuals disclose their identity to others, and has redefined it to reflect moments when we fear rejection. In this (re)invention of language, Shannon is able to expose why typical notions of coming out need to be more critically analyzed, realizing that they are reflections of larger social issues.
“From Here To There And Back Again…” is a truly beautiful and inspiring zine. The true potential for zines to connect, to shed emotion, and to engage catharsis is unleashed amongst the pages. Have a box of tissues nearby if you read this zine, but definitely read it.