Owning the Means of Publication: Zine Making & The Radical Possibilities of Publishing

Abstract

This hands-on workshop will guide participants through making their own zine as an exploration of agency in publishing. As commercial publishing systems have concentrated control of production, they have gained increasing power over who can publish, what, how, where and when. The open access movement has wrested some control back, with open source tools enabling academic communities to pursue their own publishing activities, but there remains much potential to explore in other forms of DIY publishing. With simply a pen and paper, workshop attendees will experiment with an iconic form of publishing and learn about others that they can leverage to contribute to how we grow and share our collective knowledge.

Contemporary publishing systems are rightly maligned as sites of gatekeeping and extraction, especially those oriented towards research dissemination and education. The major commercial publishers ride each wave of technological advancement to consolidate their control of the landscape and narrow the pathways into it, with little regard, and arguably contempt for the myriad ways of knowing and sharing that enrich our collective knowledge. While correct in their assessments, critics too often conflate the practices of today’s publishing industry with the value of publishing and publishers themselves. Yet publishing has a centuries long legacy as a site for radical imagination and revolutionary action, from the pamphlet culture of the 16th century to the zine making punks of the 1970s, to today’s queer, BIPOC and other marginalised communities publishing online. When publishing technologies are in the hands of community creators they are a powerful tool for change.

In the context of these radical histories, this workshop will invite participants to imagine a next revolution in how we share what we know, with active discussion of the possibilities and implications for scholarly publishing at large. Participants will be guided through a simple process to create their own zine while reflecting on the theme of self-determination for knowledge-producing communities, learning a replicable skill and being inspired to consider alternative methods of communication. Their resulting zines can be copied, exchanged and shared to engage others in their thinking. They will also be introduced to a handful of easy-to-use digital tools that they can adopt into their own practices as educators, researchers and advocates.