Adela C. Licona - Zines in Third Space (2013)

Zines in Third Space
Zines in Third Space

Radical Cooperation
and Borderlands Rhetoric
ADELA C. LICONA
Cover credit: I am grateful to Tyrell Haberkorn of Rubyfruit Manifesto, Helen Luu
of How to Stage a Coup, Nadia Khastagir and Design Action, and Jamie A. Lee of
visionaries filmworks for the images and design of the front cover.
I need to acknowledge that earlier versions of excerpts from chapters in my book

appeared as essays in the National Women’s Studies Association Journal in 2005 and in
Nóesis: Revista de Ciencias Sociales y Humanidades in 2007.
Published by State University of New York Press, Albany
© 2012 State University of New York
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever

without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system
or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic, electrostatic,
magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise
without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.
For information, contact State University of New York Press, Albany, NY

www.sunypress.edu
Production by Kelli W. LeRoux

Marketing by Kate McDonnell
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Licona, Adela C.  
Zines in third space : radical cooperation and borderlands rhetoric / Adela Licona.  
p. cm.  
Includes bibliographical references and index.  
ISBN 978-1-4384-4371-3 (hardcover : alk. paper)  
1. Zines. 2. Third-wave feminism. 3. Communication—Social aspects.
4. Race relations. 5. Gender identity. 6. Social justice. I. Title.
PN4878.3.L47 2012
791.43'6552—dc23 2011044030
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
For my father, who did not finish high school but had a self‑proclaimed
PhD in life, and who inspired my respect and admiration for public
intellectuals. In recognition of his love for life and language, which
was evidenced most poignantly at the end of his life through his Lake
Obregon epistolaries.
For my mother, whose steady—slow and steady—ways have fortified me
and have ultimately given me grit.
For my daughters, mis tesoros, Sophia and Aida, whose joyful and
playful wisdom made the journey always sweeter and lighter, and whose
wholehearted trust in me along the way helped me to learn to trust
myself.
Para mis herman@s—For Miguel Mario, who encouraged me to return to
graduate school, listened to The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance with me on
our shared commutes to grad school, and shared long conversations with
me about the promises of radical pedagogies and the perils of hegemony
(a word we delighted in learning to pronounce and understand and one
that was banned for a while from our family gatherings). For Memo,
who shared his haven on the mountaintop, in the summer of 2010, as a
writing refuge. For Carlos and Wanda, who set up a makeshift podium in
their cocina and listened to parts of this manuscript even though much
of it is not their cup of tea. For Herli, for reading versions of chapters
carefully and listening deeply throughout this process. And for Elisa, who
always simply believed.
For Jamie, whose deep respect for the value of the everyday stories of our
lives inspires me, whose quirk and curiosity delights me, who is so very
sweet to open my eyes to each morning, and whose kindness cultivates a
home space that I always want to come home to.
Contents
List of Illustrations ix
Acknowledgments for the Gifts of Knowledge xi
Chapter 1
Borderlands Rhetorics and Third‑Space Sites 1
Recognizing Borderlands Rhetorics in Zines as
Third‑Space Sites 4
Borderlands Peregrinations: Traveling beyond Borders
and Binaries into Third Space 11
Third‑Space Imaginary, Coalitional Consciousness, and Zines 16
Reading, Writing, and Re‑presenting as Potentially
Transformational Practices 19
Exploring Third‑Space Zines and the Chapters to Follow 20
Chapter 2
The Role of Imagination in Challenging Everyday Dominations:
Articulation at Work in Producing Antiracist and Egalitarian
Social Agendas 27
Community Scribes: Lived and Relational Knowledges
and Community Literacies 45
Code Switching and the Identification of One An‑Other 51
Academic and Nonacademic Third‑Space Sites of The Politics
and Practices of Articulation 59
Chapter 3
Embodied Intersections: Reconsidering Subject Formation
beyond Binary Borders 65
Reversals and Refractions: Shattering the Normal(izing) Gaze 70
R E V E R S O: Re‑Views and Re‑Considerations 72
viii / Contents
Embodied Resistance and Coalitional Subjectivity 86

Embodied Knowledge as Practice and Power 94
Chapter 4
Queer‑y‑ing Consumption and Production: Critical Inquiries
and Third‑Space Subversions 99
Reconfiguring the Objects and Subjects of Consumption
and Production: Brrls in the Material World 102
Queer‑y‑ing Corporatized Knowledges: Revised Practices of
Consumption and Production 113
Queer‑y‑ing Histories: Dissident Performances and Discourses 115
Re‑configuring Relations and Imagining Alternatives 121
Queer‑y‑ing the Cycles of Production and Consumption:
Third‑Space Thrifting, Second‑Order Consumption,
and Trades 126
The Re(in)Formed and Conscientious Consumer and Producer 129
Chapter 5
Epilogue: Third‑Space Theory and Borderlands Rhetorics 131
Applied Theory and the Everyday 133
Third‑Space Peregrinations and Lived Borderlands Rhetorics 135
Why Zines/Why Now: Unleashing Radical (Rhetorical)
Third‑Space Potentials 136
Entremundista: Third‑Space Navigations and Zines as
Familiar Terrain 138
Notes 141
Works Cited 171
Index 185
Illustrations
2.1 “she is always and never the same”—from Rubyfruit

Manifesto #2, edited by Tyrell Haberkorn 29
2.2 “think about it”—from Rubyfruit Manifesto #2, edited by

Tyrell Haberkorn 29
2.3 Cover of HOW TO STAGE A COUP: an insurrection of the

underground liberation army, from HOW TO STAGE A COUP,
edited by Helen Luu 35
2.4 “HerBaL aLLIes FOR crazy Grls”—from Bamboo Girl #11,

edited by Sabrina Margarita Sandata 37
2.5 “NO RACIST SCAPEGOATING”—from Bamboo Girl #11,

edited by Sabrina Margarita Sandata, and Design Active
Collective, illustrator 39
2.6 “NOT IN OUR NAME”—from Bamboo Girl #11, edited by

Sabrina Margarita Sandata, and Favianna Rodriguez, illustrator 39
2.7 “Bamboo Girl”—from Bamboo Girl #11, edited by

Sabrina Margarita Sandata 43
2.8 “Listen Up! ¡Escuchan!”—from Calico, #5 52
2.9 “. . . YOU’RE GOING TO HAVE TO FIGHT ME FIRST”—

from ¡Mamasita!, Issue One, edited by Bianca Ortiz 53
ix
x / List of Illustrations
3.1 “WE ARE NOT A MONOCHROMATIC PEOPLE”—

from Borderlands: Tales from Disputed Territories Between
Races and Cultures, edited by Nia King 69
3.2 Cover depicting a river crossing—from Apoyo, edited by

Cindy Crabb, and Cristy C. Road, illustrator 75
3.3 “Self-portrait in Black & White”—from Borderlands,

edited by Nia King, and Emily Leach, illustrator 79
3.4 “PELA, SKIN, NARIZ, TALK”—from Borderlands,

edited by Nia King, and Luisa Zamora, illustrator 80
3.5 “kill the image that is killing you”—from Housewife

Turned Assassin!, Numero #1, edited by Dani and Sisi 87
3.6 “WE ARE NOT THE ENEMY”—from Bamboo Girl #11,

edited by Sabrina Margarita Sandata, and Favianna Rodriguez,
illustrator 90
3.7 “JUSTICE NOT VENGEANCE”—from Bamboo Girl #11,

edited by Sabrina Margarita Sandata, and Inkworks Press,
illustrator 90
3.8 “Fight Sizeism”—from Tater Taught #1, edited by Emily Barber 91
4.1 “Boy? Girl? Brrl.”—from Pirate Jenny (vol. 1, #4), edited by

P.J. Goodman 105
4.2 “PURGE ACTION Barbie®”—from ¡Mamasita!, Issue One,

edited by Bianca Ortiz 110
4.3 Image of Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz—from Bi-Girl World,

Summer 1993, edited by Karen 118
4.4 baby K’s “. . . too QUEER . . . too STRAIght”—from

Bi-Girl World, Summer 1993, edited by Karen 120
4.5 “ANGST COLUMN: HOW FILIPINO/PILIPINO ARE

YOU?”—from Bamboo Girl #11, edited by
Sabrina Margarita Sandata 121
Acknowledgments for the
Gifts of Knowledge
First I would like to acknowledge and thank every zinester whose work I
experienced as its own theoretical production and act of public scholarship,
and who inspired me to keep it real and write from where and who I am.
Efforts to disentangle the strands of knowledge that inform this
project take me back to people and places that have been meaningful to me
throughout my history. I begin by acknowledging my now passed Memas,
my three grandmothers, whose home on the hill gave me perspective. Perhaps
it is this first gift of perspective that allowed me to experience the chaos
and contradictions of my family life, with lived histories on both sides of
the U.S./Mexico border, also as gifts—often joyful, sometimes challenging,
but always generative. From as early as I can remember, I experienced my
mixed‑race life as a commingling of truths and values, of old and new ways
of being, and of music and food that can be traced in multiple directions
across space and time.
Growing up on the border was a bittersweet experience of stark
realities. When I first read Gloria Anzaldúa, Emma Pérez, Yolanda Leyva,
and Chela Sandoval, I experienced both an awakening as well as a deep,
and sometimes difficult, knowing. I am profoundly grateful to these scholars
and to every Chicana writer and public intellectual whose work helped
me to think, feel, and know more deeply, and helped me to believe that
I belong. The deep knowing that is sometimes accompanied by a kind of
recognition continued as I read, for the first time, the literatures of cultural
studies, feminist theories, radical pedagogy, queer theory, and even radical
research methods. I am grateful to have been taught to value the lived
knowledges of my everyday. When these knowledges combined with those
I encountered in graduate school, my life changed. Forever. To those who
xi
xii / Acknowledgments for the Gifts of Knowledge
first introduced me to such meaningful literatures at New Mexico State

University, I am always grateful.
I am grateful to the women in my masters program who encouraged
me to pursue my doctorate and whose work and friendship continue to
inspire and sustain me—Robbin Crabtree, Margaret Jacobs, and Catrióna
Rueda Esquibel.
And I extend continued thanks to my dissertation committee:
To Diane Price Herndl, who taught me to value my insistence for
joy in the process and whose fierce intelligence I am the beneficiary of. By
example, she taught me to recognize all academic endeavors as creative. To
Carl Herndl, whose mentorship and collaboration produced a publication I
remain so proud to be a part of and who, importantly, taught me to love first
F(l)at Tire and then Newcastle. To Amy Slagell, who let me color outside of
the lines. To Michael Mendelson, who insisted on cultivating beauty along
our intersecting academic pathways. And to Jill Bystydzienski, who helped
me fulfill my need and desire to work across disciplines.
For Brenda Daly, whose meticulous scholarly eye and caring heart
helped me through more drafts of work than I or she care to remember.
I can get lost (joyfully so) in the messiness of thinking, and so I want
to express particular gratitude for those whose love of detail helped this
dissertation become a book. Rebecca Iosca from Chicken Scratch Editing
worked with great care and expert precision, and out of our work a friendship
emerged. Special thanks, too, to Marissa Juárez and Mary Duerson, whose
early editing assistance helped this book take huge leaps in its trajectory.
Thanks to Kristin Mock for her help with proofreading this work. I am
grateful to Ken McAllister who, even as he was at work on his own book,
read and then thoughtfully commented on drafts of this manuscript over
an entire morning at a local diner. His careful critique was encouraging and
enlightening. I am especially grateful to him and to Rachel for providing
me, and the three generations of women I travel with on a quotidian basis,
an opportunity to have fun, make music—not to mention the chances he
gave me to showcase my bass guitar playing skills. To Eithne Luibheid,
who carefully mentored me through my efforts to craft a persuasive
prospectus and who, together with Hai, brought all seven of us around
their dinner table for great food and conversation. Special thanks, too, to
Aimee Carrillo‑Rowe and Victor Villanueva whose thoughtful conversations
helped me to think through the notions of borderlands rhetorics and third
space. I want to thank Clara Eugenia Rojas Blanco, Sheena Malhotra, and
Suzanne Oboler for their support of my work and my ideas. To Marta
Maldonado, Stephen T. Russell, Rebecca Ropers‑Huilman, Irene D’Almeida,
Acknowledgments for the Gifts of Knowledge / xiii
Denise Uyehara, Christina Hanhardt, Miranda Joseph, Laura Gutiérrez,

Sandy Soto, David Sapp, Robbin Crabtree, and many Tucson librarians
for meaningful collaborations and to Rusty Barcelo for one incredibly
meaningful conversation that moved me to think twice about leaving the
academy. For these beautiful minds, generous spirits, expert eyes, and the
ethics of looking each set was apparently committed to, I am deeply grateful.
I am grateful to my editors at SUNY Press: Larin McLaughlin, Andrew
Kenyon, Beth Bouloukos, and Kelli W. LeRoux. This book is better for
the careful readings and insights offered by Susan Talburt and Stephen
Duncombe, whose scholarship has informed me over the years, and whose
insightful critiques, informative comments, and careful treatment of my
efforts guided me and provided me with the final impetus to move this
from a manuscript to a book. To David Prout, especially for his supportive
efforts beyond professional indexing.
I appreciate Jean O’Barr for providing me a beautiful room in the
woods that gave me space and the solitude I needed to think and reflect
at the end of my long days in the Duke archives. I am also grateful for
the invaluable assistance from Kelly Wooten, Laura Micham, and all the
staff from the Sallie Bingham Center for Women’s History and Culture,
in The David M. Rubenstein Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Duke
University. Special thanks, too, to Jenna Freedman at Barnard College.
In Arizona I thank my colleagues in RCTE, English, Spanish and
Portuguese, Mexican American Studies, Gender and Women’s Studies, and
the Institute for LGBT Studies. Particular thanks to Lynda Zwynger, whose
very simple lesson has proven incredibly meaningful—if you don’t submit
it, it won’t get published. I am indebted to Tom Miller, Amy Kimme
Hea, Anne‑Marie Hall, Theresa Enos, John Warnock, Ken McAllister, and
Damián Baca for the opportunities to share my work and in so doing refine
my ideas and receive their valuable feedback. I look forward to working next
with Maritza Cardenas and Cristina Ramirez. I am fortunate for a number
of other colleagues whose works or efforts have supported me in completing
this work including Mary Wildner‑Bassett, Susan Aiken, Alison Deming,
Jun Liu, Larry Evers, Ofelia Zepeda, Luci Tapahonso, Laura Briggs, Manuel
Muñoz, Chuck Tatum, Laura Gutiérrez, Raquel Rubio Goldsmith, and Julio
Cammarota. I am so very grateful to Liz Kennedy for her support expressed
through shared meals, shared walks, and meaningful conversations. I am
also grateful to Fenton Johnson. Special thanks to Sharonne Meyerson and
Stephanie Pearmain who have offered the kind of everyday support that
cannot easily be measured. I am additionally grateful to Stephen T. Russell
for his active mentorship in and beyond this project. I am grateful to my
xiv / Acknowledgments for the Gifts of Knowledge
favorite femme, Sandy Soto, whose intellect and rigor keep me reaching for
more. Finally, profound gratitude to Laura Gutiérrez for walking Tumamoc
mountain with me. Our near‑daily ritual invigorated and inspired me. I am
grateful for every conversation we shared on these walks.
I am indebted to my graduate students who have earnestly engaged the
ideas that have gestated and are now coming to fruition in this book with a
keen intelligence as well as with open minds and hearts. Conversations with
them have made this work better than it would otherwise have been. I am
thankful to those students whose work stretches me in ever‑new directions
including as a co‑founder of Feminist Action Research in Rhetoric (FARR),
a forum for feminist public intellectuals, here at the University of Arizona.
I am also indebted to my own graduate school community in Ames,
Iowa, who supported me and my daughters with beautiful poetry, long
conversations, and breathtaking river trips and woods walks including
Diane, Carl, and Frances, as well as Joan Stewart, Erika Mueller, Kathy
Hickok and Nancy Tepper, Terri Fredrick and Matt Burack, Susan Benner,
Laura Winkiel, Nana Osei Kofi, Laura Rendon, Rich, Julie, and Sarah Freed,
Bo Duckett, Jennifer Williams, and their family, and lastly Marty Graham
who taught me through an understated strength to mentor fiercely and
always with grace (RIP/EPD).
To Jenna Brager and Jami Sailor for keeping it real and for inviting
me to be a part of their most recent paper zine production that critically
questions the archiving of the underground and calls for research to be
accountable to the spirit of zines in their valuing of everyday and lived
knowledges. To Lina Suárez, who accepted my submission and whose
paper zine production paying un homenaje to “la mera nepantlera,” Gloria
Anzaldúa, reminds us of the power and immediacy of the page. Her zine is
a manifestation of the intimate and vital connections that paper zines are to
community histories, as well as a powerful reminder of the self‑publishing
history of women of color who claimed the power of the pen as a tool of
social activism, remembering, imagining, and telling.
Most recently to the Tucson youth and their allies, especially those at
the Tucson YWCA’s Nuestra Voz Racial Justice Program, from the Eon Queer
Youth Lounge, and from the Grrrls Literary Activism at Kore Press, with
whom I have had the privilege of working and whose fierce commitment
to social justice, the right to lived histories, and to a meaningful and
relevant education has reminded me of the privilege and responsibility of
the academic location I inhabit.
I am inspired by the efforts of Lisa Bowden, who is working hard to
keep feminist presses, including Kore Press, alive.
Acknowledgments for the Gifts of Knowledge / xv
I am grateful to everyone who included Aida, Sophia, and Grannie

into the circle of intellectual exchange as having these mujeres with me
was sometimes the only way I could be included. I am grateful to Jamie
A. Lee for her close and careful reading and intense listening as well as for
her creative work to produce this book’s cover, which demonstrates a real
understanding of my hopes and vision for this work.
This work was exhilarating and joyful for me. It was also painful at
times. While there was joy being in the Duke archives, I also experienced
a weighty responsibility. I tried to maintain the connection between the
archived texts I was reading and analyzing and the real stuff of people’s lives.
I have worked to treat each story with respect and maintain the dignity of
the writer whose courage and intelligence inspired me. Every time someone
was held accountable, a taboo was subverted, an abuse was exposed, and a
better way imagined, I was inspired. Because of the work of the zinesters I
have learned so much from, I am ultimately able to imagine better times
and remain hopeful in the face of such monstrous politics.
For inspiring and for sharing: Thank you to Lucretia Tye Jasmine
for putting a certain networking interface to one of its more redeemable
uses and so kindly sending personal messages to zinesters on behalf of this
project. To Chris Wilde at QZAP and James Schmidt and Travis with
The Civic Media Center—thank you again for your generous and friendly
assistance. Thank you again to: Nia King, Risa Rice, Tyrell Haberkorn,
Helen Luu/Miss Ruckus, Margarita Alcantara, Bianca Ortiz, Celia Perez,
Jenna Brager, Jami Sailor, Lina Suarez, Cindy Crabb, Cristy Road, Sisi and
Dani, Leah Lakshmi Piepzna‑Samarasinha, Emily Leach, Luisa Zamora. An
extra special thank you to Favianna Rodriguez, who so graciously granted
permission for us to reprint images found in zines that we traced back
to her talents (figures 2.6 and 3.6) and also to Inkworks Press (Berkeley)
and Design Action Collective, who gave us permission to reprint images
similarly utilized by zinesters (figures 3.7 and 2.5 respectively) whose original
designs were traced back to their collectives. Charlie H. and Susan N.
Moore of Inkworks, Nadia Khastagir of Design Action Collective—thank
you. To everyone who generously granted permission to share your work,
insights, and imaginings, I appreciate your spirit toward and active practice
of knowledge sharing.
Anything beautiful in this work has been made so by the relationships
that have inspired, informed, and sustained me. All imperfections are mine
alone.
1
Borderlands Rhetorics and

Third‑Space Sites
I am participating in the creation of yet another culture, a new story to

explain the world and our participation in it, a new value system with
images and symbols that connect us to each other and to the planet.
—Gloria Anzaldúa, Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza
This book is about borderlands rhetorics, third spaces, and zines. Not all
zines, of course, because while they share several characteristics, they also
vary widely in their formats, politics, themes, languages, and distribution
channels. All zines, from skinhead and suburban titles to those catering
to anarchists, lesbians, and riot grrrls, respond in one way or another to
dominant ideologies as experienced and understood by the zine authors, or
“zinesters.” Zines can be single‑authored and are sometimes anonymously
authored, and they are most often explicitly committed to a free and
diverse press. I focus on feminist of‑color zines that are co-authored and
co‑produced.1 Such zines allow me to investigate collaborative endeavors
and coalitional practices that both inform and are informed by what I term
“third‑space theory” and “borderlands rhetorics,” both of which I define and
elaborate on below.2 As this work demonstrates, third‑space hermeneutics
have widespread potential and application, and can be identified across a
broad spectrum of practices.
Despite the immediacy of zine content and the cutting‑edge nominal
cast of the form itself—not the old‑fashioned “magazine” or the nerd chic
1
2 / Zines in Third Space
“fanzine” but the sharply concatenated “zine”—the genre is by no means

new. Some researchers argue that revolutionary pamphlets in the United
States are zines’ precursors while others find links to relatively more recent
discourses, such as fan newsletters (including science fiction fanzines) of the
1930s, punk manifesto/scrapbooks of 1970s, and Riot Grrrl Zines of the
1990s.3 Still others trace the emergence of zines to alternative, of‑color, and
feminist presses as well as to liberation movements.4 The zines I introduce
in the following chapters are those that advocate for change based on
identified affinities and intersections of oppression, injustice, and inequity.
These identifications, forged across borders of difference, lend insight into
practices of social action and social change as evidenced by their integration
of coalitional politics in everyday contexts. Although electronic zines are
prolifically produced and readily available to some, my inquiry is limited
to print zines because not all who create and/or read zines have access to
computer technology.5
While they can be sleek productions, zines are often put together in a
raw cut‑and‑paste style, copied, and traded or sold for a nominal fee.6 The
trades that occur between zinesters often interrupt purchasing imperatives.
The trading of zines among zinesters serves to build community, circulate
information, and create dialogues between zines and zinesters.7 They can be
irreverent, parodic, utopian, and imaginative; thus, in a sense, zines perform
the differences they are trying to make. By challenging, reimagining, and
replacing exclusionary and oppressive discursive practices, zines perform new
expressions of subjectivity. Such radical rhetorical performances constitute
a third space that offers insight into the multiply voiced discourses or
borderlands rhetorics that characterize third‑space subjectivities, sites, and
practices.8 The zines and zinesters I consider here participate, as Gloria
Anzaldúa imagined, in the practice and production of a value system that
focuses on egalitarian social relationships, equity, and social justice.
Understanding the countercultural production of zines is important
especially insofar as it reveals the pursuit of social change, the building of
community, and the participation in community action. The zines explored
in this book explicitly propagate grassroots literacies meant to effect change
through the circulation of information and the production of new practices,
perspectives, and knowledges. They are sites where traditional knowledges
circulate and sometimes collide with newer knowledges to produce innovative
and informed practices. They are action‑oriented, feminist and sometimes
queer‑identified; they are conscious of race, racialization, sex, sexualization,
gender, and class. In them readers witness acted‑upon knowledge informed
by critical and coalitional consciousness.9
Borderlands Rhetorics and Third‑Space Sites / 3
I distinguish critical consciousness from criticism as I argue that

criticism, while often performing an important function, does not necessarily
lead to action.10 Whereas criticism in zines uses the page as a medium
between like‑minded people, zines informed by critical consciousness use
the page as a medium between like‑minded people as well as an active
and conscious connection to the real, material world. They seek to redress
material inequities and promote a broad‑based agenda of social justice
through critically informed social action. Critical consciousness as revealed
in what I term third‑space zines is committed to engaged understanding,
action, and expressed radical and participatory democratics.11
A focus on third‑space zines illuminates the sites, subjectivities,
and (discursive) practices of resistance undertaken to generate alternative
knowledges, practices, and relations that first imagine and then reconstruct
and promote models of social justice and antiracist agendas. Vibrant
and vital counterhegemonic sites, these third‑space zines reveal a desire
to connect, communicate, inform, and act. They also reveal overlooked
concerns and un(der)represented voices. In their rants and raves against
injustices and social inequalities, zinesters speak of and offer narratives
about issues related to child care, mental health, body image, poverty, rape,
safety, spirituality, political economy, color, sex, sexualities, gender, and the
confines and artificiality of a dominant dichotomous social order. They
can be savvy, angry, and complicated. However, their expressions can also
be naive and even jaded, and their rants sometimes remain at the level
of criticism that is not articulated to social action. The zines I analyze
re(en)vision and represent multiply situated, nondominant subjectivities in
pursuit of coalition building to address local inequities.12 I have chosen to
use the term coalition throughout my work as it implies, for me, a practiced
articulation or deliberate bringing and coming together around social change
that can be witnessed in zines. Through an engagement with deployed
borderlands rhetorical practices and performances, myriad micropractices of
resistance to enact social transformations are revealed. As Michelle Comstock
states, zines have “much to teach us about the sites, practices, politics,
and economies of writing” (383). As I illustrate, zines also have much to
teach us about re‑presentations of self and community as contradictory,
complicated, ambiguous, and on the move. They have much to reveal about
the practices and performances of lived theory.13 Before turning to what can
be accomplished through an engaged and sustained inquiry into zines, I
want to define the terms I deploy throughout the book. In defining these
terms I hope also to make clear why I believe the zines I study, what I
understand as third‑space zines, are particularly well suited sites for the
investigation of rhetorical and countercultural production that is connected

to social action.
A focus on third‑space zines and their work to address social injustices
and pursue coalitional politics that are transformative in their agendas offers
insight into how change is pursued and how it happens.14 The borderlands
rhetorics deployed in these zines can illustrate the creative and generative
capacity of third‑space, borderlands rhetorical practices, and cultural
reproduction. These rhetorics, as deployed in feminist and queer of‑color
zines and the zines themselves can offer third‑space subjects a potentially
powerful site for social action.
Recognizing Borderlands Rhetorics

in Zines as Third‑Space Sites
While first reading zines, I experienced a familiarity that initially made

little sense to me. However, as I continued reading, I experienced a deep
connection to the rhetorical practices and performances I was encountering.
I found myself in the midst of rhetorical innovations, creative and critical
inquiries and reflections, and powerfully persuasive words, visual images, and
spatio‑cultural configurations of everyday people in everyday contexts.15 I
began identifying with the innovations—discursive, visual, and otherwise—
performed in these zines. With an excitement accompanied by reluctance,
I named these rhetorical practices “borderlands rhetorics.” Though my
understanding of the term borderlands is a reflection of my own history
of having been born and raised in the U.S./Mexico borderlands, I mean
for it here to imply a still‑spatialized though not necessarily geographic
context where two or more things come together and, in so doing, create
a third space of sorts. I also mean these third spaces to be understood as
the in‑between spaces that are created at virtual and material intersections.
Anne Donadey notes the important cautions and critiques Yvonne
Yarbro‑Bejarano makes of works that risk merely appropriating Anzaldúan
concepts, conflating differences, and erasing specificity. Donadey argues,
however, for extending Anzaldúa’s ideas beyond the material borderlands of
her context. Specifically, Donadey states that while she agrees
with Yarbro-Bejarano that what Emma Pérez (1999) would call

Anzaldúa’s “decolonial imaginary” should not be flattened out
by a postmodern translation of the concept of borderlands that
would erase its historical and cultural grounding by turning it
into a disembodied metaphor that all can come to claim, it is also

important to remember that Anzaldua’s Borderlands/La Frontera
has at least two levels of address: one deals with the specificity
of the Chicana/o history in the U.S./Mexican borderlands; the
other seeks to make a space for Chicanas/os and others whose
identities cannot be reduced to binaries in a variety of locations,
including the academy. Anzaldua’s first words in Borderlands/
La Frontera emphasize this very multiplicity of addresses: “The
actual physical borderland that I’m dealing with in this book
is the Texas‑U.S. Southwest/Mexican border. The psychological
borderlands, the sexual borderlands and the spiritual borderlands
are not particular to the Southwest” (19). Thinking of academic
fields of study through the model of borders and borderlands
is, I believe, a way to follow up on an important insight of
Anzaldua’s, rather than a misappropriation of her work. (23–24)
Coming to identify and name a borderlands rhetoric is not without

struggle and conflict for me. By including discursive and metaphoric
borderlands in my investigations, I fear that I will distract from the tangible
and material realities, inequities, and injustices, or the regulatory power
of the political technologies, that prevail in the Mexico/U.S. borderlands
from which I come. However, I resist the tendency for fear to inhibit or
immobilize exploration and action. And so I proceed with this tension that
is informed by both the concept and location of borderlands as well as by
emergent borderlands rhetorics, which for me represent third‑space lived
experience and both/and consciousness.
I was born and raised on the Juárez/El Paso border, a place where the
border is a lived arbitrary line that constructs and is constructed. It is both
meaningful and meaningless, material and metaphoric, visible and invisible.
It divides and it unites. It is powerful and powerless, peaceful and violent.
It scars the (psychic) landscape for those of us who lived divided as a result
of its imposition. Borders have historically been spaces of colonization where
powerful forces have imposed, represented, and misinterpreted historical
truths. Borders, in my experience, have all too often been understood
and utilized only to delimit, divide, and order things. The focus of such
an understanding is on the production of borders rather than on their
potential productivity.16 Like borders, binaries have served as demarcations
that have divided and defined in the context of identity formation. Rhetorics
of identity have traditionally relied on modernist tendencies that have
promoted a notion of self that is unitary, unified, whole, fixed, and stable.
Identity configured accordingly disallows the visibility of lived experience

(as both produced and productive) and those third spaces that exceed and
are excluded from identity binaries. Revealing and representing subjectivities
as fluid, unstable, and even messy requires a deconstructive process that
consciously challenges and ultimately dismantles the identity binary.17
Borderlands rhetorics express this dismantling and reveal third‑space ways
of being and knowing beyond binaries.18
In my work, I play with language. I always have. It is serious play
through which I am able to reimagine language’s potential. Borderlands
rhetorics can be playful rhetorics that allow for the exploration of un/
authorized terrain. By un/authorized and contested terrain I mean the spaces
between and beyond (identity) binaries and those created at intersections
and overlaps. Since my childhood, those spaces identified as “off limits”
remain of intrigue to me. Chela Sandoval notes that “[t]his process of taking
and using whatever is necessary and available in order to negotiate, confront,
or speak to power—and then moving on to new forms, expressions, and
ethos when necessary—is a method for survival” (29).19 By investigating
the multiple ways in which words and images are used in third‑space zines,
which I understand to be innovative sites of theoretical production, I intend
to broaden our (academic) understanding of social discourse, particularly
borderlands rhetoric and its implications for practices of (self-) representation
and alliance formation that have meaning beyond dominant culture. Mis/
representations are sources of objectification that, when re/visioned, can
allow subjects to engage in new ways of interpreting and re‑presenting
lived experiences and new knowledges. Brummett and Bowers argue that
representations are the “raw materials for [re]constructing subject positions”
(121). I agree, though I also always understand them to be only partial and
contingent. Borderlands rhetorics—discursive and visual—are those rhetorics
that have the potential to reconstruct stories, identities, places, histories, and
experiences in such a way as to not only expose misrepresentations but
also to uncover or produce new perspectives and even new knowledges.
While zines are often text‑heavy sites of the personal testimony of lived
experiences, the visuals they deploy often serve as a complement to the
written text and the written text serves as a complement to the visual.
Reading the text and the images (what some refer to as the imagetext)
through a countercultural lens and relational understanding of both, I will
move beyond an emphasis on discursive function to also focus on the visual,
which is always implicated in the rhetorical force of zines.20 The images
produced in zines are rhetorical productions that are often nonnormative
demonstrations of how it is possible to see, do, and be in new ways or
otherwise intended to be read in countercultural, nondominant ways. I will,
accordingly, further the argument for a politics of location and relation from
which productive looking as well as critical and creative re‑presentations
and reconfigurations can disrupt normative imperatives and assumptions.
My extended focus will include discussions of transtextuality as
a means to understand what words and images in zines can accomplish
together in terms of persuasion, production, and the potential for social
action.21 Through rhetorical analysis of the discursive and the visual in the
zines I study here, I argue that the boundaries between text and image
are convergences, not sharp divides, and that these convergences reveal a
generative and important relationship of mutuality as well as a demonstration
of third‑space theory and borderlands rhetorics.22
As I have argued elsewhere, borderlands rhetorics are subversive
third‑space tactics and strategies that can prove discursively disobedient
to the confines of phallogocentrism and its neocolonizing effects over
time and space.23 Like many third‑space subjects, I have needed to read
and interpret con/texts, and reread and reinterpret con/texts, in multiple
directions. Growing up on the El Paso/Juárez border, this tactic of reading
between the lines was part of how I read and understood the world. It
was representative for me of my location and the ways in which I moved
in the world—always between the lines. I learned this tactic before I can
remember and perfected it in simultaneity with my formal education. I
remember vividly how these practices emerged for me in elementary school
as I read Dick and Jane and Spot books. At home we, too, had a dog
named Spot, but we called him Lunares. Lunar, in Spanish, means mole,
which translates roughly into “spot” in English. I read and reread, and
interpreted and reinterpreted my first grade reader from both a dominant
and a nondominant perspective such that I could imagine myself in the
text. Through a silent, unauthorized, and subversive act, I inserted myself—y
mi familia—into the text by first reimagining myself and my history as a
central part of the text and then by reinterpreting the story to fit my lived
experience. Only then could I make meaning and sense of what I was
supposed to be learning. More importantly, this subversive reading allowed
me to function within and yet beyond a dominant knowledge system. I
was six years old. Such a reading practice, which I developed and deployed
over time, demonstrates a differential consciousness—what Chela Sandoval
calls a “survival skill” (60).24 I identify similar survival skills at work through
of‑color zines in which zinesters read and reread, write and rewrite between
the lines to blur boundaries and reveal third‑space contexts.
Differential consciousness, according to Chela Sandoval, as a tool of
meaning making, can inform the deconstruction and the reconstruction of
knowledge and the politics and practices of disarticulation and rearticulation.25
Additionally, differential consciousness enables us to value and recognize

shared survival skills that have the potential to contribute to a coalitional
consciousness, which can potentially inform egalitarian social relations and
social justice. Revealed third‑space locations illuminate the spaces from which
third‑space subjects self‑identify as well as the spaces we occupy and/or are
relegated to, individually and collectively.
This work is, at least in part, an answer to the invitation made by
Sandoval to acknowledge our complicated places and consciously drift into
the abyss beyond dualisms in order to speak a third voice, revision third
meaning (142–45). This abyss is a third space where subjectivities can be
reimagined and re‑membered and from which they can be (re)presented.
Valuing lived knowledges, a practice that is common in zines, addresses
Sandoval’s critique that these technologies are all too often not acknowledged
as “theoretical and methodological approach[es] in [their] own right” (171).
This project unearths, identifies, and applies the methodologies of the
oppressed as I understand and have lived them.26
My efforts, generally, are a critique of dichotomy.27 In understanding
that the border, while materially significant and imposing, is also arbitrary,
it can also be understood that the border shifts. It is recreated and
reproduced through power, practices, relations, and representations in
multiple spaces over time.28 Borders are recreated, resisted, and reshaped
through interactions. Mine is also, then, a project of respatialization
because the border is, and is not, restricted to a geographic space as a
fixed location. Borders delimit territory in a manner that has implications
for the production of knowledges. This understanding allows the lived
theories of the borderlands to move beyond obvious geographic locations to
other locations, unsettling assumptions about space as static, homogenous,
and uncontested. The rhetorical practices emerging from these spaces to
represent differences, contestation, and coalition illuminate how change
is proposed and pursued from nondominant, third‑space, contexts. It is
important to note that difference, as conceived throughout many of the
zines I discuss here, is understood as a complicated term, especially as it
can imply “difference from” normativities and the normative configurations
that structure daily life. Zinesters are often intervening in these pervasive
normative configurations that structure social life. However, zinesters also
acknowledge that language produces and is produced by these structuring
norms. Language, sometimes through neologisms, which can be part of
what I am referring to as borderlands rhetoric, is deployed as a strategic—
critical and creative—intervention. So the term difference deployed in zines
is not necessarily a part of the dualism that functions in strict opposition to
sameness but, rather, can be a relational and experiential term of third‑space

articulations in pursuit of new configurations.
I approach these emergent rhetorics or borderlands rhetorics from
a spatialized perspective because I have come to understand a reciprocity
between spaces or stories and the people who populate them. I am arguing
for a relationship between people and places—the places we populate and
the places within which we circulate—in order to suggest that we not only
define these spaces but are also, in part, defined by them. Such a spatialized
approach signals an understanding of particular spaces as contingent and
contestable terrains that are in/formed by ambiguity and contradiction.
Again, this understanding has implications for the production of knowledge
that will be explored throughout this book. Because third‑space zines pursue
coalitions across borders of difference to address social inequity, they provide
an ideal context for studying the practices, performances, and productions
that are represented by borderlands rhetorics. The zinesters whose zines I
consider speak of their contexts in spatialized terms.29 They understand their
work to be taking place in a context of community where contestations,
ambiguities, and contradictions abound.30 Zinesters explicitly engage their
lived contradictions and ambiguities in terms of racialized identities, gender
identification, and sexuality. In this work, I identify and explore these messy
spaces of lived experience as borderlands contexts.
I both explore and reproduce borderlands rhetorics that represent the
discursive, visual, symbolic, material, and disciplinary borders and boundaries
that constrain and produce us and our discourses in the everyday. Drawing
from the work of Maria Lugones, I borrow the term peregrinations to capture
the movement beyond dichotomies that zinesters perform as conscious
third‑space practices. I propose that it is through the in‑depth exploration
of third‑space and borderlands rhetorics that meaningful discoveries can be
made to reveal important insights into the transformative potentials of third
space. For Chela Sandoval,
the social space represented by these “third‑term” identities is that

place out of which a politicized differential consciousness arises.
It is this personal, political, and cultural configuration that [has]
permitted feminists of color from very different racial, ethnic,
physical, national, or sexual identities access to the same psychic
domain, where they recognized one another as “countrywomen”
of a new kind of global and public domain, and as a result
generated a new kind of coalition identity politics, a “coalitional
consciousness.” (71)
Borderlands rhetorical practices in third‑space contexts reveal a shared

understanding of nondominant experiences that can build coalition.
Zines are an ideal third‑space site within which to study the production
of borderlands rhetoric. The zines of my study articulate traditional and
contemporary knowledges to inform new ways of being and relating
across the borders of different knowledge systems. They are innovative and
transformational in intent and action. Zines are written and reproduced
from perspectives that represent a full range of the political spectrum. This
work considers contemporary zines whose authors self‑identify as some or all
of the following: antiracist, of‑color, feminist/a or womanist; these zinesters,
in turn produce zines that: build and mobilize community, work to forge
coalitions across lines of difference for purposes of pursuing agendas of
social justice and equity, and provide third‑space contexts ideal for exploring
rhetorical innovations and third‑space practices.
In its powerful challenges to the limits and obfuscation of dualistic
representational rhetoric, much of the discourse in the zines I have studied
is recognizable as borderlands rhetorics. I was and remain hope‑filled by the
new knowledges and the new cultures that are part of a social reconfiguration
emerging in these zines. These emergent cultural reformations are sites and
discourses of third‑space activist subjects and borderlands rhetorics. Many of
the zines I studied reflect not just the injustices of third‑space subjectivity
but the joys of nepantla that can be uncovered and encountered as well.
As Anzaldúa notes in the preface to the first edition of Borderlands/La
Frontera: The New Mestiza, “Living on borders and in margins, keeping
intact one’s shifting and multiple identity and integrity, is like trying to
swim in a new element, an ‘alien’ element. There is an exhilaration in
being a participant in the further evolution of humankind” (La Frontera
n.p.). Like Anzaldúa, I, too, believe that in “every border resident, colored
or non‑colored . . . dormant areas of consciousness are being activated,
awakened” (La Frontera n.p.). My work suggests that this activation can be
found in (micro) practices of rearticulation and resistance in borderlands
rhetorics. The politics of articulation are reconfiguring third‑space sites,
subjectivities, and rhetorical practices in pursuit of an activist, transformative
agenda. Third‑space zines use subversive tactics and strategies of interruption
and resistance to challenge and potentially transform dominant practices
of subordination, division, and exclusion. I am arguing that these zines
can offer important insights into the representation of lived truths, the
production of knowledge, the importance of imagination and the imagined,
and the process of deconstructing subordinating divisions as present and
circulating in third‑space contexts. Ultimately, my goal is to demonstrate
that borderlands rhetorics and third spaces are other ways of being and
knowing that offer hopeful potentials for what has been referred to as a
radical, transcultural, and coalitional democratics.
Borderlands Peregrinations: Traveling beyond Borders

and Binaries into Third Space
I am of and from the border. I embody the border. It is how I know and
experience the world. I am aware, painfully at times, of the consequences
and risks of my names and how I self‑identify. In the introduction to
the second edition of Gloria Anzaldúa’s Borderlands/La Frontera, Sonia
Saldívar‑Hall notes that when the new mestiza “names all her names, once
again she enacts the culmination of unearthing her multiple [and I would
add, at times contradictory] subjectivities” (7). On each side of the border of
my beginnings I can be in/authenticated—not quite American and not quite
Mexican either. Fronteriza? Chicana? Latina? American/a? Mestiza? Lived
borderlands experiences challenge notions of purity and even authenticity
that fit neatly within a binary framework of either/or but not so neatly
within a third‑space framework of both/and.
It is the lived condition of crossing borders and existing in the
realm of both/and together that allows for the conscious movement into
the creative terrain of third space. Third space is an interstitial space of
intersection and overlap, ambiguity and contradiction, that materializes a
subversion to either/or ways of being and reproducing knowledge. It is an
epistemological as well as an ontological space revealing ways of knowing
and being in the world. Third‑space ways of knowing and being defy the
values that are implicated in the “authentic,” the “proper,” and the “pure.”
In short, third space is a space that materializes what borders serve to divide,
subordinate, and obscure. In rhetorical terms, it is the space within which
borderlands rhetorics circulate and materialize third‑space consciousness. I
draw on the work of Chicana feminists as well as scholars such as David
Harvey and Doreen Massey, in order to develop an understanding of space,
especially third space, as always dynamic, historically defined, and contested
in order to reveal radical impurities and what Lugones would call spatial
complexities.31 Such radical impurities belong to and emerge from third
space as a counter/cultural space for counter/public rhetorical productions.
For Massey, space is a relational production, which is to say a product
of social relations and thus necessarily political. Space emerges through active
material practices.32 It is never complete, never finished. Rather, it is “the
sphere of dynamic simultaneity, constantly disconnected by new arrivals”

and determined by new relations (Massey 107). To capture such a dynamic
and contested nature of space, I engage and focus on the narrative‑based part
of Massey’s definition of space as “stories‑so‑far”(12, 24).33 This spatialized
conceptualization allows me to identify third spaces within what I am calling
borderlands rhetorics. Third spaces are both indeterminate and constructive.
They are constructed by and they construct geographies, histories, embodied
subjectivities, and borderlands rhetorics. Third‑space subjects and third‑space
sites are recursively related, revealing an intimate connection between place
and self.34 As Patton and Sánchez‑Eppler point out, an “identity is not merely
a succession of strategic moves but a highly mobile cluster of claims to self
that appear and transmogrify in and of place. But place is also a mobile
imaginary, a form of desire” (4). They continue, “Place is acted upon by
identifiers—by identifications—that occur, as events, on/in ‘it’ ” (4). Finally,
they ask, “What must be interrogated, and harnessed?: the intersection, the
collision, the slippage between body‑places; the partial transformation of
those places; the face installed by dissimulation in place” (4). Revealing the
recursivity between site and subjectivity, third‑space zinesters as multiply-
situated subjects embody multiple sites, social locations, and various and
fluid identity markers.
Borders have been spatially imposed and reinscribed on and in
our bodies in ways that have proven oppressive and subordinating.35 In
resisting the arbitrary nature of borders, third‑space subjects and borderlands
rhetorics can blur divisions and expose potentially fertile spaces/places for
reinvention of “new subject formations, new cultural formations, [and]
new political formations” (Pérez‑Torres 12). My efforts bring together
Chela Sandoval’s differential consciousness and Emma Pérez’s decolonial
imaginary as necessarily present in, and important to, third‑space contexts
and borderlands rhetorics.36 Believing that we not only shape discourses but
are also shaped by discourses, I am interested in the rhetorical dynamics at
play in practices and performances of self- and Other-representation. Gloria
Anzaldúa states that the work of mestiza consciousness is to break down the
subject‑object duality. She challenges us to show—in the flesh and through
the images in our work—how duality is transcended (1987 102).37 I utilize
the concept of third space as a space materialized by this transcendence.
Third‑space contexts are spatialized contexts within which new stories
created by zinesters emerge to contribute to stories‑so‑far and to propose
new social and cultural configurations brought together for social change.
In third space, borderlands rhetorics and their representational potentials
emerge to reclaim and resignify language practices beyond dichotomous
borders. Borderlands spaces can be considered material narratives; that is

to say spaces have histories, contested histories, and they are continuously
productive of new stories, stories in the making, that are contested
and contingent.38 Borderlands rhetorics are rhetorics that re‑present
nondominant stories, subjectitivites, and practices, and that materialize
third‑space consciousness. I start then with Gloria Anzaldúa’s definition of
a borderland as a “vague and undetermined place created by the emotional
residue of an unnatural boundary . . . in a constant state of transition”
(1987 25) and then move into what I identify as third space. I make
this move as my own act of coalition—to pursue and make meaning with
others whose geographic location is not the border. Third space can be
understood as a location and/or practice. As a location, third space is a
relational space of contestation—often in the form of discursive struggle—
and can also be one of shared understanding and meaning making. As a
practice it can reveal a differential consciousness capturing the movement
that joins different networks of consciousness and revealing a potential for
greater understanding.39 By third space I mean, then, the space created by
borderlands contexts. It is real and imagined, material and metaphoric.40
Acknowledging that language, discourse, and rhetoric have been used
to mis(re)present histories that have erased lived experiences not coinciding
with dominant (mis)interpretations of life on and of the borderlands is a
starting point for reconsidering the transformative potential of borderlands
rhetorics. While I understand that the struggles revealed in my investigation
are primarily discursive, they are not limited by or to the discursive. The
power of the concept of borderlands as I unearth and deploy it is that it
transcends the discursive to include third‑space experience in its psychic,
material, embodied, social, sexual, and always political dimensions. I
contend that zines as il/legitimate and im/pure third‑space sites challenge
sanctioned—authorized and expert—discourses in ways that redress the
obfuscation of alternative, nondominant expressions and representations of
self and Others. Zines, then, are sites of resistance that are often overlooked
and underrepresented in dominant contexts. The borderlands rhetorics they
produce flourish in the fertile third space of the interstitial and the liminal.
The demarcating line of the border—not always a straight line—
can obscure third space or fertile ground of unrealized potentials. Third
space becomes a space of rhetorical struggle and of shared understanding
or conocimiento.41 Third space is a site where things are articulated and
disarticulated, and a practice that offers an opportunity to reflect on and
revision the ways in which discourses have been used to erase, obscure, or
exclude. In employing a borderlands rhetoric, a rhetoric of third space, I do
not lose sight of the tangible and material realities, inequities and injustices
or the regulatory power of the political technologies, that prevail in the
Mexico/U.S. borderlands from which I come.42 I am arguing, however, for
the epistemological significance of third space and the promise and potential
for a borderlands rhetoric to communicate a vibrant, important, and, at
times, even hopeful way of knowing and being in the world across borders
of difference.43 Third‑space consciousness is inherent in the deliberate
deployment of a borderlands rhetoric. Third space offers a possibility
for many concurrent, interacting, ambiguous, and even contradictory
discourses.44
Third‑space subjects are dis/similar. Our collective identities are
always only tactically essential. They are never permanent or whole. Yet
borderlands contexts and subjectivities can be articulated to one another
temporally and spatially in order to acknowledge a sense of community
and serve a sociopolitical agenda that informs notions of social justice
and the development of voice(s) that can (re)tell our stories and thereby
inform our futures. Pérez writes that “perhaps our only hope is to move
in many directions and knowingly ‘occupy’ an interstitial space where we
practice third‑space feminism” (20). I would add that we may also practice
borderlands rhetorics in this third space. When we knowingly occupy this
space, we engage in the practice of differential consciousness, which gives
rise to the opportunity for a developed coalitional consciousness that can, in
turn, move us to a sociopolitical agenda based on notions of social justice. As
we move toward and realize coalitional consciousness, we can begin to re(en)
vision how history has been written about and without us and how history
can then begin to be revisioned in the space(s) of the decolonial imaginary.
Through a third‑space consciousness, then, dualities are transcended
to reveal potentially fertile and generative borderlands where third‑space
subjects put our perspectives, lived experiences, and rhetorical performances
into play. In third‑space sites, representational rhetorics emerge as
borderlands rhetorics. Unlike dualistic language paradigms and structures,
borderlands rhetorics are not constrained by binary borders; instead, they
inhabit a named third space of ambiguity and contradiction. The third‑space
consciousness inherent in borderlands rhetorics can be found, as I illustrate
next, in third‑space zines. Borderlands rhetorics expose third‑space relational
practices and complexities.45 They are third‑space consciousnesses materialized
and made manifest.
A study of third‑space zines advances understanding of third‑space
theory as well as third‑space discursive and rhetorical practices. Importantly,
third‑space theory can contribute to understanding multiply situated
subjects, coalitional consciousness, and community activism. The lived

experiences of third‑space subjects provide insight into contemporary
feminist conversations about relational subjectivities, questions of agency
and authority, and the im/possibilities of the rhetorics of representation.
These conversations can be invigorated and informed by looking through
the lens of third space. Zines provide the revisioning and strategic
potential that bridge the gap between theory and practice. They also speak
to the important dimensions of third‑space sites and subjectivities that
are steeped in the normed concepts of the im/pure, in/valid, im/proper,
and il/legitimate. In discussing discursive spaces and identity practices
emerging in community con/texts, Juana Maria Rodríguez notes that “it
is precisely their unsanctioned status as objects of inquiry that opens up
interpretive possibilities for . . . representation[s] . . . as they announce the
contradictory contours of the discursive spaces in which they emerge” (8). I
agree and would add that it is in the space of the unsanctioned and improper
that third‑space practices and the decolonized imaginary can flourish to
reconsider and re‑present lived experiences, dreams, and desires for how
the world ought to be.
In their discussion about diasporic subjects and their tactical, dissident
performances, Patton and Sánchez‑Eppler turn to de Certeau’s notion that
“tactics erode the terms of the ‘proper’ space,” concluding that we “need
better tools to appreciate the nuanced materiality and corrosive power of
this kind of dissident performance” (5). Third space as theory and practice
provides these very tools. As Anzaldúa demonstrates, borderlands subjects
are in/authenticated in multiple directions as a result of our contradictory
positionings and mobility. Specifically, in Borderlands/La Frontera, she states,
“The new mestiza . . . learns to be an Indian in Mexican culture, to be
Mexican from an Anglo point of view. She learns to juggle cultures. She has
a plural personality, she operates in a pluralistic mode—nothing is thrust
out, the good the bad and the ugly, nothing rejected, nothing abandoned.
Not only does she sustain contradictions, she turns the ambivalence into
something else” (101). These often messy pluralities birth, and are birthed
by, the dissident performers and performances of third‑space con/texts. The
ability to sustain the ambivalence and turn it into something productive is
related to Anzaldúa’s notion of mestiza consciousness, which I connect to
Chela Sandoval’s ideas regarding differential consciousness, to Emma Pérez’s
decolonial imaginary, and on to coalitional consciousness.
I have been interested in the limits and im/possibilities of discourse and
its representational potentials beyond the binary ever since I can remember.
My intrigue with language and its in/ability to capture and represent
borderlands experiences began when I was a child. Words, meanings, and

truths commingled and contradicted one another in the borderlands of
my youth. Proper language and proper perspectives had little to do with
my everyday except when they were deployed by my great‑aunt, mi tía,
who worked hard to teach us all that was proper. The proper had been
codified for my great‑aunt in the Velázquez Spanish‑English/English‑Spanish
bilingual dictionary and in the works of Emily Post—both texts she referred
to with regularity and seemingly appropriate rigidity. My intentions here are
informed by the disconnect I experienced in my childhood between what
I was taught, what I experienced, and how people, practices, and places
were mis/represented to me along the way as well as how that disconnect
became part of my living consciousness and way of making meaning in
the world. Such consciousness refuses fixed dichotomous structures and
their reductive implications for matters of self‑representation. It informs
borderlands rhetorics and can inform third‑space practices.
Borderlands rhetorics and third space each can be understood as
practices and locations. As practices they reveal a differential consciousness,
and as locations they reveal spaces of opportunity for the building of
coalitions. Borderlands rhetorics are rhetorics of resistance, coalition,
community education, activism, imagination, and representation that are
produced and reproduced in third‑space contexts. Third space then is the
very epistemology of borderlands rhetoric.46
Third-Space Imaginary, Coalitional Consciousness, and Zines
As a demonstration and an application of the theory and method of

third‑space consciousness, I begin with my own imagination, which
remains in the process of decolonization.47 It is a decolonized imagination
that allows me to dismantle limiting binaries and rhetorical structures that
have produced norms and sustained the dominance of dichotomous and
subordinating representations of knowledge and subjectivity. The tools and
technologies utilized in these efforts are primarily those of the methodology
of the oppressed, as defined and described by Chela Sandoval in her book
by the same title.48 Third‑space zines materialize the Sandovalian abyss.
The decolonized imaginary in zines creates a playful affective subjectivity
that deploys a borderlands rhetoric to flout the stability and the duality of
dominant subject positionings from this abyss.
The imaginary as an in/valid and in/formative third‑space tool is often
deployed to re(en)vision subjects as agents in our re‑presentation of ourselves,
the knowledge/s we co‑construct, and the complicated understanding we

have of the world in which we live. In an effort to demonstrate how a singular
voice, or even a linear chronology, cannot represent third‑space subjects who
move across contexts and in so doing become—and unbecome—Other,
Patton and Sánchez‑Eppler investigate “practices of self‑invention and
self‑authentication [and how they] simultaneously give life and produce
death” (7). Their investigation is born of the necessity to narrate life not
chronologically but instead according to different emplacements, referred to
as diasporas, that allow for narrations not of the whole but of movements
and partialities.
Patton and Sánchez‑Eppler refer to the stabilizing effects of strategies
undertaken in proper space and time. Their work suggests that it is the
mobility inherent in third‑space subjectivity that interrupts certainty. They
note that as “we have each, no doubt, discovered for ourselves, whatever we
may be (or have been), even when we hardly move at all, there are places
and times in which we simply are not, or are not quite, primarily that” (8).
My understanding of Patton and Sánchez‑Eppler’s point is that subjectivity
is fluid and that distinct and shifting positionalities and displacements have
implications for how we (are able or not to) interpret, represent, and revision
ourselves and our lived experiences across time and space.49
Borderlands rhetorics as third‑space discourses are those that can
liberate us from the confines and constrictions of dominant dichotomous
thinking, knowing, and being. Sandoval looks upon such potentially
liberating practices as challenges to dominant representational strategies that
are born of differential consciousness uncovering a void and, in so doing,
acting as a “conduit . . . capable of evoking and puncturing through to
another site” (140). These “other sites,” which can be considered third‑space
sites, represent a differential zone where the “differential activist is thus made
by the ideological intervention that she is also making: the only predictable
final outcome is transformation itself ” (Sandoval 157). I understand this to
mean that the potential for transformation may not always be realized.50 This
unpredictability is certainly present in third‑space zines. While I recognize
the im/possibilities for transformation, I remain interested in the proposed,
pursued, and enacted micropractices of subversion, resistance, community
education, and revisionings that I highlight in third‑space zines in the
following chapters.51
In an academic example of third‑space revisioning, Emma Pérez’s
The Decolonial Imaginary: Writing Chicanas into History explores the
transformative potential of representing the histories of those of us previously
obscured from historical sight and significance. Citing Homi Bhabha, Pérez
reconsiders that which has been “unspoken and unseen” as representative

of interstitial spaces in a historic borderlands context (5). For Pérez, the
interstitial is an in‑between space that reflects the tensions and reproduced
silences of multiple conjunctures within the context of the borderlands. It
is a space that “eludes invasion, a world unseen that cannot, will not, be
colonized” (115). Following Pérez, the interstitial can be understood as the
space of the decolonial imaginary—a third space of newness, rearticulated
desire, revisioned histories, and empowerment; in short, it is a space of the
emancipation of third‑space consciousness from which histories and even
futures, can be reimagined.
Pérez uses the decolonial imaginary specifically to revision historic
mis(re)presentations of Chicanas over time and space. The decolonial
imaginary, broadly deployed, allows us to reclaim certain spaces in time
to retell our stories and thereby resist and transform historical omissions
and occlusions. Specifically, for Chicanas to revision ourselves as active
participants in history, more than Madonnas and more than whores, we
must bring our imaginations to bear on our diverse historical roles. Pérez’s
emphasis on the decolonial moves us to reimagine our history from a
noncolonial perspective.52 Imaginative historical reversals and revisionings
allow us to see ourselves as active agents in history.53
As a tool, the imagination allows us to deconstruct and move beyond
the reductive and restrictive tendencies of oppositional dualisms. It allows
those who deploy it to uncover how either/or ways of knowing are simply
too limiting. Powerful norms that produce notions such as purity and
impurity, for example, can be exposed for the myths that they are through
the imagination. As a process, the imagination is involved in subject
re‑creation and re‑presentation. According to Anzaldúa, “Imagination, a
function of the soul, has the capacity to extend us beyond the confines
of our skin, situation, and condition so we can choose our responses. It
enables us to reimagine our lives, rewrite the self, and create guiding myths
for our time” (2002 5). Third‑space zines are sites of historical reimaginings,
revisionings, and reclamations. Third‑space zinesters often question historic
productions, especially to inquire who was left out of historical accounts and
why. Their inquiries sometimes work to unsettle representations of historical
figures as acceptable in and for dominant contexts. Zines such as Bi‑Girl
World and Memoirs of a Queer Hapa work to unsettle heteronormative
assumptions, imperatives, and mis/representations in contemporary and
historic contexts. Meanwhile, zines such as Bamboo Girl and Borderlands:
Tales from Disputed Territories between Races and Cultures consciously
disrupt normative racialized assumptions steeped in dominance and white
supremacy. Third‑space zinesters demonstrate an ability, which many claim

is their response/ability, to question taken‑for‑granted assumptions. Such a
practice reveals the imagination in zines and also the utilization of feminist,
queer, and coalitional consciousness to unearth exclusions and participate
in practices of broad‑based historical inclusivity.
As Mohanty notes, a conceptualization of “race and racism is . . .
essential to any contemporary discussion of feminist politics” (65). The
feminist of‑color zines that I study demonstrate an awareness of the ways
in which gender, sexuality, and race (as well as other identity markers and
locations) serve as structuring principles in social contexts. In accordance
with the work of Omi and Winant regarding racial formations, my
analysis of antiracist and of‑color zines reveals that race continues to
be a central organizing principle and way of understanding the world.
Zinesters implicitly and explicitly understand and resist the structuring
principles of normative regimes. The state and related state apparatuses
are understood as regimes structured in domination to discursively delimit
the acceptable, the authentic, the legitimate, the authorized, and the true.
Zinesters demonstrate an awareness of the relationship between nation, race,
citizenship, gender, and sexuality as evidenced by their reflections on how
the state and those authorized on its behalf (such as mainstream education,
media, and corporations) delimit practices that defy nationalist imperatives
and normative relations.
Reading, Writing, and Re‑presenting as

Potentially Transformational Practices
Believing that reading and writing practices can be transformative, I

acknowledge the activist potential in borderlands rhetorics and the writing
of zines.54 Anzaldúa speaks of activist authors who have gone before us as
“luchadoras que nos dejaron un legado de protesta y activismo por medio
de la pluma” (This Bridge 5). The very act of writing zines is undertaken as
an act of subversion and revision. Countercultural or oppositional writing in
zines represents a technology of potentially transformative recoding, which
can produce, promote, and/or reveal diverse community and grassroots
literacies.
The writing of the zines I consider is itself an oppositional technology
deployed by third‑space subjects. As Sandoval notes, “the agent of the third
voice is bound to the process of differential consciousness and its oppositional
technologies” (206). Trinh T. Minh‑ha, too, reflects on practices and processes
of writing, though from an explicitly postcolonial perspective.55 Her focus

is on the fragmented woman‑subject as author. She notes that as the “focal
point of cultural consciousness and social change, writing weaves into
language the complex relations of a subject caught between the problems of
race and gender and the practice of literature as the very place where social
alienation is thwarted differently according to each specific context” (Minh-
ha 6). She goes on to dissect the rituals of writing that give a writer status.
She notes that a writer “must submit her writings to the law laid down by
the corporation of literary/literacy victims and be prepared to accept their
verdict” (8). Zines are acts of defiance of this ritual. Through their discursive
reflections, investigations, and assertions, zines subvert the authority of
sanctioned knowledges and practices. Perhaps even more importantly, they
exert their own authority through their practices of self‑representation and
through their knowledge claims. Through self‑publishing and the generation
of intertextual conversations, zinesters circumvent the sanctioned right of
passage to which Minh‑ha refers. They do not wait for permission or
acceptance to write. The act of production is not allowed but undertaken,
often subversively and through what zinesters describe as secretive, after‑hours
efforts at their and others’ places of employment. The production process of
zines is thus, itself, an act of subversion.
Zines offer spaces for exploration as to how third‑space subjects
are writing and self‑representing and reinterpreting his/stories.56 Radical
rhetorical potential in third‑pace zines offers what Brownwyn Davies
considers “disruptions [that can see] the possibility of breaking down old
oppressive structures and of locating and experiencing [them] differently,
of moving outside the fixed structures” (39). The tools and technologies
deployed in third space are used not only to dismantle (rhetorical) structures
but also to build coalitions and community. To speak from and of these
coalitions and communities requires creative practices of interpretation and
representation.
Exploring Third‑Space Zines and the Chapters to Follow
In keeping with my efforts to move beyond binary structures, I am

conceptualizing zines on a spectrum or spectrums of practices and
transformational potentials. Much of the previous work on zines has
focused on zines produced by predominantly alienated youth, often from
middle‑class positionalities and often in the context of U.S. punk culture.
Often critiques of zines are made around the fact that zines are privileged
reflections that circulate in exclusively privileged contexts. I consider the

zines I study to be representative of third‑space sites; that is to say, they
are often conscious of transcending dichotomies, including the one between
privilege and non‑privilege. They engage in what Lugones would consider to
be “streetwalker theorizing,” which is both tactical and strategic (224–25).
Many of the zines I study speak from a nondominant location and/or a
nondominant and privileged location. Many zinesters whose work I am
considering have roots in working‑class and of‑color communities, each
with their own histories of self‑publication. Zinesters sometimes self‑identify
as first‑generation college students. Some express an awareness of their
academically informed theoretical insights through an open acknowledgment
of it as a privilege. These same zinesters often seek explicitly to write from
a third space created by the articulation of their theoretical sophistication
and everyday lived experiences in order to be more broadly accessible. One
such example can be found in jackie wang’s Memoirs of a Queer Hapa #2
in which she explicitly acknowledges that she writes in the (third) space
between the deeply personal and the academic “to slide in and out of
ways of being, ways of writing, so that being itself is undermined in favor
of becoming.” She continues, “here’s to radical impurity . . .” (1). In an
example of class‑consciousness and class location another zinester, Sabrina
Margarita Sandata, in her first issue of Bamboo Girl, offers the following
statement: “Unlike what you may suspect, this zine is not made by a
trust fund kid, so upcoming issues will be made on WIGAFCO (When
I Get a Fucking Chance, Ok?) basis.” The third‑space zines I consider
here, however, whether academically informed or not, should be considered
theoretical productions in their own right. Many of the zinesters introduced
here often work with people in poverty and communities of color with an
explicit commitment to learn from these spaces, their histories, and their
practices and to recirculate these lived experiences and learned knowledges
in community contexts. The zines I identify here range from what I have
termed Duncombesque, based on Stephen Duncombe’s essay, “ ‘I’m a Loser
Baby’: Zines and the Creation of Underground Identity,” to radical, of‑color,
queer, and coalitional or third‑space zines. In his essay, Duncombe defines
zines as “produced by individuals—primarily young people, raised with the
‘privileges’ of the white middle class—who feel at odds with mainstream
society” (228). Duncombe focuses on the inevitable inertia of middle‑class
angst in these zines. Zines at this end of the spectrum often provide personal
reflections as well as (punk) music reviews, often in a rage‑against‑the‑system
style. They are relatively less interested in forging action‑oriented alliances
across differences and are instead self‑reflective spaces of radical individuality.
Duncombe captures the import of these zines in his discussion of perzines,

or personal zines, in which “personal revelation outweighs rhetoric, and
polished literary style takes a back seat to honesty” (232).57 They assert
a personal authority through intentionally raw, emotional, and intensely
personal rhetorical strategies.
Representing a midway point on the spectrum, Riot Grrrl zines, with
roots in the underground feminist punk movement and grrrl music scenes,
work to agitate and raise consciousness of girls and boys. While middle‑class
angst is often still apparent in these zines as well, more attention is focused
on efforts to come to terms with privilege as a way of raising consciousness.
Many of these zines are written by young girls and speak to such topics
as girl relationships, particularly friendship, especially as it is challenged by
dominant, patriarchal culture. Unlike perzines, these zines are interested in
the building of an active girl culture as a place of community, information,
anger, and music.
My study includes some Riot Grrrl zines but focuses on the other end of
the spectrum, where coalitional consciousness is explicit, activism is engaged
and promoted, and community building, knowledge generating, grassroots
literacies, and information sharing are the articulated foci.58 At this end of
the spectrum, third‑space zines often offer everyday recipes for community
resistance to mainstream media, corporatization, and globalization and its
concomitant exploitations. Greater evidence of a more diverse authorship is
apparent in these zines and coalitions are often advocated and overt. These
zines show a concerted effort to promote grassroots literacies and alternative
ways of knowing and understanding as these zinesters are not satisfied with
reflections on the personal as an individual experience. They also often
identify as disaffected punkers who recognize and discuss misogyny and
racism in the punk movement. Though they continue to engage in music
reviews and explore myriad cultural productions, they are increasingly
engaged in proposing and pursuing critically informed coalitional action.
They are practicing the politics of articulation to imagine and rebuild
communities in order to: resist myriad forms of oppression, reeducate,
inform, and re‑present one another, and to practice a radical, countercultural
democratics. These practices inform, and are informed by, lived theory and
the understanding of borderlands rhetorics. The borderlands rhetorics that
emerge in these zines work to challenge and to creatively and critically
reconfigure norms. They are rhetorics of reimagination and resistance, and
they reveal the lived experiences of third‑space contexts. It is important to
note that these zines often call on nontraditional and sometimes indigenous
knowledges. Third‑space zines demonstrate differing degrees of privilege in
terms of access to (and interest in) academic discourses and literatures. I am

interested in the intersections of the academic and the nonacademic, if and
how they come together with the traditional, and what their intersections
and overlaps (attempt to) accomplish. I am also most interested in the
production and application of knowledges from diverse locations across
multiple contexts.
In the chapters that follow I focus on the ways in which zines materialize
third space and borderlands rhetorics to demonstrate the emergence of a
coalitional consciousness and practices of articulation that serve the creation
and mobilization of coalitions for social change and social justice. I consider
the practices in third‑space zines to subvert the borders and boundaries of
gendered and sexed dichotomies as a strategy of inclusivity. And finally
I identify innovative and transformative practices of consumption and
production as evidence of applied third‑space consciousness.59
To address what I see at play in the zines I am considering, I have
organized the book into chapters that focus on three primary although not
discrete functions of zines. First, zines are consciously pursuing coalitions to
imagine and build communities based on shared affinities and a conscious
and coalitional desire for social change. Next, zines are innovating new
rhetorical strategies to address sex and gender. Finally, zines are enacting
and provoking quotidian transformations in terms of production and
consumption. They are traded for a nominal fee. They are often produced
subversively, and they advocate creative, conscientious, and sometimes
second‑order consumption and production.60 They are concerned with the
earth, and consider the effects of consumer culture on the environment.
Chapter 2 exposes and explores rhetorical operations that are an
important part of alliance formation and coalition building. The critical
analysis at work in this chapter identifies disarticulations and rearticulations
undertaken first to interrupt taken‑for‑granted connections and then to forge
new connections in order to perform and re‑present new ways of being,
doing, knowing, and relating in third‑space contexts. More specifically, in
this chapter I explore the intimate, if shifting, connection between sites and
subjectivities. I investigate the multiple ways sites and subjectivities come
together to reconfigure social relationships and social practices. I reconsider
the practices and politics of articulation to better understand the ways in
which countercultural practices and reproduction are pursued to enact social
transformations.
Zines as third‑space sites of borderlands rhetorics reveal the potential
for social transformation through disruptive (discursive) acts, dissident
performances, and transmigrations that effect new social, cultural, political,
economic, and sexual configurations and coalitions. The emergent and

creative cultural reconfigurations in zines serve to educate and inform while
also reclaiming community and redefining community values. I consider
zine writing a potentially transformational technology deployed to enact
social change through the revisioning and representation of alternative
truths and community literacies based on lived experiences. The imaginary
in its decolonized manifestation is discussed in this chapter as a powerful
dynamic to rewrite and represent histories and desires.61 I consider practices
of resignification to reconsider and explain alternative expressions of
third‑space experiences. Other tactics deployed in the zines discussed here
include resistance to the imperatives as well as to the produced norms of
dominant discourses through practices of re‑coding, code switching, code
b(l)ending, and bilingualism. Neologisms that emerge in these zines are
not so much a result of back and forth (this language or that language),
but rather innovations resulting from a kind of code b(l)ending that is
often deployed to disrupt or to create something new. These nondominant
discursive practices reveal how change is pursued through alternative
rhetorical tactics and strategies that resist dominant discursive control.62
Chapter 3 works to represent the embodied, corporeal, and relational
subject contextualized in third space and expressing an action‑oriented,
coalitional consciousness. The mind‑body duality, effectively rewoven,
is identified in this chapter to reveal embodied knowledges, embodied
subjectivities, and borderlands rhetorics. Anger is identified as a motivating
emotion that propels third‑space revisionings and representations. Instances
of embodied resistance emerge in third‑space zines as tactics of the everyday
to express emotion and offer alternatives to unjust social practices. An
emphasis on revisioned bodies, genders, and sexualities emerges in this
chapter. In this chapter, I also introduce a practice I have termed “reverso”
to begin explaining how third‑space subjects are returning the normative and
normalizing gaze on society not in an oppositional way but rather through
a refracted gaze and related new ways of looking and seeing. Questions of
pleasure, desire, prohibition, and pathology emerge and are redirected to
subvert misrepresentations of the body in consumer culture. This innovation
accomplishes a more inclusive circle of participants in the conversations
that zines are proposing, provoking, and participating in. In this chapter I
identify anger as a common emotion in zines that works to redress reductive
and exclusionary (representational) practices. I consider the implications of
the rhetorical moves to engage sex and gender ambiguity as a strategy of
coalition, community education, and community literacy.
Chapter 4 investigates alternative consumption patterns emerging in
third space. These alternative patterns are the result of efforts to disrupt
consumer culture as it is imposed throughout society. While an awareness of

globalization and its socioeconomic asymmetries is identifiable in third space,
this chapter focuses on local practices of consumption and reproduction that,
while connected to the global, are emerging in reconfigured, third‑space
local community contexts. I identify the many creative and critically
conscious ways consumerism or consumption and reproduction are called
into question by many zinesters.
I borrow from queer theory to propose that third‑space zinesters are
performing a queer‑y of their contexts to unhinge the taken‑for‑granted
imperatives of late capitalism. This unhinging of sorts is accomplished
without guarantees or permanence. Zinesters often reproduce product
information in their zines to participate in a kind of grassroots community
literacy that informs second‑order consumers about sexual health,
reproductive choices, mental health, and the power of writing and reading.
The information that gets circulated sometimes uses product inserts to
interrupt the capitalist imperative that only first‑order consumers should
have access to valuable information. Consumption is reconfigured and
represented in zines as a conscious interruption to dominant practices
predicated on a hegemonically manufactured concept of desire. Desire is
reasserted in zines to interrupt dominant (read: heter- and homonormative)
representations of what is supposed to be desirable. Third‑space consumers
are questioning, for example, how it could be desirable to participate in
consumption that ignores exploitative and degrading practices of production
and reproduction. Another example of altered consumerism is identified
in the creative strategies deployed in third space to effect subversive uses
and representation of ubiquitous products. Importantly, third‑space subjects
are subverting the socioeconomic and classed accessibility to information
regarding health and well‑being by freely reproducing information that
is reserved for those who can afford to purchase it. Finally, second‑order
consumption emerges as an alternative to first‑order consumption, and local
practices that resist corporatized mass culture are explored as third‑space
alternatives to the imperatives of late capitalism.
To conclude, the epilogue identifies the ways third‑space theory
can contribute to understanding multiply situated subjects, coalitional
subjectivity, and community education, literacies, and action. This chapter
advances the understanding of third‑space theory as well as third‑space
discursive and rhetorical practices that can contribute new knowledges at
the interstices of feminist, queer, and of‑color rhetorics, gender and queer
studies, cultural studies, and community literacies.
2
The Role of Imagination in

Challenging Everyday Dominations
Articulation at Work in Producing Antiracist
and Egalitarian Social Agendas
In her preface to This Bridge We Call Home: Radical Visions for Transformation,
Gloria Anzaldúa asserts that imagination “has the capacity to extend us
beyond the confines of our skin, situation, and condition” (5). Chandra
Mohanty, too, addresses the power and potential of imagination, suggesting
that the idea of an imagined community is important because it can move
individuals to “political coalitions woven together by the threads of opposition
to forms of domination” (47). I draw on these and other theorists’ work (and
in the following chapters focus more on the role of the decolonial imaginary)
to explore the pursuit and formation of coalitions and the circulation of
new perspectives and new knowledges in zines as third‑space sites. I propose
that coalitions are born of articulations, which may be considered expressive
and connective practices. Zines can be highly imaginative and connectional.
As a result of this nexus of imagination, connection, and politics, zines
are an excellent site for studying a certain kind of rhetoric, what I call
borderlands rhetorics, that belongs to third space. Third‑space sites as I am
proposing them throughout this work, are spaces in which the politics of
articulation are necessarily at play. The politics of articulation are expressed
in zines in which zinesters first imagine and then work to build coalitions
across contexts and in pursuit of social transformation that is predicated
27
on a radical democratics. By radical democratics I mean a participatory

and emancipatory politics reflected in conscious coalitions.1 There is much
to be learned about coalitional practices, especially in their potential to
propose new knowledges that serve a social justice agenda. Throughout this
chapter, I explore rhetorical operations as important parts of articulation
theory and practice.
Antiracist and of‑color zinesters often write of the everyday as a
racialized and racist context that holds coalitional potential. Many of these
zinesters identify boundaries of difference across which coalitions can be
imagined and consciously pursued. Importantly, the zines I focus on do not
work to conflate difference or pursue homogenized heterogeneity but instead
demonstrate how differences can stay intact in coalitional contexts. One
strategy identified in the of‑color zines and antiracist white zines I examined
is a resistance to color‑blindness and the color‑blind racism that it insidiously
reproduces.2 Importantly, zines often reveal an informed understanding of
the challenges of intersectional work, especially as they work to apply it
through the practices of articulation across local and global contexts to better
understand historic and ongoing experiences of exclusions and oppressions.3
In I Dreamed I Was Assertive, Celia Perez reflects on everyday contexts and
how saturated they are in racism. She notes that in her “whole secondary ed
program there were only two black students and one Latina (me)” (issue 2
n.p.). She discusses the public school where she teaches and the many ways
dominance and color‑blind racism are reproduced in the teachers’ lounge,
the classrooms, and the curriculum. Zinesters engage an understanding that
spaces and the social interactions that constitute them, and are constituted
by them, are imbued with racial meanings and racialized inclusions and
exclusions, at once symbolic, historic, and material.4
In its caption, “always and never the same,” the cover of Rubyfruit
Manifesto #2 calls readers to consider the mis/treatment of people as
mass productions of sameness while also calling readers to a sense of the
unpredictable by implying that people are always in the process of becoming
and in that process should be understood as never simply the same (see
Figure 2.1). In this example from Rubyfruit Manifesto #2, the zinester uses a
raw cut‑and‑paste visual to highlight the stark and inhumane reality of Nike
factory workers in Vietnam not earning a living wage (see Figure 2.2). In
asking readers to simply “think about it,” the zinester is assuming that the
issue of a living wage is obvious and that any thoughtful person would grasp
the magnitude of injustice in confronting how a transnational conglomerate
such as Nike can get away with such gross and mass exploitation. Though
the cut‑and‑paste style is informal with a sense of impromptu, especially
in its visual assemblages, this zinester also includes a relatively more formal
Figure 2.1. “she is always and never the same”—from Rubyfruit Manifesto #2, edited
by Tyrell Haberkorn.
Figure 2.2. “think about it”—from Rubyfruit Manifesto #2, edited by Tyrell

Haberkorn.
citation of the statistics that reflect the income disparities that sustain
opulence and abject poverty. This citational reference invites readers to
further investigate for themselves this issue in which they, as consumers,
are implicated. The visual and the discursive come together to address the
greed of consumer culture, support a sense of urgency around the need to
act as critically informed consumers, and to call for activism against unjust
labor practices. A sense of local and global responsibility, connectivity, and
transnational awareness is conveyed throughout this zine, especially in its
appeals to new and informed practices across shared affinities.
Blanca of Esperanza, December 2002, Issue #2, demonstrates a relatively
formal, academically informed understanding of intersectionality that
is then followed with specific examples of lived practices related to this
understanding in pursuit of an egalitarian social agenda. This zine articulates,
and is focused on, motherhood and community activism. Blanca proposes a
“womanifesto” written “in order to encourage and support the blossoming
of female friendship and community” (6). Such an expression reveals the
value of relationships and relational understanding that is often expressed
in zines. Before delineating her understanding of overlapping systems of
oppression, she first addresses the relationship between commodification,
corporatization, and the body and how such a relationship serves powerful
interests and harms women in the everyday. She proceeds through a critically
engaged act of disarticulation that acknowledges intersecting, if also fluid,
systems and practices of oppression. Specifically, she states that she will
“[r]efuse to engage in self‑loathing that corporations profit from and
perpetuate. Understand that ‘all forms of subordination are interlocking and
mutually reinforcing’ by using Mari Matsuda’s ‘other question’ technique:
‘when I see something racist, I ask, ‘Where is the patriarchy in this?’ When
I see something that looks sexist, I ask, ‘Where is the heterosexism in this?’
When I see something homophobic, I ask, ‘Where are the class interests
in this?” (6). In this passage, this zinester offers a guide for readers to
disarticulate interlocking structures of oppression and rearticulate social
structures and (discursive) practices in pursuit of social justice.5
As a demonstration of the coalitional consciousness that informs the
production of Esperanza, Blanca writes that “any trades I get that are racist,
sexist, homophobic or otherwise offensive get recycled in the city dumpster”
(inside cover). This editrix promises to send nothing but evil thoughts in
return for receiving such zines. Like many zinesters she calls for other
tradeworthy zines to engage in a kind of community dialogue to share
knowledge and promote connection among young mothers in particular.
Trading such zines is a mechanism of community education and community
building.
The Role of Imagination in Challenging Everyday Dominations / 31
In Bamboo Girl, Issue 6, Sabrina Margarita Sandata notes that she is

working to build community by hooking up or articulating the east and
west coasts, but she goes on to note that “if there’s anyone else out there
who lives in the boonies and in between, and needs fellow strong Asians to
speak with, definitely send in your shit (see below). We need all of you guys!
And when I say Asians, I mean the whole shebang! Yellow, brown, Near/Far/
North/East/South/West/everywhere Asians, Oceanic, Micronesia, Hawaiian,
us mutts in between the lines (or should I say, cultures?), and everyone else
I forgot to mention but am not leaving out purposely” (82–83).
Sandata writes of being inspired to pursue a pan‑Asian coalition and
in one entry titled “Calling All Asian Brothers and Sisters!” she clearly
reveals the coalitional consciousness that informs this zine’s production.
She notes that her call to organize is inspired by the history of organizing
in the black community. The act of calling on nondominant histories and
of identifying problems and possible solutions from within nondominant
community contexts is related to decolonizing methodologies that prioritize
such practices. Such practices are important to the politics of articulation
that inform of‑color coalitions struggling against related, if distinct and
multiple, oppressions. The understood responsibility to know and value one’s
history as well as those of Others is engaged as a commitment reiterated
across a number of feminist of‑color zines, including Slander, How to
Stage a Coup, Evolution of a Race Riot, and Borderlands: Tales from
Disputed Territories between Races and Cultures.6
Evolution of a Race Riot is a zine compiled by Mimi Nguyen and
contains writings that address classism, hetero/sexism, racism, and color‑blind
racism primarily in punk culture. Ultimately, Nguyen identifies punk as both
racist and hetero/sexist, and her writings turn toward conscious coalitions of
post‑punk feminists and queers‑of‑color. She, and other zinesters, question
how punk as a space that was supposed to challenge authority and promote
antiauthoritarian, antiestablishment, and antinationalist values could reproduce
race, gender, and sex hierarchies as well as participate in exclusions based on
race, gender, and sexuality. Nguyen has written for a number of zines, and
consistently practices a politics of articulation to build coalition for progressive
social change across local and transnational contexts. She considers feminist
and queer of‑color zines and their compiled bibliographies a networking tool
that can inform a politics of transformation for equity and justice.
In another of her zines, titled Slander, Nguyen chronicles her
relationship to the punk scene in the United States. Articulating an
anticorporate activism to feminist and queer politics, she writes of her lived
experiences with a collectively run record store and her collaborations for
the Epicenter Women’s Outreach Koalition (EWOK) for punk rock feminist
purposes. She notes that in the punk rock scene “there were the white boys
and their displays, pumping righteous vegan fists in the air.” Such protests
fall short of the change‑oriented practices Nguyen is herself involved in
and promotes in her writings. Throughout her writings, she advocates for
a coalitional approach to local ills, writing about such places and practices
as the “Mad Housers,” and teaching about the concept of essential shelter
as an alternative to the inhumane ways homeless people are treated in the
United States. She writes of being increasingly less involved in the punk
scene and notes that she continues to have “one foot planted firmly in
still‑hostile territory [of punk] but” that she is “far better armed, & less
believing. Much less. Much, much, much less” (n.p.).
Nguyen shares her own experience of everyday racism and articulates it
to the complex politics of tourism and the pursuit of empire. An issue that she
explores in some depth is that of tourism and travel. Specifically, she explores
how tourism as an industry is related to empire and empire building. In one
entry she reflects on the language of the frontier as non‑innocent, evoking
shades of both economic and territorial expansion and empire. She speaks of
tourism as implicated in the politics of global capitalism and as a representation
of “colonial nostalgia, a space of money, memory and amnesia. Imperialism
has ways of resurfacing” (n.p.). Her writings often investigate social change
movements for the ways in which they conflate or elide difference and/
or get commodified. Throughout, Nguyen critically investigates such social
movements and progressive practices for ways in which they might consciously,
or not, reproduce injustices, oppressions, and historical omissions particularly
through dominant narratives and national scripts across local and national
boundaries. She uses the space of the zines to enact critical reflections on
movements identified as liberatory while also effecting a kind of grassroots
community education and community literacy. Her zines then practice the
politics of articulation, thereby connecting not only communities but also issues
to promote a critically informed antiracist, antiglobalization, transnationally
aware agenda. Nguyen’s work engages in a critique of neoliberalism. It expresses
both a transnational and local perspective by actively articulating the local to
the global and by asking probing questions about the relationships between
race, class, gender, sexuality, citizenship, and nation.
In one entry regarding a review Mimi found of her zine, the
self‑identified white reviewer states that she “can’t relate” and feels bad about
that fact. Mimi considers writing to her to tell her that
maybe the point wasn’t for her to relate, but to challenge herself
to think more broadly, critically. Or maybe suggest that [she]
didn’t want her to relate, because she is not like her, and that
very real issues of race, class, and nation affect our sociality,
even in a supposedly “neutral” space like art, or punk, and that
we need to be aware of these things and take them seriously.
Nguyen concludes this entry with, “Then I realized that I’d already written
all these things in the zine she reviewed” (n.p.). Her conclusion expresses
what many of‑color zinesters, particularly in the U.S. punk scene, comment
on: how tired they are of making efforts to teach and explain and interrupt
everyday racism. Such experiences are often the motivation for the coalitions
they are proposing in these zines.
Nguyen’s Race Riot 2 is deeply theoretical while also being accessible,
as revealed by its authors’ commitments to valuing lived material truths,
engaging in everyday race talk, confronting everyday racism, and revisioning
everyday and other occluded histories.7 There is also an engagement with
whiteness that highlights and critiques the ways in which whiteness can
(but should not) reinsert itself as central in coalitional work. Importantly,
there is an understanding of the need to pursue coalitions that are primarily
identified as “of color” while understanding that antiracist whites can be part
of such coalitions. This understanding reflects a lived experience of the ways
in which social movements have served dominant interests and reinscribed
social subordinations. This zine identified the need to address racism in
many of the ways we might experience it. One entry in this zine begins
with an acknowledgment of the difficulty of remaining in the punk scene
when, all too often, one can count the of‑color participants. It discusses
the shortcomings of the U.S. punk movement particularly for women of
color. This zinester also considers the experience of overt and/or color‑blind
racism, sexism, and heterosexism in the punk scene.
In this issue there is a long and related rant that addresses the racism
and heterosexism in the punk scene. This zinester states that it is “disgraceful
that a person in this scene would stigmatize those who identify themselves as
a riot grrrl, a feminist, a queer or just a person who demands to be treated
with a little respect” (49). She concludes by asking, “Why aren’t these critics
as opinionated about racist or meat‑head bullies at shows? Think about it!”
(49). “Think about it” appears throughout a number of zines as a call to
become informed and active against social injustices.8
how to stage a coup, a zine by Helen Luu in Scarborough,
Ontario, offers yet another example of conscious awareness regarding
intersecting systems and practices of exclusion and oppression (see Figure
2.3). This zine offers in‑depth investigations into subcultural contexts that
reproduce rather than interrupt dominant social orderings. In “Unpunking,”
Luu, like Nguyen, identifies and questions the lack of diversity in punk
contexts. This inquiry informs most of the submissions in this zine. Luu
discusses the punk‑identified Antiracist Action group of “white punks
trying to combat racism” (n.p.). She begins her critique of the group by
articulating its androcentrism with its ethnocentrism, or what she calls its
“whitecentric” profile (n.p.). She notes that the ARA works to confront
blatant racism but ignores the quotidian experiences and expressions of
it, a matter of‑color zines take up. Her critique is based on the ignored
relationship between structures and institutionalized racist practices,
and the people who interact, perpetuate, and populate these structures
and institutions. Luu’s analysis highlights the problem of perpetuating a
myth of racism as only structural and therefore not also relational and
everyday. The problem with a strictly institutional definition of racism,
for Luu, is that it does not hold individuals responsible for participating
in institutions and institutional practices of racism. Luu concludes that
such an understanding of racism does not encourage or even allow for
necessary self‑reflection at the local/individual level. While questioning
why more people/punks of color are not active in the ARA, Luu also
critiques the action sometimes undertaken by whites on behalf of people of
color, noting that it feels “extremely paternal. As in, the poor and helpless
people of color needing the brave and mighty whites to come rescue us”
(n.p.). In keeping with the value that many feminist of‑color zinesters
promote in working from within, she notes that people of color welcome
“allies and supporters fighting with us but we need to be the one taking
the front lines. This, by the way, is for all oppressed groups—women,
those who are queer, disabled, poor, the list goes on” (n.p.). This quote
demonstrates a lived consciousness about both racism and (white) privilege
as well as their connections to queer politics. As another demonstration
of the conversations that are ongoing across academic and nonacademic
contexts, this zine applies critical theoretical discourses on whiteness,
power, privilege, and the production of norms to lived experience.
Throughout how to stage a coup, Luu expresses a coalitional
subjectivity. She self‑identifies as a ‘third world’ woman (n.p.). Investigating
the homogeneity of punk culture in the context of her status as a
working‑class immigrant, she makes connections between the relatively local
and oppressive practices she has identified within her own subcultures and
those more global and oppressive practices in society at large. She sees the
local in the global and the global in the local. Such a vision demonstrates
an interconnected understanding of systems of oppression as experienced
within regimes of race, nation, sexuality, and gender, which is key to the
strategies of resistance in this zine.
Figure 2.3. Cover of HOW TO STAGE A COUP: an insurrection of the underground

liberation army, from HOW TO STAGE A COUP, edited by Helen Luu.
Specifically, Luu reflects on the related experiences of hetero/sexism

and racism and efforts to express them that are met with disbelief.9 Luu
concludes that the disbelief of acts of everyday sexism and racism is
perpetuated through the myth that civil rights are everywhere established
and equitably in place. She states:
You know, it’s like when privileged white middle/upper class,

able‑bodied/able‑minded men whine about measures like
affirmative action and employment equity being “reverse
discrimination.” As if reverse discrimination can even exist in

a context where certain groups hold power and privilege over
others (not to mention the disturbing fact that the word “reverse”
implies that discrimination is abnormal when it happens to people
who hold power and privilege in society, and is only normal and
acceptable when it happens to the Other. (n.p.)
By arguing against the very notion of reverse discrimination, Luu offers a

structural understanding of the impossibilities of effective material reversals
in entrenched hierarchies. Luu also offers a materialist critique to articulate
and include class and ability in her discussion of power. She notes that
discrimination is perpetuated and enforced by a particular configuration
of power relations. Questioning the impossibility of reverse discrimination
is a self‑authorized act based both on lived experience and on an ability
to articulate her own understanding and experience to other contexts. The
politics of articulation are thus functioning in expressions of coalitional
consciousness and coalitional subjectivity as alliance‑building tactics and
strategies.
Lynn Hou, a contributor to how to stage a coup, self-identifies
as “queer, disabled, asian‑american” (n.p.). She reflects on “a dynamic and
complex dilemma in a subculture that supposedly accentuated this universal
concept of all punks being oppressed the same. just like the real world
frighteningly, punk was/still is this straight white boy hegemony” (n.p.).
She concludes with a call for “people of color” to form collectivities in
order to “see how we can make a difference in the punk scene, if not the
world” (n.p.). Hou acknowledges that practices of subordination are often
repeated in subcultural contexts. Naming these practices of division and
subordination is a step toward interrupting them. Articulating the local
and the global holds the potential to build a broad community base for
purposes of supporting coalitional action across contexts.
In addition to advocating for the need and the right to know
nondominant histories and heritages and acknowledging the racist
implications in the inaccessibility of such histories, particularly in educational
contexts, there is often a call in zines to educate about the rights of the
exploited and those who are otherwise disenfranchised. In Issue 9 of Bamboo
Girl, Sandata writes an entry titled “Know Your Rights as an Immigrant!”
for un/documented people living and working in the United States (20).10
This rant resulted from her lived experiences with the INS. The use of lived
experience to inform coalitional action—in this case to circulate information
about rights—is prevalent throughout the zines I considered.11
Bamboo Girl also demonstrates an understanding of the process and

implications of racism and racialization in local contexts in issue 11, which
focuses on women of color and mental health. It is meant to challenge the
taboo and interrupt the silence regarding mental health in communities
of color and working‑class communities. In an entry titled “Herbal Allies
for Crazy Girls” (Figure 2.4), Leah Lakshmi Piepzna‑Samarasinha reclaims
her right to share knowledge based on her own experiences: “I don’t got
any fancy letters after my name. . . . I’m a girl who’s been crazy who
has been studying herbs for about ten years now on my own” (37). This
author’s understanding of medicinal herbs, based on her own experiences,
legitimates and validates lived experience as valuable and informative.
Piepzna‑Samarasinha’s entry articulates lived experience with traditional
practices and indigenous knowledges, especially as they address well‑being
and proliferate information, knowledge, and lived literacies that pertain to
health and well‑being in community contexts.
Figure 2.4. “HerBaL aLLIes FOR crazy Grls”—from Bamboo Girl #11, edited by
Sabrina Margarita Sandata.
Strategically, Bamboo Girl uses visual representations of each herb

Piepzna‑Samarasinha comments on to include both the common name as
well as the botanical name. Such a strategy demonstrates deep knowledge
about, and an informed approach to, the healing herbs being discussed.
Tactically, however, Piepzna-Samarasinha quickly distances herself from the
medical establishment by noting that she has no fancy title but relies instead
on lived experience and on practiced and learned traditional knowledges. She
notes that her qualifications include being “a girl who’s been crazy” and who
has been “studying herbs for about ten years” on her own. Searching for and
finding answers from within, Bamboo Girl demonstrates many such examples
of resistance to exclusionary practices that rely solely or even primarily
on expert and therefore authorized knowledge. Expert and authorized
knowledges in this zine are understood as unaffordable and otherwise
inaccessible. They are also understood as potentially pathologizing through
the production of norms that would render a “crazy girl” an unauthorized
and illegitimate source of knowledge. Legitimations and validations of
lived knowledges are third‑space strategies and tactics that also promote
community and grassroots literacies. This zine works to consciously imagine
and reconfigure community and community agendas that value accessibility
to information and community education based on lived experiences.
Issue 11 of Bamboo Girl, which is identified as a post-9/11 zine,
addresses the misrepresentations imposed through scapegoating and
stereotyping (see Figure 2.5). The back cover of this zine focuses on a
photograph taken of a sidewalk spray‑painted with the words “Please Don’t
Attack Other Americans.” The editrix of this zine, Sabrina Margarita Sandata,
notes how 9/11 has led to dangerous expressions of patriotism that are
feeding into a culture of fear and allowing for the profiling of brown people,
referred to throughout this zine as “brothers and sisters.”12 Sandata’s point
of view is historically informed, race conscious, community‑oriented, and
coalitional. Moreover, “brown” in this zine is a named coalitional ambiguity
that is deployed strategically to build community and forge coalition across
borders of difference.13 One entry reproduces a poster stating “Not In Our
Name! Women of Color AGAINST WAR” (45) (see Figure 2.6). A caption
encourages readers to hang the slogan “on your computer at work. Surely to
impress the powers that be. Exercise your goddess right! Unless of course, it
gets you fired” (45). Labor practices are called into question through a call
to subvert, where possible, the capitalist imperative regarding work space as
somehow not also the space of activism and resistance, particularly, in this
instance, resistance against the post‑9/11 fear‑based discrimination is related
to Islamophobia and the persecution of brown people.
Figure 2.5. “NO RACIST SCAPEGOATING”—from Bamboo Girl #11, edited by
Sabrina Margarita Sandata, and Design Active Collective, illustrator.
Figure 2.6. “NOT IN OUR NAME”—from Bamboo Girl #11, edited by Sabrina
Margarita Sandata, and Favianna Rodriguez, illustrator.
Not all zinesters experience the same potential through “brown” as

an expressed code for coalition; this discussion is also taken up in some
academic spheres. As jackie notes in her zine, Memoirs of a Queer Hapa #2,
“the vision of a United States consisting of ‘shades of brown’ that we began
with is not so much a vision of pluralism as it is a vision of homogeneity
or sameness, or a ‘flattening’ of difference under a unified national identity.
The vision offered to us by the example of the ‘queer hapa’ is a vision of
difference without reductionism, and a belief in the possibility of creative
identity construction rather than being forced—by a normalizing culture
and national discourse—to adopt a prefabricated identity” (14). There is,
of course, not always consensus in of‑color zines about the rhetorics of self-
and other‑representation, but there is evidence of productive dialogues about
distinctions and contestations. Third‑space zinesters often explicitly note that
the language they have access to is steeped in dominant ideology. These
same zinesters state that they will continue to look for and propose more
equitable discourses but that, in the meantime, they resist all that serves to
silence and invisibilize them. As jackie notes at the end of another issue of
Memoirs of a Queer Hapa, “difference” is invoked to describe “everything
that is not white and heterosexual” (n.p.). “The term is often used with
good intentions, but is problematic in that the inscribed meaning reproduces
the idea that everything that is not white and heterosexual is not normal.
Although I did use the term, I put it in quotes to show that I was using it
somewhat sarcastically” (23). She knows that to speak of “difference” is to
reify normativity.14 While she creatively and critically continues to develop
a language that expresses difference outside of the normative/nonnormative
dichotomy, she qualifies her language with quotations as a visual cue that
she is calling such words as “difference” into question.
Though distinct in their discourses, both Bamboo Girl and Memoirs
of a Queer Hapa address third‑space activism in the everyday. Returning
to Bamboo Girl, the call for agitation in mundane contexts is made with
the understanding that one is differently constricted in different material
contexts. This third‑space understanding demonstrates the ways lived
contradictions are understood and navigated in the everyday. In this zine,
it is a given that some people will be able and willing to be visible and
vocal regarding their political resistance while others will not. What is
noteworthy is that the two identified populations are understood as able
to form coalitions that will, at different times and in different ways, resist
discriminatory practices. In much the same way that I am suggesting a
spectrum of zines in terms of critical consciousness, it is worth noting that
this example, too, demonstrates a kind of spectrum of third‑space tactics
and strategies, from radical resistances and agitations at one end to the
relatively more passive approaches at the other end.
Sandata’s reflections on racist naming practices are another example
of navigating lived contradictions. She reflects on her own reentry into
school to study “Traditional Oriental Medicine,” noting that, for her, the
term Oriental should be reserved for referencing a rug. Demonstrating a
third‑space understanding of the realities of living with contradictions,
she states that she will wait to take on this issue of such racist naming
practices after her studies are completed. Throughout each issue of Bamboo
Girl are disarticulations and rearticulations that demonstrate a developed
and deployed coalitional consciousness and commitment to community
representation, education, and outreach—all elements of third‑space and
borderlands rhetorical practices.
In another instance of the politics of articulation and borderlands
rhetorics as representing third‑space understanding and coalitional
consciousness, an interview titled “Samira (Un)Veiled” in Bamboo Girl #11,
describes Samira Ali Gutoc as
a spirited Muslim‑Filipina [and] law student at the Arellano

University School of Law . . . A cultural hybrid, [who] openly
discusses the intersections of her identity—on being born and
raised Filipina in Saudi Arabia, getting in touch with Muslim
identity and culture during the early part of her move to the
Philippines, articulating Islam with feminism as well as the
feminist implications of keeping her veil on—and relating these
with her commitment as a journalist to take Muslim struggles,
youth perspectives, cultural diversity and women’s stories to
the mainstream. She’s both a fighter and a pop culture junkie.
(Villacorta 47)
This passage offers a third‑space representation and understanding of

third‑space lived experiences as produced and as productive. Through a
borderlands rhetoric a young, Muslim Filipina activist is introduced through
a representation not available in mainstream media. In offering a third‑space
representation of what it means to be both Muslim and Filipina, readers
are confronted with a multiply positioned coalitional subject who, through
this representation, is made understandable and knowable.15 She becomes
someone with whom to build coalitions across her own lived and embodied
experiences, which are located beyond a strict binary to reveal third space
through both/and consciousness and lived material realities. She refuses to
collapse or obscure any part of herself in order to fit a more tidy definition
of self‑identity.
A commonality in many of the zines I am considering is a clear
understanding of the force and function of normative and normativizing
discourses. Letters to the editor, responding to the multiplicity of issues
raised in Bamboo Girl #11, are reproduced in the midsection of this
zine. One letter writer acknowledges the “veil of invisibility” Filipina/os
have lived under for far too long (79). The writer expresses a theoretical
and quotidian understanding of racism based on lived experience. She
demonstrates a multivoiced perspective and a kind of code switching as
third‑space practice that acts between dominant and nondominant discursive
practices, expectations, and terrains. Such discursive practices are certainly
related to code switching but can be messier and as much about words as
they are about concepts. For example, the “Angst Column” is written with
third‑space consciousness (83). Titled “How Filipino/Pilipino Are You?” the
essay begins with the question: “Who is anybody to tell you you’re not
‘enough’ of anything?” (83). This entry embodies a third‑space conscious
understanding of “authenticity,” “purity,” and “legitimacy” as subordinating
and alienating myths. The author is aware that these myths need to be
shattered by a conscious understanding of what it means to embody and
live the messiness of multiplicity. Demonstrating an awareness of the ways
borders can not only divide but inauthenticate subjects, the author asks what
it means to be a real or true Filipino (my emphasis). She describes grappling
with the taunts that she was not “Filipino enough,” “feminine enough,”
“queer enough,” or even “dark enough” (83). Such personal reflections are
a borderlands rhetorical expression of both the lived experience of both/and
as well as its coalitional potential. The “table of contempts” of Bamboo Girl,
#8, is a playful discursive expression of the zinester’s dissatisfaction with the
injustices in society and it lists articles, essays, and other contributions (3).
Third space is revealed to be a shared space of understanding here, and as
such, it is often a component in the politics of articulation.
In Blowin’ Chunxx 5, a Native American zine, an entry titled “Anarchy
in Action” posits the importance of space in its relational and coalitional
potential. This zine makes a spatialized appeal to coalition that is meant to
redress historic displacement, cultural appropriation, and commodification.
The zinester states that she is attempting a coalition through “a geographical
reality, however, small or fragile, that does not exist on the map of mass
consumption and malaise” (n.p.). This zinester goes on to say that 404 Willis
(a not‑for‑profit gathering space) is a place where “we translate critique into
action and explore prospects for real freedom through non‑alienated daily
Figure 2.7. “Bamboo Girl”—from Bamboo Girl #11, edited by Sabrina Margarita
Sandata.
interaction; a place where we go to live, if only for brief moments, as if

the circle was not broken; a place where we can experience the fulfillment
of mutual desire and imagine a life where our dreams are not colonized”
(n.p.). In an example of the related practices of articulation this zinester
explains that “[e]very Sunday 404 engages in direct response to the war
on the poor . . . by distributing free coffee, clothes, and vegetarian food”
(n.p.). There is a developed class‑consciousness revealed through a call to
move beyond the punk scene and anarchist community. There is also a call
to conscious consumption regarding infamous punk rocker G. G. Allin,
who, according to this zine, “thinks brutalizing women is cool” (n.p.). The
entry continues, “We think he sucks. Boycott G. G. Allen” (n.p.). The calls
to action in this zine reveal not only an informed, coalitional consciousness
but a politics of articulation that brings together Native American youth,
zinesters, post‑punkers, feminists, anarchists, and activists against neoliberal
dominations as well as against misogyny, racism, classism, homophobia,
and xenophobia.
In Bamboo Girl #1, there is a two-page entry articulating racism,
classism, and lesbian sexuality. It addresses the “Lesbian Avengers,” whose
group split over issues some members had with experienced racism and
feelings of being silenced and otherwise erased from group discussions,
decisions, and practices (23–24). These experiences, in turn, inform the

practice and politics of disarticulation and coalition as articulated in the
zine, eventually contributing to a consciousness of race, sexuality, and class
that catalyzes the formation of a new and highly class‑conscious coalition
known as CITYAXE. According to literature of CITYAXE reproduced in
this zine: “The lesbians of color and working class lesbians of CITYAXE
are not presuming to speak for all lesbians of color, and all working class
lesbians, but we do speak as lesbians of color, and working class lesbians,
and we demand respect for our knowledge of our own racial, ethnic and
class identities just as we do for our lesbian identities” (24). This newly
formed coalition is dedicated to “instigating and organizing multicultural,
multiracial activism by and for New York lesbians” (n.p.).
The entry by members of CITYAXE recognizes the difficulty inherent in
coalitional practices and demonstrates the diverse intersections of third‑space
subjectivity, which reveal the importance of forging coalitions across borders
of difference, including those of race, class, and sex. This zine manifests
itself as a decolonized, third‑space site reminiscent for me of Sandoval’s
decolonized cyberspace “in which alternative realities provide individuals
and communities increased and novel means of communication, creativity,
productivity, mobility, and a different sense of ‘control’ ” (136). Insight
into the challenges, including the failures, of activist groups attempting
cohesion through intersectionality and diversity is instructive and hopeful.
Letters and comments are posted throughout this zine in order to create and
sustain dialogue. Third‑space, borderlands rhetorics clearly work, in part,
through repeated and politically charged calls for intersectional approaches
to coalition. These calls are often founded on antinormative discourses and
explicitly queered practice.
The fact that how to stage a coup issued a call for
submissions to Indian Attack, a then newly forming zine that boasted a
circulation of “1500,” exemplifies the cross‑community dialogue and the
coalitional practices of‑color zines are engaged in (n.p.). The call suggests
a commitment to building connections and even coalitions through the
pursuit of questioning dominant historical record, new knowledges and
the production of alternative histories. This zine includes a reprinted article
by Mike Alexander titled “Redefining ‘Justice’—creating alternatives to the
canadian ‘just us’ system” (n.p.). The rhetorical choice to deploy the concept
of justice as “just us” demonstrates a strategic awareness of the criminalizing
of certain communities as well as of the exclusionary and subjective historical
practices and applications of justice in racialized societies. Such a rhetorical
move opens a space for the contested histories and spatialized social practices
that Massey describes as stories‑so‑far; this space allows for contradictory

histories to commingle, to circulate, and to be critically considered across
contexts.
Community Scribes: Lived and Relational Knowledges

and Community Literacies
Community literacies16 are born of lived experiences and are a valued part
of cultural reconfigurations emerging in many zines.17 Due to the valuing of
lived experiences and the potential to generate and circulate not only new
perspectives but also new knowledges, community literacies are implicated
in the politics of articulation as practiced in third‑space reconfigurations.
These reformations are sites and discourses of third‑space activist subjects
whose experiences are understood to be valid and valuable in the production
and consideration of knowledges.
Third‑space zines reflect an (emergent) coalitional consciousness
that informs, and is informed by, practices and performances of resistance
to deficit‑driven understandings of circulating literacies. It is made up
of oppositional technologies and differential practices, relations, and
understandings that allow for, and pursue, “the pleasure[s] of regeneration
in . . . chiasmatic borderlands” (Haraway 1992 306). As countercultural,
third‑space sites, the zines I have studied offer fertile ground for exploration
of the politics, practices, and transformative potentials of tactical groupings
informed by a radical democratic politics and a community agenda of social
justice.18 Code b(l)ending, strategic coalitions, and resistance to identified
mechanisms of social control emerge as tools and tactics of coalition and
change. Coalitions emerge from the relational politics of identity in motion
that are always implicated in the practices of articulation considered here.19
In Memoirs of a Queer Hapa #2, jackie invites readers to copy and
distribute her zine freely: “Copy‑Left! Reproduce and distribute freely!”
(n.p.). Such an invitation holds the potential to promote grassroots
literacies and community education, and also exemplifies how third‑space
lived practice can subvert normalized and dominant capitalist imperatives.
Another example of a zine that deploys a coalitional consciousness toward
the goal of building and educating community is Housewife Turned Assassin!,
Numero #1, a zine reproduced in North Hollywood, California. It includes
pages on “*stuff 2 read*” with a call to “put your mind 2 work. sit your
ass & read a book” (n.p.). Another page in this zine is headed “Read
and Think” and reproduces a page from “Marlene Fried & Loretta Ross’
pamphlet ‘Reproductive freedom: our right to decide’ ” (n.p.). This pamphlet

begins with the fist of resistance in the center of the symbol for woman
and says: “In whatever sphere of activism we choose—education, agitation,
inspiration, legislation—whether we are building organizations or creating
alternative structures and communities of resistance, we must trust in our
ability to find answers from our own lives” (n.p.). By including this page the
zine editor sends a message to readers that personal reflection is a valuable
tool and necessary exercise in coming to coalitional consciousness and action.
The message reveals how the valuing of one’s story and its application to
a broader context are activist and political acts with consequences for the
greater community.
Narratives deployed in zines offer everyday voices and counter‑stories
from third spaces and third‑space subjectivities that can be instructive about
and disruptive to dominant discourses.20 Voices becoming audible and spaces
becoming visible are both part of a process that can aid in developing
borderlands rhetorical tactics and strategies that describe and make meaning of
individual and collective realities, especially those based on lived experiences.21
As Lugones notes, a “crucial aspect of the streetwalker theorizing is to uncover,
consider, learn, pass on knowledge of the multiple tools of tactical strategists in
having deep spatio‑temporal insight into the social” (225). More importantly,
these insights from multiply‑situated subjects can contribute to the refutation
and revisioning of colonial histories that have obscured and silenced shared,
and yet diverse, lived experiences and community knowledges. Narratives
in zines provide insight into third‑space practices, relationships, contested
(material) histories, and discourses in their cultural contexts.
Naming practices and resignifications emerge as important to the
reproduction of knowledges, the circulation of information, and the
building of community. In Pure Vamp, Gretchen reflects on the name
of her zine and her motivation for writing it. She, too, expresses a
coalitional subjectivity stating that she wanted to “make it phor sistas,
kinda nonboysnotantiboys . . . I wanted it to relate to wimmin. I wanted
it to represent what they think of us. Heartless, manipulating, deceiving. I
wanted it to represent me. Vampires sucking the life outta u, kinda sounds
like what we live thru everyday.” She notes on this same page that “in an
11th grade classroom survey, when asked how Lady Macbeth is similar to
a woman of the 90’s majority of boys and one girl described her as being
a heartless whore, manipulating, & deceiving.” Gretchen’s reflections on
normativized representations of women in dominant contexts is one of
resistance, resignification, and reclamation. She identifies the stereotypical
depictions and misinterpretations of women within and beyond literary
contexts. She describes how it feels in the everyday to be associated with

these depictions as a result of her gender and sexuality. Through a dissident
performance she resignifies and subverts the notion of good girls or ladies as
always and only virginal and passive. Borderlands rhetorics in zines such as
this one function to identify, resist, and even disarticulate the social controls
that are exerted through the production of norms and serve to subordinate,
dominate, or otherwise exclude.
In Alien, [c r]apøl[a] #1, for example, the zine’s creator, Witknee,
explains why she chose the title of her zine, stating simply “i feel . . . very
alienated.” In a discursive and tactical move to interrupt and disarticulate
the alienating components of the assembled mechanisms of power Witknee
confronts, she notes:
to understand how ignorant and clueless my parents, i’ll give

you a small example: we were walking down the street and we
walked past a homeless man and my dad turns to me and the
step‑monster saying they deserve to be homeless cos it’s their
fault they can’t find a job and a place to stay. now it is quite
ironic cos my dad was of the many people who support ronald
mcregan closing down all the mental institutions and leaving
all the patients homeless. oh how i love america, and my dad
too. (n.p.)
In this passage, Witknee describes the effects of the powerful norms that
are produced through the articulated relationships between family, nation,
patriarchy, government, mental institutions, and corporations. The sarcasm
with which she ends this passage speaks to what she experiences as the absurd
representation of America as a land of equal opportunity. It also demonstrates
an understanding of the relationship, and relational practices, between nation
and patriarchy. Her critique serves as a discursive interruption to the rhetoric
of blame that is associated with those in poverty. Her reflections throughout
this zine discursively disarticulate the connections that perpetuate systems,
structures, and practices of entrenched and normalized inequality. What
this passage reveals is that disarticulation is a process in which zines and
zinesters engage in very savvy ways. Third‑space consciousness informs this
process that can begin to be identified in many zinesters’ personal reflections
as necessary to new articulations and proposed action.
Alien, no. too, Witknee’s second issue, includes “AN OPEN LETTER
TO ALL MEN,” in which she states that she is not “anti‑man” but
“pro‑womyn” (n.p.). In this letter she succinctly details the ways patriarchal
practices pervade life. She discusses and deploys strategies of disarticulation

through a critically engaged consciousness that moves her to question the
taken‑for‑grantedness of patriarchy and androcentrism. She begins,
i live in ur world. i live in a society based on HE, HIS,

MAN . . . i have always been taught to care what U think
of ME (US); whether it by looks and/or actions. All of OUR
magazines are centered around U—how U feel about our clothes,
hair, weight, and even the way WE THINK. . . . i’ve been force
fed UR HISTORY, UR philosophies, UR discoveries, and UR
pleasures. UR WHITE MALE government controls OUR bodies,
OUR choices, Our life. (n.p.)
In its questioning of dominance and the ill effects of a gendered, subordinating,

and exclusionary history, this passage, too, reveals the process of disarticulation
and its relationship to the development of a critical consciousness that is
part of a pattern in many of the zines I studied. This process represents
a vital component in practices of disarticulation. This questioning that
resists normalized discourses, cultural practices, privilege, and entitlement
is followed by a call to other zinesters to collaboratively uncover alternative
representations of histories and knowledges. Resistance in zines comes into
view through a politics of disarticulation and rearticulation that promotes
and pursues a reimagined world based on a radical democratic politics and
a community agenda of social justice. Zinesters sometimes begin the process
of disarticulation through the investigation of their own privileges.
fantastic fanzine: s is for sorry is a zine out of Arlington, Virginia, written
by erika. It begins with reflections about “systems of domination” and their
implications for the local and the global (n.p.). erika identifies the politics of
articulation as pursued through writing as a resistant and subversive act with
community‑building potential: “i feel like writing this stuff is something i can
do that is really necessary if we want to bring all this ‘political shit’ together
in a way that we can struggle for the end of domination on a global level
but in our own lives too” (n.p.). She begins her reflections by commenting
on Leonard Peltier, who was convicted for the murders of FBI agents due to
his affiliation with and leadership of the American Indian Movement (AIM)
and then continues with reflections on the implications and prevalence of
(assumptions of ) monogamy in heterosexual relationships. She follows these
entries with reflections on a sex‑positive approach and a redefined erotics
that interrupt normative prescriptions for pleasure and any predetermined
objects of desire. What appear to be at first glance random thoughts turn
out to be a savvy recognition of the ways norms and related dominant

cultural practices are articulated to serve and reproduce what she identifies as
a heteronormative social order that is exclusionary, divisive, and oppressive.
She states for example that “lately i’ve been trying to weave things together
and i use my own experiences to try and understand or actually explain
things like colonization and CYCLES OF ABUSE. i know it’s not all the
same but it’s all connected” (n.p.). Throughout her zine, erika identifies and
disarticulates these disciplining cultural formations.22 These zines together
begin to constitute a spectrum that can broadly represent the principles
and potentials of critical, third‑space consciousness as intersectional and as
necessarily informing coalitional work.
Throughout the zine, how to stage a coup, there is a generalized
call to join a national “Refuse & Resist” action group (n.p.). The call is
aimed at promoting a critical community literacy, and is made next to
an insert from the group’s “Real World Dictionary.” This dictionary, itself
promoting a kind of community literacy, defines “The War on Crime” by
articulating it with a “New World Order” and “war on drugs” and offering
alternative definitions for readers to consider, in their words:
1. A war on African‑American and Latino communities and poor

people in general (with a particular focus on criminalizing Black
and Latino youth and scapegoating immigrants). 2. Deceptive
phraseology used to promote the idea that problems in society
are caused by “a lack of family values, mothers on welfare, day
laborers on street corners, youth labeled gang members, and
immigrants”; blaming the victims of economic exploitation and racist
oppression, rather than Amerikkka’s white‑supremacist, reactionary
socioeconomic policies 3. Police‑state measures designed to contain
the fallout from continued exploitation and oppression of the
people by the U.S. government ex. a) Clinton’s Crime Bill b) 3
strikes you’re out c) Boot camps for juvenile offenders d) 100,000
more cops e) Militarizing the border between the U.S. and Mexico
f ) 47 new death penalty crimes g) “Community‑based” policing
(police‑based communities) h) “Constitutional” sweeps of public
housing i) building new prisons j) Closed‑circuit television/traffic
signals. Don’t believe the hype! Join with Refuse & Resist and
beat back this attack on the people. (n.p.)
The consistent use of the term “Amerikkka” is a form of code b(l)ending

in that it deploys a discursive tactic recognized by many in marginalized
communities as a reminiscent of the fact that race continues to be an

organizing principle in social hierarchies and power relations. In utilizing
this nondominant code, this zine demonstrates a historic awareness and
contextualization of the racism experienced in community contexts. This
zine identifies other radical sites of resistance with which to build coalitions.
It also exemplifies a Foucauldian understanding of the structures, systems,
and apparatuses of social control. For example, on a page dedicated to
ongoing struggles in East Timor, one zinester writes that the East Timorese
“find small comfort in the pretense of U.N. support. (And why not? After
all, it means a whole new market for their buddies in Big Business.)” (n.p.).
The border‑crossing pursuits of new perspectives and new knowledges
circulated to inform, educate, and call to action that I have outlined here
are in keeping with Chris Atton’s proposal that alternative media (in this
instance zines) have created new spaces for other voices that provide a
focus for specific community interests as well as those that are contrary
and subversive. My focus is on the participatory nature of these media
and particularly how participation is imagined and reconfigured, as well
as who is included and what is getting proposed, produced, addressed,
and/or accomplished. Some zine articles exemplify multidimensional and
creative borderlands rhetorics as rhetorics of resistance, coalition, community
education, and activism. Others reflect critical borderlands rhetorics that
propose new perspectives and speak the personal in order to enter into
dialogue with a created (virtual) community, generate new knowledges, and
pursue new articulations. Efforts at community education reveal the lived
literacies I have identified and how they can be applied.
In Queer Latinidad: Identity Practices, Discursive Spaces, Juana María
Rodriguez acknowledges the code switching that goes on in queered Latina
spaces between quotidian language, or what she calls street vernacular, and
political theoretical discourse. She invites us to “reimagine the practice of
knowledge production” as it is undertaken in these contexts (3). Code
switching blurs the boundaries between legitimate/illegitimate and proper/
improper discourses that for many zinesters conjure third spaces both
on the page and subsequently in the minds of readers. The reciprocal
relationship that exists between borderlands rhetorics and third spaces as
mutually constitutive can ultimately reveal a lived and valued community
literacy that is characterized by remarkable practices and intricacies of code
switching and creative code b(l)ending deployed by zinesters as community
scribes to resist dominant power structures while also generating local and
global discourses and knowledges as well as building community through
affiliational practices.
Code Switching and the Identification of One An‑Other

So, if you really want to hurt me, talk badly about my language. . . . I am
my language. Until I can take pride in my language, I cannot take pride
in myself. . . . I will no longer be made to feel ashamed of existing. I will
have my voice: Indian, Spanish, white. I will have my serpent’s tongue—
my woman’s voice, my sexual voice, my poet’s voice. I will overcome the
tradition of silence.
—Gloria Anzaldúa, “How to Tame a Wild Tongue,”
Borderlands/La Frontera (81)
Code switching can be a change in language or in language in/

formality within a given context. Code switching between English and
Spanish is used in a zine titled Calico, #5 as a community‑building and
information‑circulating tactic to call for volunteers to eliminate illiteracy.
Issue 5 begins with “Listen Up! ¡Escuchan!” (9). In comic‑like text bubbles
affixed to a collage of 1950s‑era black and white ad photos, a group of
adult, white and seemingly middle‑class men and women are made to
ask and answer the question “How Does Illiteracy Affect Me?” (9). The
responses to this question include statistics about the cost of illiteracy and
its ill effects across a number of social locations and experiences, including
poverty, crime, discrimination, interrupted productivity, and challenges to
family and employment (see Figure 2.8).
This zine is deploying 1950s images that even today continue to circu‑
late as the expression of modernity and progress as well as the representation
of what it looks like and apparently means to be an American in order to
disrupt the continued dominant assumptions of these representations. As J.
Anthony Blair argues in “The Rhetoric of Visual Arguments,” in the same
way that rhetorical arguments include enthymemes, so, too, do images as
they also produce a kind of visual rhetorical argument, composed of miss‑
ing parts or gaps, that call an audience to actively fill in those gaps. Blair’s
visual enthymemes are rhetorical devices and strategies that are implicated
in the disruptions of dominant social orderings that zines accomplish. By
using visual representations of white middle‑class men and women to ques‑
tion their own role in the presence and re-production of illiteracy and by
identifying and articulating the multiple dimensions and related complexi‑
ties of illiteracy as a community problem, the artificial divisions so often
sustained in the name of (maintaining) a given social order are resisted. The
action‑oriented, coalition‑building approach being performed here subverts
these taken‑for‑granted and therefore normalized or naturalized divisions
Figure 2.8. “Listen Up! ¡Escuchan!”—from Calico, #5
and potentially interrupts the ideology that illiteracy is a problem located

solely on the individual; using the accessible aesthetics of zine culture, it
presents illiteracy as a shared problem across lines of race, class, and gender
that must be addressed through action on multiple political and cultural
fronts.
Code switching as an act of solidarity, communication, and coalition
is evident in a number of zines. It reveals an alternative, mixed discourse
that can speak an ambiguity that resonates with third‑space subjects.
Third‑space tactics and borderlands rhetorics are often comprised of code
switching or bilingualism as a means of representing lived experiences and
thereby resisting the limits of dominant discourses. Code switching can be

a change in language within a given context. Those who are able to follow
and generate the same switched codes understand and are able to identify
(with) one another. Code switching is identified in dominant contexts as
illegitimate, impure, improper, and therefore invalid.23 As a practice, code
switching demonstrates a commitment to the value of lived experience and
the validity and import of the (allegedly) impure in nondominant contexts.24
The performed and discursive acts of resistance in the zine ¡Mamasita!, Issue
One, begin with an act of code switching as evident in both the zine’s
title and the grammatical markings that surround it: namely, the inverted
exclamation point preceding the title is a visual cue that this zine emanates
from and circulates within nondominant linguistic and cultural contexts
because this exclamation point is regularly used in Spanish language texts
but not in English language texts (see Figure 2.9).
Figure 2.9. “. . . YOU’RE GOING TO HAVE TO FIGHT ME FIRST”—from

¡Mamasita!, Issue One, edited by Bianca Ortiz.
Third spaces are exposed and explored throughout this zine. Even the
space between childhood and adulthood becomes a new space for questioning
expertise and authority as potentially repressive. Issue 1 also questions the
role of rules in artistic expression. To the zinesters at ¡Mamasita!, rules
express an authority that should be questioned as they limit and oppress
imagination, expression, and (artistic) representation. In an unnumbered
issue, one ¡Mamasita! zinester questions the mainstream information that
reproduces taken‑for‑granted assumptions in authorized spaces, such as
dictionaries. She argues that normalized word pairings such as “big and
stupid” and “skinny and pretty” are part of dichotomous discourse that
reproduces hierarchy and inequity through (veiled) subordination (n.p.).
This identification of discursive practices that sustain subordination and
oppression is another borderlands rhetorical tactic that works as an implicit
argument for third space produced by the subversion of false dichotomies.
Throughout ¡Mamasita! this strategy is used to reconsider dominant
language practices as impositions of power that reproduce the status quo.
In using this strategy of highlighting discursive practices that sustain false
hierarchies and other third‑space tactics, this zine begins to dismantle the
imposed limitations to dichotomous and neatly oppositional and therefore
subordinating dominant discourses.
Bamboo Girl also uses code switching and bilingualism as a coalitional
strategy. In issue 8 it calls for an engaged activism with articulated Others.
One entry is based on a political flyer that the author acquired at “the festival
of resistance,” and it depicts a political slogan/logo naming the “coalición
por los derechos humanos de los inmigrantes/coalition for human rights
of immigrants” (55). Articles throughout this issue call for community
action based on pursued coalitions and circulate information regarding
community resources. Titles that reveal interventions into taken‑for‑granted
assumptions, a commitment to grassroots literacies, and a call to coalitional
action include “rally against street beat sweatshops,” “calling all asian brothers
and sisters,” “working our world by painting it,” “Interview with Dr. Zieba
Shorish‑Shamley: Director of Women’s Alliance for Peace and Human Rights
in Afghanistan (WAPHA),” (3) and “resource list for puerto rican political
prisoners and prisoners of war” (26). Other titles that reflect this third
space as both a location and as a practice are “the acculturation of Asiatic
tattoos by non‑asians” (18), “married & queer” (44), and “being ‘a person of
color’ at rutgers freshman orientation” (75). Bamboo Girl reports on acts of
injustice that identify shared oppressions and exclusions as experiences that
can promote collective action. One such report is titled “southern justice
prevails: black panther activist returned to solitary confinement” (27).
Bamboo Girl #1 is written for “brown” women in pursuit of coalition

across differences to challenge practices and notions of color‑blindness and
its ill effect of conflating difference with sameness.25 Sandata begins her zine
by using both English and Tagalog in her greeting. The borderlands rhetoric
that follows defines her reasons for creating the zine, stating that she has
“always been a little perturbed by the fact that nobody sees ethnic chics in
the hardcore [punk] scene [but she knows] they exist, because [she’s] one
of them. [She’s] a Filipina/Spanish/Irish mestiza of sorts [who has] always
wanted to express [her] frustration toward racist assholes who think that the
hardcore scene in the US belongs to the white middle‑class boyz alone” (1).
The goal is to break from the tyranny of the practices that zinesters have
experienced as alienating over time. In the lives of many zinesters, these social
networks even in subcultural contexts can be mechanisms of control and
discipline that need to be subverted and reimagined.26 Borderlands rhetorics
resist and reveal the active obfuscation and exclusions Sandata discusses. This
first issue of Bamboo Girl offers critical reflections on the lack of diversity
and gender equity in punk and other subcultural contexts. Further evidence
of a coalitional consciousness is revealed in an entry that chronicles the
coalitional efforts of different community groups. The submissions throughout
this zine exemplify the multidimensional and creative discursive approaches
to resistance, coalition, community activism, and third‑space representation.
In i dreamed i was assertive #3 winter/spring 2000, Celia Perez begins
with a bilingual introduction of her cover image of Frida Kahlo. She
considers the different receptions/meanings Frida has on either side of the
Mexico/U.S. border and concludes asking if people in the United States
“know how much she disliked america?” In one entry, Celia questions why
she feels that people don’t (want to) hear her. She describes having given
her family a zine she wrote for them at Christmas in which she reflected
on race, class, and family and her “feelings about living between worlds,
as a first‑generation American and as a quasi‑middle class, college‑educated
person who spends most of her time among white people” (n.p.).27 She later
comments about having written about her feelings like an outsider among
Latinos and whites and how those feelings seemingly offended her white
father‑in‑law. Her writing leads her to reflect on the effects and experiences
of color‑blind racism. She notes the silencing effects she experienced in
knowing that her father‑in‑law did not want her to write about being ill
at ease particularly among whites:
I feel incredibly sad to be in this position. But at the same time

I feel like, there you go, a prime example of what our society
is like. So many white “liberals” who turn away from reality,

pretend things aren’t the way they are, because they don’t want
to acknowledge their existence for fear of how these things will
reflect on them. (n.p.)
She extends her concern with censorship from the realm of family
to the public realm. She has a well‑researched entry on housing zines
at libraries and why she thinks housing them in public libraries is not
often practiced. She draws on the works of Noam Chomsky, Chris Atton,
and the Library Bill of Rights to argue for the need for non‑mainstream
perspectives and alternative literature to be collected and made available in
our libraries. Noting that the aim of libraries is to “provide information,
unbiased, democratically, free of charge, to all that enter its doors,” she
argues that zines are in line with the very purpose of libraries. She also
names the Civic Media Center’s Zine Library in Gainesville, Florida. Celia
explicitly notes that the production of zines is not for “monetary gain” and
therefore highlights the alternative consumption patterns and interests that
are so often promoted in zines as they work to build coalitions that are not
just about consumer culture and capitalist imperatives.
Several of Celia’s entries demonstrate an awareness of the articulated
interests of nation, citizenship, and mainstream as well as popular media.
After watching episodes of Will & Grace and 90210 about Latina maids
marrying for their green cards, Celia decides to do some research. As
yet another demonstration of the engagement in tactical and strategic
maneuverings, her critical inquiries lead her to the Yale Journal of Law
and Feminism, where she confirms her gut feeling about the instances and
difficulties women have in obtaining green cards through “sham” marriages.
She says immigration laws soothe a growing anti‑immigrant sentiment, favor
men, and hurt women, in particular, as women must remain married for two
years before INS will accept the marriage as real. Her concern is for women
who are made to endure subservience, violence, and vulnerability in order
to become citizens. In those two years, Celia discovers, female immigrants
are particularly vulnerable to abuse and threats (n.p.).28
Believing that women learn from women’s lives and valuing lived
knowledges, the zinester who creates Women’s Self Defense: Stories & Strategies
of Survival states these goals: to “give women more options to choose from
when using self‑defense by sharing a diverse range of strategies successfully
used by women in real life situations . . . [and to] break the stigma around
sexual harassment and assault so that we can talk about it, take action,
and overcome it” (4). The significance of this zine is in its valuing of
women’s individual stories of sexual assault and harassment. As tactics of

third space, the reproduction of these stories validates individual experiences
and authorizes the telling of these experiences as informative. Moreover,
it empowers women to discuss their survival skills and strategies, thereby
validating lived experience as a valued way of knowing. It also recognizes the
value of naming experiences and sharing stories of survival in the recovery
and healing process for victims of sexual violence.
In Gift Idea, 1 & ½, seanna reflects on the potential for a more just
world. One entry reveals her imagination at play as she wishes “they’d come
out with a tang instant social consciousness juice powder that everyone
could drink” (7). She acknowledges that social transformation takes time
and coalitional effort. As an act of community education and an effort to
promote community literacy, she includes a glossary at the end of her zine
because “there just seems to be so much vocabulary that’s very important
and last year i didn’t really have an idea of what these words mean! so it
would be assy for me to just use them and not define them” (11). seanna
has included her own neologisms as well as definitions for concepts such
as “oppression, imperialism, colonialism, critique, dialogue, institution or
‘institutionalized,’ and privilege” (11).
Borderlands rhetorical practices subvert exclusionary practices and
boundaries that keep information and knowledge inaccessible. Zines, as
third‑space sites, often question the authorized and expert, especially in
terms of knowledge production.29 This is a third‑space and borderlands
rhetorical practice. The zine Gift Idea works to consciously reimagine and
reconfigure community and community agendas that value accessibility of
information based primarily on lived experiences. Throughout, it focuses
on community practices and agendas that are attentive to difference and
that consciously resist the conflation of differences for political expediency.
Another zine titled Heresies demonstrates one end of the diverse
spectrum of sophistication in terms of presentation and production. It is a
more polished, self‑described feminist publication that is funded, in part, by
the New York State Council on the Arts and the National Endowment for
the Arts. Issue 20’s cover is a list of words that include examples of bilingual
code switching. The words lead up to the title of the zine and appear to
reveal the motivation for readers and writers of zines such as ¡Mamasita!
as well as “activists, organizers, progressives, heroines, visionaries, witnesses,
pacifists, sisters, compañeras, agitators, radicals, leftwingers, dissidents,
firebrands, revolutionaries, subversives, provocateurs, yellow‑bellies, bleeding
hearts, big mouths, bra burners, castrating bitches, commie sluts, pinko
dykes” (Heresies cover). On the inside cover there is a space, “Help!,” where
a call to feminists for help with production is made. The introductory

comments on the inside cover define those who work on and for Heresies
as women who
are aware that historically the connections between our lives, our
arts, and our ideas have been suppressed. Once these connections
can be clarified, they can function as a means to dissolve the
alienation between artist and audience, and to understand the
relationship between art and politics, work and workers. As a
step toward the demystification of art, we reject the standard
relationship of criticism to art within the present system which
has often become the relationship of advertiser to product  .  .  .  we
feel that in the process of this dialogue we can foster change in
the meaning of art. (1)
This relatively well‑funded zine and its introductory statement manifest the
coalitional consciousness and practices of resistance that are being rehearsed,
performed, and imagined in zines such as ¡Mamasita! to inform the politics
of articulation. Heresies, issue 20 includes contributors as well‑known as
Barbara Kingsolver and Ronnie Gilbert. It includes a questionnaire with
responses from a wide range of feminist activists. Questions probe the
process of self‑identifying as an activist, the defining moments, motivations,
and models for becoming an activist, the intersections of difference in
activism for activist Others, and the contradictions inherent in activism.
Offering insight from within, there is an understanding among many of the
respondents that zinesters are considered everyday activists. Ronnie Gilbert
concludes her questionnaire with reflections on the everyday activist:
I worry when “activists” are lionized that people will say, Oh, that
is such an extraordinary person—look at all she does—she must
be some kind of Superwoman. We all want models and examples
to inspire us. But it seems to me that the single mother who
campaigns for daycare is the activist, the woman who works for
battered women, the ex‑battered woman who turns her experience
into a teaching project for school children, the precinct worker,
leafletter, petition circulator, the person who supports with letters
and money and/or her physical presence the fight for reproductive
rights or divestment from South Africa, who opens her doors or
her church’s to Central American refugees, who takes whatever
small but firm bites out of her small or large resources to end
religious, racial or political persecution ANYWHERE, and she

who gives of some part of herself to prevent nuclear disaster—she
is where the action is. (Volume 5, #4)
This description of the everyday activists demystifies and makes an activist

identity accessible. Importantly, this profile not only emphasizes the everyday
activist but the relational potential that resides in everyday coalitions.
Finally, and as a representation of the reality of the struggles for
feminist activists, this issue includes a photograph of an anonymous man
wearing a T‑shirt that reads “NUKE THE BITCHES” at the Women’s
Peace Encampment. The idea that a man wearing this T‑shirt would situate
himself at the Women’s Peace Encampment is representative of the lived
threat of violent male domination. The photographic representation of this
threat reveals its materiality and its prevalence in the world. These threats are
manifested across a number of contexts in the everyday. Girls and women
throughout these zines are actively and collectively resisting very real threats
to their emotional, psychic, physical, and sexual well‑beings. Such zines work
to disarticulate identified modalities of control as well as to interrupt and
reconfigure networks of power relationships. Within the subset of publications
I have concentrated on in this chapter, zinesters’ common goal—often stated
explicitly—is to break from the tyranny of alienating practices and the power
of normativing discourses. The articulated formations explored in these zines
are mechanisms of control and discipline. Zinesters often disarticulate these
connections, rearticulating them in third‑space coalitional or community
contexts where, after critical engagement and reflection, they take on new
meanings.
Academic and Nonacademic Third‑Space Sites of

The Politics and Practices of Articulation
Zines materialize and reflect borderlands rhetorics through the languages

of resistance, opposition, and, most importantly, coalition. They generate
knowledge and provide alternative sources of information. They can be
theoretically sophisticated, productive, and informed while also being
accessible and thereby promoting community literacies. As demonstrated here,
zinesters as third‑space subjects are tactically and strategically practicing and
performing third‑space theory and also performing coalitional subjectivities,
building community, and sharing knowledge across the seemingly impervious
boundaries and borders of race, class, color, gender, sexuality, education,
and ability. Zinesters’ resistance is routinely undertaken to reimagine and

re‑present new ways of relating with similarly interested people, distributing
information, and generating knowledge. In creating spaces within which
to produce and exchange these perspectives, a community of engaged
participants from differing social locations and lived experiences come
together to inform one another about different ways of being in solidarity
around shared values and issues that are both local and global.
Zines gestate and circulate in myriad acts of resistance toward social
transformation. The tactics of the very reproduction of zines are often
illegitimate and unauthorized. Zines are often reproduced subversively,
on company time and with company resources. Office copy machines are
often the unauthorized tools of reproduction. These tactics of reproduction
are not themselves transformational, but the potential for countercultural
resistance and transformation can be found in the consciousness‑raising,
knowledge‑generating, information‑disseminating, and community‑building
action in zines. In constituting communities, zines are third‑space sites
for the production of knowledges and outlets for the dissemination of
information. Zines are also spaces of reconfigured community. Zinesters, as
third‑space subjects, resist myriad mechanisms of social controls to imagine
and to construct third‑space alliances pursued in the name of antiracist and
socially just agendas.
My purpose throughout this project has been to make visible the
third‑space sites and subjectivities of (discursive) resistance undertaken for
the purpose of producing meaningful and relevant knowledges, practices,
and relations that first imagine and then reconstruct, promote, and represent
antiracist agendas and models of social justice and egalitarian social
discourses. Social spaces are sites of identity construction and coalition
that can highlight the ways that identities are based on “performances
of social actors operating in and through these spaces” (Massey 43). I
am arguing that the practices of articulation performed in zines are a
community‑building tool of meaning making that can inform coalitional
work as it is undertaken to pursue a socially progressive agenda that, in
turn, implicates egalitarian social relations, antiracist agendas, and social
justice using spatialized terms; coalitional practices develop in the realm of
third space as a consequence. Third space is identified from within academic
and nonacademic contexts. This suggests to me that a dialogue can and
should occur across such contexts to activate the potential of borderlands
rhetorics to build relationships and understanding as well as to produce
knowledges and new practices that have the potential to subvert norms
and transcend exclusionary and dominating divisions.
In yet another spatialized reference, the artist of the cover for the zine,
Borderlands: It’s a family affair #2, uses two profiled faces to take up the
borders of the left and right edges of the title page (front and back cover of
the zine). The faces are looking directly at one another and between them are
photographs of different people, including one couple that has been posed to
appear heterosexual and therefore represent normative sexuality. The caption
reads “TITLE: Hermanas ARTIST STATEMENT: In relation to the theme:
FAMILY, This piece is about bonding not by blood but by experiences. I
grew up mostly in white spaces on the west coast of the U.S. and because
of this, the birth of my browness came much later in my life. During the
budding knowledge of my race identity, I had and have a beautiful friend
and hermana to share it with. Gracias por todo Michelle. by Luisa” (back
cover). There are myriad such references to space as an important component
in the process of coming to understand oneself through one’s lived history.
This process is often contextualized in space that is understood as contested,
racialized, and (in need of being) politicized.
Zines as third‑space sites are sometimes explicitly addressed in spatial
terms as a “home” of sorts. Specifically, in Memoirs of a Queer Hapa,
jackie writes that zines “provide a place where subjugated knowledges and
self‑representations can be produced. It is possible that exclusion from both
dominant and minority groups has led outsiders of varying backgrounds
to construct a ‘home’ on the hotly contested middle ground of racial
and sexual identities” (12). When I write of borderlands rhetorics and
third‑space contexts as spatialized, I am referring to this notion of creating
space through an act of imagined, lived, and discursive transcendence of
binaries, oppositional dualisms, and false dichotomies. The representations
from this third space are accomplished through borderlands rhetorics that,
themselves, are not only produced from but also productive of third space.
Such an instantiation of the recursive relationship between third‑space sites
and subjectivities is what I am arguing for in this project. My understanding
of these lived realites as spatialized experiences comes first from my own
understanding of what it meant for me to grow up in a mixed‑race home
on the U.S./Mexico border. Not only can we read zines as third‑space sites
but we must also understand them as locations where zinesters’ efforts at
re‑spatialization are an expressed opportunity for re‑politicization often also
expressed as a pursuit of social change and coalition that is contextualized
by lived, material circumstances and experiences.30
The practice of articulation is the contingent, non‑necessary
connection among discourses, social forces, and social actants or groups.
My understanding of articulation and articulatory practices is predicated on
the nonessential self as a multiply‑situated subject informed by ambiguity

and even contradiction. The discursive formations that are constitutive
elements of these subject positions are reflected through the borderlands
rhetorics that are relational rhetorics insofar as they reveal the potential
for connectivity through a third‑space consciousness. The connection
between intersectionality and articulation is, itself, relational; that is to say,
multiply‑situated subjects are situated such that we are able to use our
positionalities to theorize and to achieve the potential of what Mouffe refers
to as the “multiplicity of relations of subordination” (535). However, the
relational potential of these positionings are not ever guaranteed and are
not permanent.
These notions of a relational elsewhere and of the newness it can imply
are important in understanding the potential of coalitions under specific
conditions. “Elsewhere,” for me, is related to third space or what Haraway
sometimes also refers to as a “common place.” Third space is a common
space that is about public culture, something that the rhetorical arts have
long been attentive to. Haraway states that the common place or public
culture has many houses with many inhabitants, suggesting that the potential
points of articulation are many and unpredictable (297). The articulation of
Haraway’s notion of situated knowledges to the understanding of coalition
that zinesters demonstrate can inform a deeper understanding of the politics
and practices of articulations assembled across different locations and
relations. Ultimately, Haraway argues that we are all in liminal areas where
new configurations and new kinds of action and responsibility are gestating
in the world (314). While I do not agree that all material circumstances
are lived or experienced as liminal, I am interested in borderlands spaces
that are experienced as liminal and are consciously engaged to reveal new
ways of understanding, being, relating, and acting in the world. As I see
it, third space always emerges out of articulations to become the material
context for yet more articulations.
Thinking in terms of praxis, articulation theory—when followed by
articulation politics—can result in a gyre that serves to produce linkages that
resist normalizing and hegemonic ideologies. Of course, key to all work in
articulation theory and politics is the understanding that connections can
be changed and reorganized—though this is not always a simple matter.
Practices of disarticulation and rearticulation imply that work that can fail is
never absolute, guaranteed, or permanent. This inevitability of connectional
vulnerability and even breakage is an integral component of articulation
theory and practice.
Next, I briefly turn to examples of the politics of articulation at play
in academic contexts. Here, I identify practices I’ve identified in zines that
include disarticulations and rearticulations undertaken first to interrupt

taken‑for‑granted knowledge systems and (academic) connections and then
forged to make new connections in order to perform and represent new
imaginings and produce new knowledges.
The crossing of borders of differing knowledge systems represents
manifest resistance to the academic apartheid that Chela Sandoval describes as
reductive, divisive, and exclusionary (2000). These interdisciplinary academic
border crossings reveal a practiced politics of dis- and re‑articulation and offer
a revitalized approach to the transformative potential of interdisciplinary
academics and activism. These cross‑disciplinary, third‑space practices have
the potential to generate new perspectives and new knowledges that are
represented by borderlands rhetorics. As illustrated, for example, in the works
of Susan Bordo, Yolanda Leyva, Emma Pérez, and Juana María Rodríguez,
academic border crossings are generative acts of resistance to imposed
disciplinary orderings that divide the scientific, social, sexual, historic,
personal, and/or cultural. The works of these scholars can be considered
third‑space work rhetorically represented by bringing together two or more
academic disciplines.31 Several of the activist of‑color zines that I studied
had editors who went on to pursue activist work and engage in the politics
of articulation from more formal, institutional locations. Zinesters, as has
been noted, may be found in the academy and the public library system,
where their community and coalitional work and perspectives strategically
inform new ways of doing things in dominant contexts. Mimi Nguyen’s
academic research, for example, demonstrates transdisciplinary interests as
creative articulatory practices that bring together “transnational feminist
cultural studies; science and technology studies; fashion, citizenship and
transnationality; and Asian American, queer, and punk subcultures.”32 Celia
Perez, meanwhile, is a public librarian who continues to work to include
paper zines in library collections and circulations because she believes that
such periodicals represent alternatives that should be accessible to others
looking to engage in new, critical, and creative community and academic
practices as well as to document locally relevant practices.
Zines are examples of the politics of articulation at play, particularly
as they reveal the potential for social transformation through disruptive
discursive acts, dissident performances, and articulations that effect new
social, cultural, political, economic, and sexual configurations. Importantly,
zines reveal articulatory practices and potentials while also suggesting
the potential for constant subversion of these practices. They provide us
with a visualized manifestation of struggles against subordination. I agree
with Stephen Duncombe who identifies in them “the seeds of a different
possibility: a novel form of communication and creation that burst with
an angry idealism and a fierce devotion to democratic expression” (228).

This democratic expression is connected to a politics of articulation as it
reveals the potential to be disruptive and also coalitional, participatory,
and inclusive. The practices of articulation revealed in this chapter provide
evidence of coalitional consciousness in activist efforts at community
building, knowledge generation, and information sharing. The examples
in this chapter offer recipes for resistance to exclusionary, divisive, and
subordinating practices and discourses. I highlight the ways in which
the practices and politics of articulation serve to imagine and propose
communities in order to resist myriad forms of oppression, to reeducate,
inform, and re‑present one another, and to practice a radical, countercultural,
and coalitional democratics.
Resistance in zines comes into view through a politics of dis- and
re‑articulation. Disarticulations interrupt, even dismantle, the taken‑for‑
grantedness of normativities as well as networks and relationships of control.
As countercultural third‑space sites, zines offer fertile ground for exploration
of the transformative tactics and goals of reconfigured and reimagined coali‑
tions. Practices and politics of articulation are reconfiguring third‑space sites
and (discursive) practices in pursuit of a transformative agenda.
Zines are third spaces of disarticulations and rearticulations, resistance,
and antagonism. Borderlands rhetorics are deployed in these reconfigured
collectivities to reimagine and re‑present new and old knowledges that
inform the coalitional politics of rereading, rewriting, and re‑presenting
in the everyday. The borderlands rhetorical practices and performances
of zines demonstrate resistance to dominant mis/representations. They
demonstrate not only new representational strategies but also new reading
and interpretation strategies that have implications for the production of
local, relevant knowledges and for literacy studies.
3
Embodied Intersections
Reconsidering Subject Formation
beyond Binary Borders
We can only start from where we are—beings who have been created in a
cruelly racist, capitalist, and male‑dominated society that has shaped our
bodies and our minds, our perceptions, our values and our emotions, our
language and our systems of knowledge.
—Alison M. Jaggar, “Love and Knowledge”
In her influential essay “Love and Knowledge: Emotion in Feminist

Epistemology,” Alison Jaggar calls for the articulation of emotion to
theorizing. She argues that emotion is an important part of the production
of knowledge and is therefore implicated in all knowledge claims. Rather
than deny or suppress emotion’s role in the production of knowledge,
she suggests emotion can be a tool of coalition and can therefore aid
emancipatory practices. Similarly, in her chapter titled “Anguished Past,
Troubled Present,” Edén Torres argues that we, Chicanas, “must make good
use of our pain, memory, and rage” in order for us not only to heal but
to build lasting coalitions for social change (46). Zinesters are working to
integrate emotion into their knowledge claims and practices in order to
engage holistically and in coalition for social change. Embodied knowledges,
embodied resistances, and representations of the body in third‑space contexts
reveal much about multiply-situated, relational, coalitional, and corporeal
subjectivity.1 In my efforts to identify practices, and explore the potentials of
reweaving or rearticulating the mind‑body dualism as a third‑space tactic, I
look to the role of emotions, specifically anger and also love, in articulatory
65
practices. Zines can be considered instantiations of theoretical productions

and reconsiderations as well as representations, of subject formation and
embodiment that I take up in greater detail later in the chapter.2
My deployment of the notion of third‑space corporeal and coalitional
subjectivity is a tactical revisioning of the subject as an embodied, thinking,
feeling, material, and relational being‑in‑motion.3 Relationships influence
how we understand ourselves and others as well as how we see the world
and, so, how we read, write, and relate in the world; in other words, how
we re‑present.4 The introduction to a zine titled Borderlands: Tales from
Disputed Territories between Races and Cultures (sequel to MXD: True Stories
by Mixed Race Writers), edited by Nia King, is written in the form of a
letter from the editor and begins with a reflection on the lived experience
of being mixed‑race, what that experience means in relationship to others,
and how these understandings are related to practices of articulation. King
states that this “zine is about the new racism, the racism we face in trying
to undo the damage done by assimilation in generations past, the racism
that negates our right to self‑identity and prevents others from seeing us the
way we want to be seen, the way we see ourselves. It’s about the racism that
creates the no‑win situations we find ourselves in when forging our identity
and the thin lines we often have to walk to find acceptance and validation
in any community. This zine is a product of our struggle to move beyond
the margins, the disputed borderland territory between races and cultures
we were born into, and for the right to be validated, to forge community
and to find home where ever we see fit. In solidarity, Nia King” (n.p.).
When King refers to the “borderland territory,” the “thin lines we have to
walk,” and to efforts to “forge community” and “find home,” she offers
insight into the lived experience of being mixed‑race as embodied and also
spatialized. She also reveals an underlying anger in response to the experience
of “no‑win” situations for mixed‑race people and in the acknowledgment
of the lived “struggle” for our right to identify as we understand ourselves.
In my desire to engage in play with language as a tactical effort to
re‑present words outside of dominant understandings, I have chosen to
represent “emotion” as “e‑motion” to emphasize the motor that drives an
integrated, discursive, and emotional third‑space understanding toward
coalitional action. The zines I analyze here provide evidence of the e‑motion
that moves the mind‑body beyond thinking and reflection to action. While
I understand us to be embodied beings, situated in time and place, and
so contextualized, I also believe us to be desiring beings—more than our
skin and always circulating in the potential of (intimate) realignments
and of becoming an/other in the crossing of our daily borders. As an
Embodied Intersections / 67
embodied knowledge practice, e‑motion motivates new investigations that

can lead us to a practiced politics of articulations that is predicated on
shared understandings and feelings—lived experiences—of domination,
subordination, and exclusion. E‑motion motivates empathetic and heart
knowledge that informs the borderlands rhetorical representations of
third‑space sites, embodied subjectivities, and coalitional practices. The
politics of articulation are components of the practice of what I term
reverso in that these practices begin with critical inquiry that serves to
dismantle (discursive) structures of representation that are not meaningful
in third‑space contexts. The rearticulation that is effected often demonstrates
an effort to make meaning and make change in third‑space contexts.
In Memoirs of a Queer Hapa, when discussing the zine The Mixed‑Race
Queer Girl Manifesto, by Lauren Jade Martin, editrix jackie notes that Martin
“explores the frontiers of exclusion and inclusion based on slippery racial and
sexual identifiers” (13). jackie goes on to say that the “vision of a United
States consisting of ‘shades of brown’ that we began with is not so much
a vision of pluralism as it is a vision of homogeneity or sameness, or a
‘flattening’ of difference under a unified national identity. The vision offered
to us by the example of the ‘queer hapa’ is a vision of difference without
reductionism, and a belief in the possibility of creative identity construction
rather than being forced—by a normalizing culture and national discourse—
to adopt a prefabricated identity” (14). In these entries jackie refers to
the “force” of an imposed identity steeped in dominant assumptions and
discourses, and she also considers the “frontiers of exclusion and inclusion,”
and “slippery identifiers” (13). While emotion is not explicitly engaged,
these references move readers to consider the violence often experienced—
implicitly and/or explicitly—by those whose identities are impure and
nondominant. Moreover, in using the language of the “frontier” and the
experience of “slippery” identities, jackie expresses an understanding of the
risks of naming oneself outside of strict normative orderings that impose
a neatness that belies the messiness of third‑space subjectivity as expressed
through borderlands rhetorics.5
Anger in zines results not only from invisibility but also from the
imposed subordinations, restrictions, and obfuscations of identity binaries.
E‑motion interrupts rigid representations of identity that divide the self in
ways that are not meaningful. It also drives the reweaving of oppositional
representations of the mind‑body dualism. E‑motion in zines is often
represented as motivated in anger but continued in love. Regarding rigid
identity markers, Patton and Sánchez‑Eppler note that “the focus of attention
is no longer on whether identity is ever not constructed . . . but instead
on how to make sense of the always poignant and always hilarious labors
of reinvention and renegotiation in new places, or in reimagined old ones”
(3). Critical and creative labors of reinvention such as the ones referred
to by Patton and Sanchez‑Eppler reveal third‑space sites and subjects as
constructed articulations of emotion, time, place, desire, experience, and
embodiment. The practices of identifying oneself are often painful and/or
exhilarating, and efforts to re‑identify oneself are often urgently motivated
by e‑motion.
In Race Riot, Iraya notes that “being mixed, I had already learned that
either/or choices would never be my reality” (5). She continues, “mixed
heritage people inhabit a special kind of place in the racist imagination: we’re
supposed to represent the ultimate result of ‘crossing racial boundaries,’ the
Forbidden (especially to whites)” (5). “I am an automatic boundary‑crosser
without ‘liberating’ choices” (7). This article focuses on sexuality but is about
the intersections and inextricabilities of any number of identity markers
and social locations. Iraya writes of her transmigrations across boundaries
such that she falls outside of neat categories and is rendered invisible.6
This zinester reveals that third space need not necessarily be liberating or
transformational. Instead, it is through third‑space consciousness that the
lived experience of ambiguity can serve its coalitional potential.
In Borderlands, editrix Nia King draws from Adam Mansbach’s Angry
Black White Boy and uses all caps to emphasize his sentiment: “WE ARE
NOT A MONOCHROMATIC PEOPLE” (n.p.) (see Figure 3.1). This is
yet another example of deployed emotion as a response to rigid identity
markers and racism implicated in dominant naming practices. Notably, King
does not create brown or grey of black and white identity. Brown and grey
can both be third‑space practices of coalition and each also can be a denial
of the ends of the spectrum as well as of the nuance that can exist on the
spectrum between black and white. Her entry resists conflating either side
of the identity categories of black and white to instead reveal a third‑space
mixed‑race spectrum.7 She goes on to claim that “. . . NOT TALKING
ABOUT RACE AND RACISM DOES NOT MAKE THEM GO AWAY.”
King explains that mixed‑race zinesters cannot have “honest or
meaningful dialogues without exploring these histories” and by “these
histories” she is referencing that need to engage “how racism—internalized,
interpersonal and institutional—effected our families and our upbringing”
(intro). Such a recognition reveals a value often expressed in of‑color zines of
engaging multiple, competing, and contested or otherwise obscured (lived)
and often painful histories. On the penultimate page of her zine, Nia provides
readers with recommended race blogs and texts that address mixed‑race and
Figure 3.1. “WE ARE NOT A MONOCHROMATIC PEOPLE”—from

Borderlands: Tales from Disputed Territories Between Races and Cultures, edited by Nia
King.
of‑color issues and lived experiences. She invites submissions from persons
“of color who identify[y] as mixed‑race, bicultural or transracially adopted.”
Though not a focus here it is important to note that increasing numbers
of transracial adoptees are speaking out through zines to narrate the lived
displacements and transnational and transracial experience of being adopted
across boundaries of race, class, religion, and nation. They sometimes write
as exiles who demonstrate a lived transnational awareness of adoption across
national boundaries. They often write from a space of pain and feelings of
isolation while also openly acknowledging privilege as a component of their
multiply-situated and contradictory experiences.
In Bamboo Girl #8, transnational and transracial adoptees write to
resist dominant misrepresentations of family by offering critical reflections
and reconsiderations of diverse family configurations. Two self‑identified
Korean adoptees of white families tell their stories. One entry revealing
lived ambiguity through borderlands rhetorics begins with a reflection
on self‑identity in the context of an adoptive family: “Thinking about
adoption and identity is difficult because, for me, adoptees stand in‑between
identities: biological and adopted. And identity politics don’t seem to allow
for ambiguity” (19). In referring to standing between identities, Amy, a
self‑identified Korean adoptee in a Jewish home, relies on borderlands
rhetorics to speak a spatialized and embodied ambiguity as an integral part of
her lived experience in a third‑space context. In another statement revealing

an embodied awareness, Amy states that she stands “outside the rigid
categories and phenotypical assumptions” (19). She discusses how in college,
for the first time, she faced being “Korean‑but‑not” and “Jewish‑but‑not”
(19). The borderlands rhetorics she uses reveal a recognition of her need
to imagine and build her own community—a goal she is committed to
pursuing.
The second reflection in this issue is by “Christine Jones, ‘Christin ni
Seion’ Irish language translation. My Korean name was Yun Hee Suh” (20–
22). Christine chronicles the racism and sexism she faced in school and in the
greater community around her while residing in a loving if underinformed
home and family. Her point in offering her story is coalitional. She reaches
out to the Asian community to build support for children and adult Asian
adoptees. The entries end with a mock advertisement where a middle‑aged
white man is holding a canister of “Bigot Ethnic Cleanser—Same old idiotic
formula.” He and the can are positioned beneath the caption “Stupid?
Ignorant?” (22). The decolonized imagination at play in this visual resists
and revisions whitewashed representations of the 1950s, and reimagines
a world free from the prevalence and absurdity, yet real consequences of,
ignorant and racist practices implicated in such maddeningly deracialized
representations.
Reversals and Refractions: Shattering the Normal(izing) Gaze
Zinesters as everyday theorists are also taking on the politics of the body
and especially the body‑in‑relation, to include desire, pleasure, and the
practice of what I term “reverso,” or critical reversals of the normative
(and normalizing as well as often pathologizing) gaze. At play in this
concept is a kind of code switching. Specifically, “reverso” means reverse in
Spanish. Redefinitions of bodies, beings, desires, and relationships are often
the result of the practices of reverso, which affects necessary revisionings,
including different ways of perceiving and portraying the world for purposes
of third‑space re‑presentation. Practices of reverso emerge to return and,
importantly, refract the normative gaze, produce critical inquiries into
questions of (mental) health, madness, pathologies, morality, and pleasure,
and to re‑present embodied practices of healing, resistance, and activism.
Through acts of contortion, distortion, aggression, confession, desire, and
reconciliation, bodies and be‑ings are being re‑membered and re‑configured
in zines. Nondocile, noninnocent, re‑membered bodies are emerging as
corporeal and coalitional third‑space subjects.
Zines are taking on the politics of the body, including desire and
pleasure, through conscious practices of this reversed and refracting critical
gaze that I call reverso. The concept of reverso refers to the creative ways
the penetrative power of the gaze is being turned back on society. The
effects of reverso, however, are not those of a simple inversion. Instead,
the reversed gaze from third space is refracting and thus imprecise and
even messy, affecting new and unpredictable assemblages. Reverso implies
a critical engagement with dominant cultural mis/re‑presentations that
have sustained a divisive social order. Foucault contends that social space is
configured in order to ensure “surveillance which would be both global and
individualising while at the same time carefully separating the individuals
under observation” (Power/Knowledge 146). It is precisely at the point of
separation of which Foucault speaks where zines’ resistant reversals and
coalitional acts can be unearthed and identified. Zines contend with the
effects of the normalizing, pathologizing, and disciplining gaze in creative
and resistant ways. For instance, zinesters reflect a consciousness about the
ill effects of patriarchal social ordering on girl communities and girl culture.
Zinesters often discuss the ways in which girls and women are divided
from one another through patriarchal divisions based on, among other
things, outward appearance, size, class, and competition. Zinesters discuss
and strategize tactics of resistance that aim to build grrrl communities and
instantiate alternative ways of being, understanding, and representing in
the world. The resistance being enacted is not absolute, but is in keeping
with the Foucauldian understanding that it need not be absolute to offer
transformative potential.8
Zines are being used as third‑space sites from which borderlands
rhetorics are deployed to reverse the gaze on society and ask who is mad
in a mad world. Some of these zines question whose bodies are in‑valid and
whose embodied practices are ab‑normal in a society that modifies bodies
for profit and imagines only normative relationships. They acknowledge a
culture of fear where alterity is suspect and is produced in and by perpetually
unsafe terrain while also always being vulnerable to appropriation and
commodification. Zinesters often work to disrupt the order imposed by the
normativizing gaze and the perceived and materialized order it imposes by
rendering visible the previously invisible, indecent, invalid, and unacceptable.
Zinesters are taking (discursive) charge of disciplinary mechanisms of control
and reversing the gaze in order to reveal the sicknesses inherent in their
societal contexts. The effects of these practices create spaces where “expert”
knowledges can be critically reexamined, practices and discourses resignified,
and new knowledges gen/d/erated. Reverso effects a space and time when
and where the shape of bodies can be re‑imag/in/ed and re/per/formed,
and relationships can be re/con/figured. Reverso refracts the objectifying

gaze imposed and sustained by dominant cultural codes, practices, and
representations.
R E V E R S O: Re‑Views and Re‑Considerations
Naming this practice of reverso emerged for me after investigating why so

many zines invoke Wonder Woman as an icon. Used to symbolize strength
and resistance, Wonder Woman is often pictured with captions that speak of
a feminist utopia. A rereading of the Wonder Woman comics explains her
iconic status in many feminist and queer zines. Reverso, and the refraction
it accomplishes, represents a practiced critical inquiry from messy identities,
experiences, locations, and relations of third space. Importantly, reverso also
works to subvert hierarchies and authorized and expert knowledges.9
Entrenched in a lesbian utopian history, Wonder Woman’s decision
to participate in a heterosexual world was born of nonnormative desire.
To achieve her desire, Wonder Woman had to show strength, courage,
intelligence, and daring. In an archived edition of William Molton Marston’s
Sensational Comics, readers find Wonder Woman, with the help of the girls at
Holliday College for Women, interrupting a plot to bring down the United
States Army. Dr. Poison has schemed to infuse the water supply throughout
the United States military installations with a newly invented drug called
REVERSO, which is intended to disrupt military order. This drug reverses
understandings and perspectives so that the order of army camps is made
chaotic through reversals of commands from above, making it a challenge
to exercise discipline and control. The “perceived utopia of the perfectly
governed” military is shattered by reverso and much is brought to light in
this shattering (Foucault Discipline and Punish 198). By deploying reverso,
zines shatter oppressive practices, myths, and images as expressed through
imposed oppositions and the social orderings they imply. This concept of
reverso is at the core of zinesters’ approaches to embodied subjectivities
and informs the borderlands rhetoric that represents the messy realities of
third‑space sites and subjectivities.
In ¡Mamasita!, Issue One, editrix Bianca Ortiz, from San Pablo,
California, deploys tactics of reverso in efforts to come to terms with being
a girl in a society experienced as misogynist. These tactics are manifested
in a burgeoning consciousness of the experiences and implications of
voicelessness. In “The Body and the Reproduction of Femininity,” Bordo
refers to muteness as the “condition of the silent, uncomplaining woman—an
ideal of patriarchal culture” (177). Ortiz, too, explores muteness. ¡Mamasita!,
Issue One uses tactics of reverso in the deployment of the Hello Kitty logo,
a commercial symbol taken to task and reclaimed by grrrl culture:
For years now Hello Kitty has lacked a mouth—her voice never
heard, her face emotionless. But now, Hello Kitty is pissed
off cuz she doesn’t like to be told what to do and how to do
it. She doesn’t like people telling her she’s too ugly or too fat
or too dumb or too weak or too masculine or too snobby or
too loose. Hello Kitty has grown a mouth, cuz she can repress
her anger no longer! Hey! HELLO KITTY IS FUCKING
PISSED! (n.p.)
E‑motion, and especially anger, are often identified as pertaining primarily

if not exclusively to women and people of color, especially as we are often
infantilized or criminalized in media representations and social practices.10
The move to give a mouth to Hello Kitty signifies resistance to the historical
silencing of girls and women. However, the symbolism extends beyond
resistance to silence and its dominant mis/reading. As Bordo notes, “Even
when women are silent (or verbalizing exactly the opposite), their bodies
are seen as ‘speaking’ a language of provocation” (6). With a mouth, Hello
Kitty breaks the silence, spewing anger at prevailing (media) representations
of women that have imposed effectively subordinating messages to women’s
bodies in the absence of women’s voices. Shattering silences is a tactic of
reverso in that it renders audible and visible the spaces and practices of
abuse imposed and experienced as silencing.11
In another example of reverso, ¡Mamasita!, No. 1 engages in parodic
play with the absurdity of the entrenched tyrannies of norms that govern and
regulate female bodies. The headline on one page of ¡Mamasita!, No. 1 reads
“YOU COULD BE THE NEXT MISS TEENAGE AMERICA®!!” (n.p.). A
photograph of a young woman embracing a young man is captioned “How
to Get Him” (n.p.). Off to the side of the page is a woman in a bathing suit
advertising something called “CAN,” a product that dissolves fat, enhances
breast size, and generally feminizes the body “or your money back” (n.p.).
The text of this page reflects the frustration of being a teenager in the midst
of ubiquitous and dehumanizing messages and images. Sardonically, the text
invites girls to become anorexic or bulimic to fit the image. It calls on girls
to become hyperfeminized and childlike while also sexualized:
Get your tits filled with silicon to at least a size 38D. Remember
bigger is better. *Paint your face with poison making sure to
accentuate your cheek‑bones. Practice pouting and appearing
helpless . . . If you do not do what the guidelines suggest

there will be no chance of you ever winning, because you are a
fat pig of pores and pimples! Call: 1‑800‑KIL‑TEEN GOOD
LUCK!!!!” (n.p.)
This zine demonstrates an acute awareness and anger at how practices

of discipline and control of the female body reproduce normativities as
restrictive gender codes and recreate bodies of hyperfeminization and
voicelessness. There is also a demonstrated understanding of the “pathologies
of female protest” that Bordo refers to as part of the anorectic’s experience,
which reproduce, rather than transform, that which is being protested (177).
One example of critical inquiry into gendered pathologizations that,
among more, reproduce misguided gendered assumptions about which
bodies can be and are victims of anorexia and bulimia can be found in
the zine 100%. One zinester writes, “Guys don’t understand why girls
stick two fingers down their throats to rid themselves of offending food
matter. . . . It’s because stupid insecure girls like me find superficial asses
like you attractive and would purge themselves to fit the requisite you say
you don’t want” (vol. 2:2 n.p.). She explains her resistance to the idea of
an acceptable appearance through an act of reverso that moves her from
“fluff” to “gruff” in personality and appearance. She explains that these acts
of transformation are prompted by anger and contempt and encouraged by
Courtney Love. “Step one: I threw out all my ‘fluffy’ clothes and bought a
dozen sweatsuits and a couple o’ pairs of dickies from walmart. Step two:
I cut my ‘fluffy’ hair (Possibly the hardest yet most necessary step.), and
thirdly: I got me some o’ that self respect” (n.p.). In this example the tactics
of reverso are deployed to interrupt the hegemonic gaze that objectifies,
dehumanizes, and degrades.
Importantly, reverso aids many zinesters as they attempt to address
abuse. These zines articulate the everyday abuses of the body experienced in a
misogynist society where bodies are disciplined by anything from normalized
standards of beauty, sexuality, and gender to other forms of sexual abuse
including rape and incest. 100%, Volume 2:2, for example, deals with the
contradictions of desire, the shame and self‑blame of incest, and efforts
at self‑transformation. In an anonymous entry, one writer describes her
efforts to keep “two generations of molestation” from bleeding into the third
generation (n.p.). She explains that her motivations for telling her story now
are to reject self‑blame and reverse the imposed silence and effects of the
abuse. This author shares the personal to engage the political for purposes
of resistance and healing through new ways of being and belonging. She
identifies acts of telling as opportunities to help other survivors. Speaking

out, she effectively reverses the code of silence thereby creating a space for
dialogue and potential healing.12
Apoyo, written in Spanish, is a zine dedicated to anyone who has been
abused and to their allies. The front cover of this zine displays its title in all
caps and is otherwise a hand‑drawn visual representation of three differently
gendered female figures, turned away from the reader, who are holding
hands in support of one another as they cross a river (see Figure 3.2). They
appear to be crossing at night as the woods or mountains before them are
cast in darkness but the rising moon looms large at the horizon and signals
a kind of guiding light and presence. In reflecting on this zine’s title and the
image of its front cover, I am struck by the river crossing and the moon. The
river crossing can mean so much—from the literal border crossing context
of so many migrants as third‑space subjects, to the metaphoric reference to
“crossing that river” when we get to it.13
Figure 3.2. Cover depicting a river crossing—from Apoyo, edited by Cindy Crabb,
and Cristy C. Road, illustrator.
As Apoyo’s intro states, este es un zine para apoyar personas que han sido
abusadas sexualmente. Simply stated, this zine is written explicitly for those
who have been sexually abused. Later the zinester acknowledges that her
original intent was to produce a zine that would help those who haven’t
been sexually abused better understand and help those who have been. She
believes and values, however, that those who have been abused can learn
from one another and must overcome the silencing of abuse to do so. The
intro ends in a transnational gesture of acknowledgment of the breadth of
sexual abuse by posting numbers of abuse hotlines zinesters can call in the
United States, Mexico, Chile, la República Dominicana, Guatemala, España,
Costa Rica, y Venezuela.
Apoyo uses personal testimony and comic strip–style narratives to
address issues of sexual abuse from those who have been abused and their
allies.14 Many of the entries work to subvert the destructive myth that
those abused are responsible for their own abuse. Other entries address
sexual health and well‑being. Still others, as evidence of cross‑zine dialogue,
are posted as letter‑like responses to other zinesters. One entry, framed by
hand‑drawn ravens along the top of the page and jungle‑like foliage at the
bottom, begins “Querida Cindy, . . . lei tu columna en Slug and Lettuce.
Oh, me encantó la rabia que tiene y la forma como cuestiona; muy directa
y clara en la ira. Dear Cindy . . . I read your column in Slug and Lettuce.
Oh, I loved the rage it has and your way of questioning; very direct and
clear in your anger” (33). The letter writer, Sarah, thanks Cindy for helping
her confront her own shame and guilt at having “allowed” certain abuse
situations to have taken place in her life (33). The rhetorical function of the
raven on this page may be to symbolize the healing powers and developed
consciousness that this zinester believes can be attributed to those who have
been sexually abused and want to not only overcome their abuse but also to
help others.15 The rhetorical function of the heavy foliage at the bottom of
the page may serve as a reminder of the spaces through which those in the
process of healing must travel and emerge. Sexual abuse is broadly defined
and treated in this zine, ra(n)ging from experiences of sexual aggression to
dating violence to growing up in patriarchal and therefore normativized
contexts that degrade and sexualize women. The zine ends with a blacked‑out
page. In the upper lefthand corner there is a white square within which is
drawn a hand holding a magic wand that is touching a balloon. Inside the
balloon is the following text: “Cuando finalmente veulvo a escucharme a
mi mismsa or When I finally listen to myself. This image sits next to the
hand‑written words viajo hacia adentro y escucho y yo lo se, I travel within
and I listen and I know.” A wolflike face is hand drawn in the bottom half
of the page. The nose of the wolf is a lit match and the caption that is
affixed to where the wolf ’s mouth should be reads “Tengo el fósforo en la
mano” (54). I have the match in my hand. This page symbolizes the value
of lived experience and the power of acknowledging it and listening to it
as a source of knowing, and therefore also of recovery. Addressing sexual
abuse as not an isolated but rather more common experience that must be
openly addressed to be overcome, intervenes in the silences that can pervade
and function to perpetuate abuse and abusive contexts.
These zinesters’ tactics of reverso are deployed from a space of
integrated knowledges. The practice of reverso here reverses normed silences
and invisibilizations regarding the taboos of multiply identified contexts
of abuse, including incest, molestation, sexual aggression, and assault.
Breaking the silence is not undertaken as a reversal that serves only to
name perpetrator/s, but it is deployed to critically challenge normalizing
and subordinating practices that re‑create abusive environments as well as
to build community. These zinesters are holding society accountable for
widespread societal illnesses and abuses that so many girls and women
experience in the everyday. The borderlands rhetorics born of these contexts
revision the subject to allow for movement from the identification of victim
to that of survivor and even thriver.
fantastic fanzine: s is for sorry addresses the theme of abuse and dis/
embodied knowing. erika identifies a “survivor’s” way of knowing and being
and describes it as a strategy she deploys to be able to function in the
context of a misogynist society, consumer culture, and capitalist context.
The definition of survival in the context of these articulations—capitalism
and misogyny through patriarchy—demonstrates an awareness of the ways
in which social norms, structures, orders, and practices work together to
oppress. This zinester’s reflections are undertaken in a space that is reflected
upon as in‑sane, “a little crazy” (n.p.). erika is both practicing the politics
of articulation and developing a consciousness that is seeking coalition:
things happened to me when i wasn’t me now that made me a

little crazy not inside my body very much. i disassociate myself
from my environment to survive, emotionally, psychicly (that’s
not really a word, is it?), i think a lot of people remove them
selves from their true feelings and selves in order to function in
a capitalist society. this isn’t a new concept. but, i really have a
hard time feeling connected to these BIG concepts like the evils
of capitalism with out a framework for understanding them in
my own life. (n.p.)
erika ends her introduction with reflections on love as that energy she relies
on to “change the world” and to resist the self that was emerging in response
to a hateful and harmful society (n.p.). In her writing and rearticulated
concerns, erika deploys tactics of reverso to resist a kind of domesticating
homogeneity and to provoke new ways of thinking about domination and
its implications in global and local practices.
Another tactic of reverso is the act of interruption undertaken as a
subversive, potentially transformative, third‑space act. A number of these
zines deploy this tactic of reverso. Specifically, zinesters interrupt official
knowledges and narratives, and they assert a personal and localized authority
as an everyday expertise to express alternative perspectives and even new
knowledges, particularly from a reembodied location and identity. Their stories
revalue personal and collective experiences for reconsideration of valuable
insight into the issues they face. They articulate cultural representation to
lived experience in order to interrupt and dismantle the subordinating,
silencing, homogenizing, and terrorizing effects of mainstream culture on
the body. By first identifying the network of social controls in place, they
allow for the construction not only of an alternative rhetoric but also of
alternative practices.
One way to practice reverso is through the reclamation of history,
which, in these instances, works as a decolonizing tool of revisioning.
Dorothea is a zine dedicated to revisioning mental health and madness in
a society that is both alienating and maddening. Its work is accomplished
by first reclaiming the presence and activism of Dorothea Dix in (women’s)
history. A vital and vibrant component of so many zines I reviewed is the
research and reclamation of women’s works and words throughout history.
The author of Dorothea, Catherine, explains her motivation for writing the
zine as “an outlet for my frustrations . . . i’ve had these thoughts cluttering
my brain, so angry and distorted that they boil over in immense quantity.
before i had wondered if it was only me, but now i know it is also some of
you” (n.p.). Anger as e‑motion and writing together are deployed as practices
of reverso to question the taken‑for‑granted in the context of the everyday,
to heal, to share and circulate information, and to build community.16
The theme of disembodied disconnection is spoken in Dorothea as well.
Catherine writes, “why do i feel this way  .  .  .  so disconnected from my body.”
Her entry goes on to reveal an experience of supreme societal control. “i feel
as if i have no control over myself. my actions controlled . . . controlling
me. watching over me. deciding upon when . . . when it all happens.
when i smile. when i laugh. and even when i cry” (n.p.). These efforts
to resist and revision in order to make meaning of lived experience in
alienating contexts are demonstrated practices of reverso. She concludes, “I

tried standing with my head tilted the other day. in hope that I might be
able to see the world straight” (n.p.). Poems throughout this zine explore
emotions and relationships as well as material contradictions and social
controls experienced in the everyday.
On one page in Dorothea is an image interrupted by parallel white
spaces, each with a handwritten word or phrase in the revealed vertical
spaces, including: “I am passive, angry, mad, I am sick, worried, hateful, I
am dead” (n.p.). On the opposite page there is a poem revealing an Other
identity and exploring dominant practices of articulating Otherness with
difference defined as dis‑eased and inferior: “you eluded away from me
as if i was infected with abnormality . . . i was born. i was born with a
foreign color and slight difference of appearance. i was born with an accent
and a strange heritage. i was born unlike you” (n.p.). These last pages
reflect the complexities of identifying madness in a dominant context. The
tactics of reverso are deployed such that dominant contexts and produced
normativities are revisioned as mad, maddening, and racist.
On the cover of Borderlands: Tales from Disputed Territories between
Races and Cultures (sequel to MXD: True Stories by Mixed Race Writers) is a
“Self‑portrait in Black & White” by Emily Leach (see Figure 3.3). There
are two white squares on what is otherwise an all‑black page: one frames a
Figure 3.3. “Self‑portrait in Black & White”—from Borderlands, edited by Nia King,
and Emily Leach, illustrator.
dark, sullen face with black wavy hair and the second frames an outline of
a face and hair etched in black but appearing with a white face and hair.
The look on the second face is distant but not sullen.
The zine opens with the first two pages featuring sketching of a faceless
head of hair (labeled PELA on the place where the hair is outlined) on the
first page and an outline of a nose (NARIZ), a mouth (TALK), and SKIN
labeled at the neck on the second page (see Figure 3.4).
This entry, titled “PELA, SKIN, NARIZ, TALK,” is by Luisa and
its brief accompanying story provides the narrative that redresses the dis‑
embodiment and e/rasing implied by the outlines to address the physical
features that this zinester has experienced as signifiers of difference. She
uses her “TALK” label to address the history of what Anzaldúa would term
“linguistic terrorism” Latinos/as have experienced in the United States across
generations (Borderlands/La Frontera 80). Her entry ends with an acknowl‑
edgment of the legacy and the detrimental and limiting effects of linguistic
discrimination: “And when my father had me, he had only ingles to pass
on” (Borderlands n.p.). Here, Luisa laments the fact of monolingualism and
reverses, or rather refracts, the blame for monolingualism by situating it
outside of the family context and historicizing it across contexts. Though
Figure 3.4. “PELA, SKIN, NARIZ, TALK”—from Borderlands, edited by Nia King,
and Luisa Zamora, illustrator.
brief, this entry uses a mostly disembodied visual representation to address

the effects of linguistic and racial discrimination.
April Fool’s Day, spring 1995, is a zine produced out of Olympia,
Washington. Its cover has a hand‑drawn poodle with a crown on its
head. This zine expresses an understanding of addiction as not strictly an
individual dis/ease by articulating it to a dis/eased society. The zinester
shares information regarding community resources for addicts and explores
the recovery process. The author, like so many zinesters, identifies writing
as a life‑saving practice. In the introduction to this zine, she challenges the
authority of experts, stating that “[f ]or a longtime I have put off finishing
this writing. I kept thinking I was out of my element by talking about
addiction. But then I thought, I’m a fucking alcoholic (whatever) . . . and
I will not leave this discussion to the so‑called experts. I guess part of what
I’m trying to do is make something for me and my friends and whoever
else maybe can’t deal with the straitworld options.” While the practices and
processes of writing are identified as life‑saving, this author’s goals include a
kind of community education achieved by sharing information with others
to make meaning and effect change. Her efforts to apply the knowledge
she has gained through her own lived experience to her community context
demonstrate a committed and coalitional consciousness.
In the process of self‑reflection she calls into question those authorized
practices and expert discourses that have ill‑served her. In a section that
begins with the image of a hand‑drawn generic bottle that looks to be stuffed
with puzzle‑like pieces of paper and is labeled “Anxiety,” the author discusses
the power of community and community‑building practices. Specifically, she
experiences the benefits of communal practices as simple as potlucks. She
goes on to note that “[i]n writing this stuff I have had to think a lot about
how to share information without acting all bossy or being condescending. If
sometimes I state things in a really obvious way, it’s probably safe for you to
assume it’s because I am somewhat limited as a writer and yet REALLY want
to get this information acrossed however I can” (n.p.). In this passage, this
zinester demonstrates an awareness of the silencing potential of authorized
and expert discourses and discursive practices. Her attempt to interrupt the
potential that her words might be received as authoritative, and, as such,
silencing, can also be considered a tactic of reverso. Again, the reversal in this
instance is not an inversion but a disruption that demonstrates recognition
of the ill effects of dominant discourses and their normativizing productions
and a desire not to reproduce these effects.
This zinester moves to disarticulate and then, to some degree,
rearticulate desire, pleasure, and excess. She offers the following explanation:
“The ‘Just Say No’ PURITAN type idea tells us that we’d better not give into
our desires even just a little bit or else BAD THINGS are gonna happen to
us . . . PLEASURE to this line of thinking is dangerous” (n.p.). She goes
on to speculate that for an active addict, this line of reasoning is correct.
However, through recovery she has learned that “PLEASURE is NOT a bad
thing” (n.p.). She shares how her process of psychic, physical, and social
recovery has included dealing with issues of self‑loathing and body image
as well. By demonstrating resistance to the alienation that so many zinesters
write about, especially in terms of their bodies, and by actively working to
re‑member her body and move with integrity, she effects a kind of reverso:
I mean, our bodies are totally incredible. They have ways of

telling us when the shit feels good and when it doesn’t. I used
to feel so disconnected from my body that it was easy to ignore
the signals “it” gave me. Like the puritans who live their lives
in complete self loathing denial, afraid of the power their bodies
possess/create, I live my life unaware of, and→or ignoring the fact
that these internal “stop” and “go” mechanisms exist. Because my
addiction begins where listening to myself ends→I try to decide
in these moments what I ACTUALLY DESIRE (pleasure, escape,
why?) and then fulfill that desire in less destructive‑self‑hating
ways (or maybe not). (n.p.)
There is an important and insightful connection between the understanding

of oneself, as well as of community, as complex, connected, and even
contradictory. The importance of this insight is that complexities and
contradictions need not immobilize but can instead be generative spaces
for revisioned ways of knowing, being, and belonging that can be expressed
and experienced through acts of reverso.
In Don’t Turn Your Back on Her—She’s . . . HURRICANE GIRL, Vol.
1, Issue Fall 1998, there is an article by Kathy Scott titled “Larger Than
Life: A big girl tells it like it is” (31–33). Scott explains that she found
herself in a campus doctor’s office after having gotten something in her
eye in a chemistry lab. She self‑identifies as a woman of color and situates
herself as a nontraditional student, and she notes that her doctor was also
a woman of color, and about her age. While the visit was in reference to
her eye, the doctor suggested she would do well to lose weight. Scott com‑
ments on her past experiences as a “big, Black woman,” and how there are
“immediate assumptions about [her] eating habits, degree of exercise, and
overall health” (31). Scott recounts how she called her friend who validated
the inappropriateness of the doctor’s behavior. This validation demonstrates

a commitment expressed by many zinesters to value and listen to other
girls and women, and not let a culture of competition and suspicion divide
them. Scott continues with reflections on her most recent experience and
determines that the “obsession with large women’s bodies and with women’s
bodies in general” is about “exercising power and control over women’s
bodies” (32). Her conclusion is savvy and reveals a theoretical and practical
understanding of the relationship between medical/ized practices, authorized
knowledges, and a patriarchal social order. She writes:
Having us so obsessed with our bodies distracts us . . . being a

large woman is quite a core threat to the prescription of who
we are supposed to be as women. . . . While I certainly believe
in the efficacy of some medical data (i.e. fat clogs the arteries
to the heart, it is valuable to get good amounts of exercise,
excess estrogen is carried in fat tissue and can contribute to
breast cancer, to name a few) I do also believe that the medical
profession . . . combines medical knowledge with patriarchal,
oppressive messages about what size is acceptable for women’s
bodies. (33)
Scott ends by asking “how dare I be a woman self‑possessed, trying to

let go of the message all around all the time telling me this or that of
my body are too much?” (33). The page ends with a zine slogan, “If You
Don’t Riot Then You Can’t Complain” (33). This call to embodied and
collective action reveals a coalitional consciousness that is predicated on
shared understandings, lived experiences, and action. In an angry rant
against sizeism and fat oppression, one zinester, Nomy Lamm, writes i’m
so fucking beautiful #2, a zine from Olympia, Washington. Aware of the
widespread ill effects of dominant representations of female bodies, Lamm
calls for skinny kids and “nonfat” people to reflect on, talk about, and
interrupt their privileges based on size (n.p.).
Lived experiences are often considered valid and legitimate means of
informing everyday and coalitional practices in zines. Specifically, zinesters
are using their life stories as points of departure in their deployment of
reverso to critically investigate taken‑for‑granted and normalized practices
of abuse and systematized violence. In Disco Fred’s Got a Vasectomy, Vol. 1,
Aug. ’92, Alison Byrne Fields, the zine’s editrix, discusses rape, questions of
normalcy, and racism. She offers personal reflections on each and deploys a
borderlands rhetoric to demonstrate the connection of these reflections to the
world around her. This zine offers examples of the ways in which the private
and public as well as the local and global are understood and articulated
as a means of activism and revisioning. Some of the images reproduced
throughout the zine include 1950s‑style photographs, what I would call
“happy‑family photographs,” which stand in direct contradiction to the text;
this juxtaposition serves to interrupt the implied photographic narrative. In
an entry reflecting on the experiences of rape titled “An Act of Rudeness,”
there is an image of a young, pretty girl drinking a soft drink out of a glass
bottle and through a straw, followed by images of explicitly heterosexualized
couples embracing as if in dance with the captions “companionship” and
“romance” (n.p.). Although the visual images imply a kind of innocent fun,
the narrative is about acquaintance rape. The rhetorical function of the visual
argument and the narrative together is to recreate the dissonance that is a
part of date rape. It creates the message that you cannot necessarily trust
what you see and that the illusions of romance are predicated on a gendered
imbalance of power as well as a presumed heterosexuality. The text calls on
women to be angry so that e‑motion might lead to naming acquaintance
rape as rape. This entry—text and visual image together—disrupts normative
mis/representations of romance to open up a space for shared understanding
and potential action.
One of the entries that follows “An Act of Rudeness” is a personal
reflection on ideas of normalcy and madness. This zinester reflects on her
job at a mental health institution where she has some responsibility for
two “developmentally disabled women” (n.p.). Her reflections reveal her
understanding of the blurry boundary between normalcy and abnormalcy. The
zinester re‑considers the differently imposed sanctions for performing desire
and naming pleasure in oppositional contexts of the named “abnormal” and
the “normal” (n.p.). She offers a critique of medical practices, practitioners,
and doctors, especially regarding their in‑abilities to communicate about
sex and sexuality. She notes, for instance, that due to the “condescending
behavior that I’ve received from doctors, for so long now I’ve been willing
to relinquish all knowledge about my body to them” (n.p.). She notes that
while she admires self‑administered alternative health practices, she’s not
“conscientious enough for that” (n.p.). She laments the fact that she still
sees medical doctors but goes on to say that what she needs to do “is to
start taking control” (n.p.). This zinester elaborates on this idea by saying,
“I, along with you, should demand honesty and clarity from our doctors.
And, as my mom always tells me, we should stop and listen when our
bodies are sending us signals. We should explore—our bodies, books, and
each other—for the information we need” (n.p.). This entry demonstrates
a desire to re‑member herself as an embodied being. Throughout this entry,

she questions the legitimacy of information disseminated and mass‑produced
in a consumer‑oriented society.
In the final pages of this zine, Aimee offers personal reflections on
being raised in a racist society by a racist family. Her essay is titled “Family
Pictures: Should We Be on the Ends for Balance? (Easier to cut out too)”
(n.p.). She self‑identifies as biracial and notes that she is one of three biracial
children in her family, along with her two cousins. She reflects an awareness
of laws governing the historical interaction of her own family. Citing Lovey v
Virginia (1967), she notes how miscegenation laws “only went off the books
five years before I was born” (n.p.). In her personal essays she uses quotes
from a blatantly racist grandfather and white supremacist uncle, and she
laments the loss of the maturing males in the family to racist ideology (n.p.).
She stipulates that “this isn’t going to be an in‑depth expose of the American
people. I haven’t conducted major polls. I’m going to write about my family”
(n.p.). Personal narrative is a valuable tool for this zinester as she makes sense
of the racist spaces of her upbringing and the racism practiced there.
The narrative in this entry, like the ones above, disrupt the assumptions
that can be made regarding the “happy‑family” photograph. Representing
the practices of everyday racism in which niceness and tolerance in the face
of racism prevails, she notes that “[n]either my grandpa nor the rest of my
family were mean to me, never treated me differently. It’s kind of white by
association thing. It makes things easier for them” (n.p.). After a schoolmate
referred to Aimee as a “nigger,” she says she began to deal with her biracial
identity: “Suddenly, the fact that my great grandmother was showing me off
as a good example of what a ‘colored’ child could look like started to bother
me” (n.p.). In an entry that reveals the emptiness inherent in disembodied
and disembodying discourses and practices, she grapples with the experiences
of being invisible, having no body, and having no history: “I try not to bring
up the fact that I’m black in front of my family, although one would think
that it’s quite obvious. When I walk through the door a certain part of me
becomes invisible” (n.p.). Acts of reverso challenge mis/representations that
maintain third space as invisible and inaudible. Aimee works against that
which has been effectively silenced and obscured in order to see and hear
herself and Others represented as real material beings.
Anzaldúa argues for the potential of our stories to make change. She
contends, however, that our stories—our lived knowledges—are embodied
and that it is only through the body that the human soul can be transformed.
E‑motion proves a motivator for such transformation. Throughout zines,
examples of embodied knowledges circulate as a demonstration of third‑space
practices of resistance, meaning making, and transformation. Through critical

reversals of the normative gaze, zinesters are investigating social practices and
holding society accountable for those normalized and normalizing practices
(including ways of seeing and looking) that they identify as subordinating,
oppressive, domesticating, alienating, and violent. They seek to remedy social
ills based on imposed and inequitable divisions. Often they intervene in
visual mis/representations to resist ways of seeing and looking that reproduce
normative assumptions.
Embodied Resistance and Coalitional Subjectivity
Zinesters as third‑space subjects are articulating e‑motion to action. Ideas that

love, action, education, and anger can be articulated for purposes of social
activism and coalition are promoted throughout Housewife Turned Assassin!.
One page of Housewife Turned Assassin!, Numero #1, is dedicated to the
building of a “Secret Girlfriend Society,” through the sharing of information
and collective action. This author writes, “So I propose you talk to a friend
and she talks to another and another and then we’ll start a beautiful, huge
connection of support—a secret society of love and empowerment so people
won’t fuck with us and we won’t be victims anymore. We don’t need anyone’s
permission to take control of our lives and fight this. We will educate and
support each other through ideas put into action” (n.p.). A fighting spirit
is unleashed in the zines considered here to resist exclusionary practices and
divisive orderings. There is also a direct action page that calls for tactical
placement of “red‑and‑white stickers declaring ‘This Insults Women,’ ‘This
Promotes Violence Against Women,’ and ‘This Promotes Hatred of Women’ ”
(n.p.). The zine ends with a handwritten note from “Sisi,” who explains that
she coproduced this zine “cuz I’m pissed off at the way shit is & I feel that
sharing ideas & knowledge is a way in which we can stop the cycle of humyn
egocentric behavior—which includes: racism, genderism, classism, ignorance,
greed, & violence. This is my contribution to the mind revolution that should
be occurring always” (n.p.). Deployed borderlands rhetorics demonstrate
the politics of articulation that are informing the production of this zine. This
action‑oriented approach resists that which denigrates Others, it advocates
community action, and it demonstrates a coalitional consciousness at play
in the reconfiguring of community as an emergent cultural and coalitional
formation.
Throughout Housewife Turned Assassin!, Numero #1, the author
expresses outrage at rampant sexism. Outrage moves the author to focus on
strategies of resistance to imposed, constricting, and maddening images of
femininity, beauty, and the body. This zine unearths connections between
patriarchy and capitalism and explores their articulated implications in
practices of commodifications, exclusions, subordinations, and oppressions.
It is evident from the author’s specific strategies of resistance that she is aware
of the complex networks and relations of power that perpetuate practices of
surveillances on women’s bodies and recreate subordinating images of women.
For example, on one page the author represents the articulation of late capital
and patriarchy via a reproduced postcard of sorts that pictures a body being
drawn and quartered in the directions of “greed,” “sexism,” “despair,” and
“racism.” The caption reads “United States of America” (n.p.). Above this
cut‑and‑pasted image is an announcement for a zine titled Function zine
with the caption, “kill the image that is killing you” (n.p.). Down the center
of this page is written “WOMYN’S concocted sexuality is a commodity
4 CORPORATE AMERICA. Doesn’t this SCARE YOU? fallacy Why is
it attractive to look sooo HELPLESS?” (n.p.). These words are written
around two reproduced parodic images of women photographed to appear
stereotypically giddy, silly, hyperfeminine, and helpless (see Figure 3.5).
Figure 3.5. “kill the image that is killing you”—from Housewife Turned Assassin!,
Numero #1, edited by Dani and Sisi.
Zinesters who are working to re‑present the female body are also
promoting a new literacy that allows the body to be read and represented
differently and that identifies misrepresentations and distortions that have
been normalized. The e‑motion of anger is overtly represented in an entry
from “a feminist dictionary” on bulimia reprinted in the upper righthand
corner of this page. The entry, attributed to Mary Ellen Sanesy, reads:
BULIMIA Binge‑Purge Syndrome. “An expression of anger

at society, an anger which is taken out on oneself. A woman
overeats (for some a carrot, for another three carrot cakes), feels
bloated, guilty and angry at self so she self‑induces vomiting,
or fasts for a while, or uses laxatives. It’s a method to disguise
one’s discontent with her treatment by others. It’s a purging of
creativity, frustration and intelligence in a world where a heavy
price is asked of creative women; it’s a way to feel guilty and
bad about oneself when things may be going too well. It’s an
ambivalent rejection of the traditional definitions of woman.”
(n.p.)17
Throughout this zine the understanding that anger is both justifiable and
motivating is made explicit. As a demonstration there is also a reproduced
poster that identifies women’s bodies as battlegrounds while calling for
the support of legal abortion. This call is followed by statistics about
abortion, produced in part to dispel myths about abortion. Identifying the
body as battleground is, as Bordo contends, an act of resistance because
it acknowledges that “self‑determination has to be fought for” (263).
According to Bordo, “The metaphor of the body as battleground, rather
than postmodern playground, captures, as well, the practical difficulties
involved in the political struggle to empower ‘difference’ ” (263). Zinesters
are conscious of the practical difficulties in the political e‑motional work
they are re‑imagining and pursuing for purposes of mobilizing action in
community contexts. They demonstrate a savvy understanding of identity
and body politics.
Gift Idea, 1 & ½, is a self-described minizine or pocket zine that
demonstrates a resistance to identified privilege. The editrix of the zine,
seanna, notes that her previous zine was titled “alienation and privilege,” but
she explains that she decided not to reproduce another issue with that title
because, among other reasons, it sounded “authoritarian & academic” (3).
This name change constitutes an act of disarticulation from the mechanisms
of control that authorize and privilege certain knowledges over others. seanna
self‑identifies as a transforming “white middle class queer‑bi girl (grrrl),

anti‑authoritarian, ballet reject turned stripper” (4). She demonstrates her
third‑space sense of coalitional subjectivity as she imagines her audience to
be “those interested in social change,” noting that her own stake in social
change “is basically that i don’t want people to be/feel abused, alienated, and
shitted on as i was in childhood and still am now sometimes. the pain is
everywhere” (4). This zinester’s reflections articulate abuse, anger, and practices
of confrontation. She acknowledges that anger is a valid response to abuse
but then goes on to describe how she is learning to use anger appropriately
and how not to be intimidated into inaction. Anger as a motivating e‑motion
and demonstration of embodied knowledge is prevalent throughout this
zine. Anger is identified as a motivator in confronting the unacceptable and
beginning to build community based on shared experiences and desires.
The rhetoric of e‑motion is an important tactic deployed throughout
zine culture, an example of which we can see throughout Bamboo Girl #11.
Its editrix, Sabrina Margarita Sandata, demonstrates a keen awareness of class
positioning, race, gender, and color. Sandata’s consciousness about the material
consequences of race is reminiscent for me of Vázquez and Torres’s notion
of pigmentocracy, a term implying an entrenched hierarchy based on skin
tonalities that effects material consequences. One entry of note involves Sandata’s
response to a reference made to Bamboo Girl in the book Warrior Lessons, by
Phoebe Eng. The zine is apparently listed under “Fierce Girl Backlash.” Eng
is quoted as stating that “fiercegirl backlash can be reactive without being
analytical and what fiercegirls need is a prescription for the power to turn
rage into creativity” (2). Sandata takes issue with this mis‑representation of
Bamboo Girl and enters into a dialogue with Eng. In explaining that anger
“can be a tool to propel change and create action,” Sandata exemplifies the
concept of e‑motion (2). On the following page, after the end of this article
in Bamboo Girl #11, is another post 9/11 public announcement. This one is
of a veiled woman and the captions read: “Genocide ≠ Justice,” and “WE ARE
NOT THE ENEMY” (57) (see Figure 3.6). Another public announcement
reproduced in this same issue reads: “JUSTICE NOT VENGEANCE:
Let us not become the evil that we deplore” (67) (see Figure 3.7). These
announcements are interesting in light of the fact that this issue begins with
a defense of anger as a tool for action. Anger and violence are disarticulated
in this instance. Anger and peace are then articulated as a demonstration of
the way in which anger can serve a peaceful agenda. The right to be angry
is a right that is actively embraced in zines.
E‑motion is also transformed into resistance in Tater Taught, #1, a
zine from Seattle, Washington, when Emily Barber, editrix, states that she
Another fun piece to sport proudly at work.
You're boss will love it!
Figure 3.6. “We are not the enemy”—from Bamboo Girl #11, edited by
Sabrina Margarita Sandata, and Favianna Rodriguez, illustrator.
Figure 3.7. “JUSTICE NOT VENGEANCE”—from Bamboo Girl #11, edited by

Sabrina Margarita Sandata, and Inkworks Press, illustrator.
is writing to focus on and participate in resistance to the normative and

disciplining effects of media‑imposed myths about beauty and womanhood.
Her observations have led her “to a revolution; one in search of liberating
women from the destructive beauty cycle, and in search to regain our power.
this zine is just a tiny step in the revolution a chance to reach out to
other women with out the dictation of our society” (Tater Taught #1 n.p.).
Her introductory reflections imply both an awareness of the micropractices
of resistance as well as a belief that it is through coalition that the ill
effects of an oppressive and corporatized mass culture can be challenged
and subverted. One cut‑and‑paste page entry co‑titled “fight sizeism” and
“feminism is not a dirty word” reproduces a no‑diet button with the word
DIET and a line through it (n.p.). Information and e‑motion are connected
in the call to “question the beauty standard,” which is followed by statistics
that state “1 in 40,000 women meets the requirements of a model’s size
and shape,” “the cosmetic industry in the U.S. grosses $300 million a year
and is growing annually by 10%,” and finally, “the diet industry currently
grosses $33 billion a year” (n.p.). Another page, picturing Barbie, reveals
“The Barbie Secret” in a balloon‑caption reading “100% injection molded
plastic!” (n.p.) (see Figure 3.8).
Figure 3.8. “Fight Sizeism”—from Tater Taught #1, edited by Emily Barber.
This zine demonstrates a critical awareness of feminist theories dealing with

notions of the body and body modification. This zine, like many others,
is in critical dialogue with theoretical debates about identity, image, and
representation. The idea of plasticity and plastic bodies is also investigated
and addressed in an academic context by Bordo, who notes that “the rhetoric
of choice and self‑determination and the breezy analogies comparing cosmetic
surgery to fashion accessorizing are deeply mystifying. They efface not only
the inequalities of privilege, money, and time that prohibit most people
from indulging in these practices, but the desperation that characterizes the
lives of those who do” (247–48).
Propelled by e‑motion, zines such as Tater Taught, #1 are demystifying
the rhetoric of choice and resisting the restrictive images proliferated
throughout society. These kinds of zines are engaging the implications of late
capital and consumer culture on bodies in a material world, and exploring
alternative narratives, images, and consumption patterns. In an entry titled
“HATE LOVE REVOLUTION” in Tater Taught, #1, Barber explores
e‑motions as motivators for activism and as interruptions of dominant
confines of femininity:
they say hate is a bad thing and that my anger is destructive. i hate
our society that oppresses women. i hate the beauty restrictions
on women. i hate the superficial ideals of our society. i am angry
that feminism is still viewed as a threatening, bad word. i am
angry that the media constantly bombards me with messages
that thinness is the only form of beauty. i hate being told that
i can never be perfect, why aren’t i perfect the way i am? Is this
anger wrong? but, this anger, this hatred has forced me to stand
up for myself and my rights as a woman. i am not fighting with
hatred. i am using it as an outlet for my happiness. i think my
anger is healthy, it’s a process that can be productive. love too.
girl love. when women around me complain about their weight,
feeling ugly, and all the other aspects of our society that have
hypnotized women of their rights, i feel hurt. this compassion
and love also helped stir a revolution. (n.p.)
Barber’s critical investigation into anger as a tool of inquiry and understanding

exemplifies how e‑motion informs meaning making. Her reflections
demonstrate an integrated knowledge and embodied understanding of
third‑space lived experience. Finally, Barber demonstrates an understanding
of the role of anger and e‑motion as motivators to action.
In Memoirs of a Queer Hapa #2, jackie includes multiple entries on the

role of love as empathetic knowledge in mixed‑race activism.18 One entry is
titled “Why Love is Important for Mixed‑Race Queers” (2). In this entry
she has a subsection titled “Love and Activist Burnout” in which she address
the e‑motion of love and why it is of particular importance for mixed‑race
queer people (4). Her answer begins with reflections on lived experiences
of the difficulties of loving oneself as a mixed‑race queer. In these sections
she demonstrates the value of e‑motion in the struggles “to bring down the
system” of domination (3). In reference to equity and justice, she also notes
that love, as an act of resistance, “makes the fight worthwhile” (3). She also
articulates class to her reflections on race, ethnicity, culture, and sexuality
and states that in measuring worth by what people own and possess, we
de‑value those who are poor. She notes that “to get someone to hate and
de‑value their self, you have to get them to buy into a value‑system based
on norms relating to class, age, ability, race, gender, sexuality and so forth”
(3). She asks, “If we hate ourselves because we’ve internalized a white,
heteronormative ideal, how can we love and accept others who don’t fit into
a white, heteronormative ideal? We are told that to be beautiful means to be
white; to be worthy of acceptance is to be straight; to be ‘authentic’ means
to be one‑thing‑or‑the‑other” (3). Her explicitly queer zine acknowledges
that and how third‑space subjects are forging alliance and community in
explicit resistance to exclusionary normative productions, noting:
Mixed‑race and queer writers are beginning to forge community

with each other regardless of their diverse mixed backgrounds (an
essay by a half‑black butch‑identified person may appear next
to an essay by a Chinese‑Jewish queer feminist). Furthermore,
transracially adopted people are often included in these
compilations given the tremendous overlap in their experiences
(which may include pressure to assimilate, challenges to ethnic
authenticity, loss of language, and so forth).” (Queer Hapa #2 12)
SAD, issue number one, ’93, is a zine written by Mary Burt to dispel
commodified notions and what she calls fantasies of happiness. Burt
articulates the psychological and the social to reveal an integrated, embodied
subject.19 In a way similar to those zinesters who intervene in the illusions
of commodified and normativized representations of romance, she states
that the happiness so many people seem to be in search of does not exist:
“It’s an image advertisements use to sell their products to upper‑middle
class alcoholics (or the people who want to look like them)” (n.p.). Burt
goes on to write that this zine is “a celebration of sadness. It’s for people
who know that at the base of all experience is a level of insecurity and
loneliness that moves those involved to act” (n.p.). This zinester is using
e‑motion to address the psychosocial and emotional challenges experienced
particularly by girls and women in everyday contexts where images demean
and disconnect.
how I learned to do IT bloody murder is a zine by heather lynn that
expresses anger and alienation. lynn’s reflections are disturbingly raw, offering
insight into the ways in which the everyday can be deeply distressing for girls
and women. She asks, “why is it we learn to equate love and violence?” (n.p.).
She analyzes a society that perpetuates this equation. lynn’s reflections on
sex reveal identified contradictions inherent in a society that simultaneously
sexualizes girls and women while also disciplining and inhibiting them, all
the while promoting a distorted version of female desire: “i can’t seem to
figure out where sex ends and rape begins. most girls i know were introduced
to sex through rape. the scary part is, alot of them don’t realize it” (bloody
murder n.p.). In her conclusion, she identifies writing as a life‑saving practice
and process that mixes fiction and lived experiences. She self‑identifies as
“white and suburban bred,” and specifies that “this is just one small small
interpretation of what it’s like to grow up a girl—and that’s all i’m trying
to present” (bloody murder n.p.). Writing and e‑motion are part of the
process of coming to consciousness and action about oppressive or alienating
(discursive) practices.
Embodied Knowledge as Practice and Power
The coming to third‑space coalitional consciousness through integrated

knowledge practices that are evident in zines invokes for me the Aztec
image and story of Coyolxauhqui. According to the story, Coyolxauhqui
inspired her brothers and sisters to kill her mother for having disgraced
the family. Coyolxauhqui was dismembered by her brother as an act of
punishment for having killed their mother. Her story symbolizes figurative
and literal fragmentation and dismemberment. Acts of re‑membering, then,
can be acts including remembering, reconfiguring, and reconciliation.20 Such
re‑memberings can be found throughout many zines. They are subversive
undertakings that serve to piece together or articulate fragmented and
fragmenting histories and disembodied experiences in order to heal from
the internal and external, local and global, personal and political experiences
of division, subordination, and disciplinary and (corporeal) punishments.
Embodied knowledges are uncovered in these performances of rearticulation.

Through the politics of articulation and practices of reverso, third‑space zines
are informing and transforming quotidian practices by linking the theory
and practice of embodied knowing, being, and doing.
My analysis of zines in this chapter draws heavily from Susan Bordo’s
academic work, which reverses the gaze on Western culture to reveal how
it has so thoroughly dichotomized mind and body as to effectively occlude
their interconnectedness. Bordo identifies and investigates embodied resis‑
tances to the disciplining and subordinating practices and power of cul‑
tural images over time. Specifically, her work resists and revisions the ways
in which dualities are culturally reinscribed and reinforced on the female
body in dominant contexts. She invokes a feminist politics of the body by
calling for new ways of representing the body and embodied knowledge
beyond binaries, noting that “the study of the disordered body is as much
the proper province of cultural critics in every field and of nonspecial‑
ists, ordinary but critically questioning citizens, as it is of the ‘experts’ ”
(Unbearable Weight 2004 69).21 Zinesters emerge in this chapter as criti‑
cally questioning, everyday experts. Although the zines analyzed here were
predominantly those addressing girls and women, zines are also addressing
the differently configured body that refuses assumed conflations of gender,
sexuality, and anatomy.
Reminiscent of both Bordo’s and Fausto‑Sterling’s third‑space work
on bodies and sexualities, zinesters are reweaving the mind‑body duality,
revisioning the body and sexuality, and representing the ambiguous. The
imaginary moves us to the third space beyond reductive identity binaries.
Reimagining and revisioning oneself beyond the binary allows for a
multidimensional re‑presentation of one’s being and lived experiences. For
purposes of re‑presentation, it is important then to look to the psychic
and the social, the material and the symbolic. In theory as in practice, a
decolonized imagination serves efforts to revision nondominant ways of
being and of knowing that emanate from embodied practice.
As evidenced in this chapter’s analyses, imagination and writing
are articulated practices represented in the production of third‑space
sites and subjectivities. In Lois McNay’s writing about the imagination,
she explains how subjects do not always conform to the identity options
available according to a dominant social order. Donna Haraway, too,
invokes the mythical to reimagine a more fluid, more complicated notion
of identity. Anzaldúa calls for the conscious creation of new myths. Zines
demonstrate such nonconformity through their creative re‑presentations of
embodied third‑space subjectivity. The notion of embodiment speaks to
the implications of the multiplicity of social forces on subject formation.

The material and historical are implicated beyond the exterior into the
space(s) of the interior. Other important influences of subject formation
that cross the interior‑exterior boundary include sociocultural myth, the
imagination, and psychosocial representations of the relational subject. In
discussing third‑space lived experience as both psychic and social, Chela
Sandoval identifies
an anticolonial, mestiza, U.S. feminist of color, queer, and

differential conceptualization of the subject. To comprehend
this other conceptualization, one cannot fully inhabit either
the modernist/historicist or the poststructuralist/postmodernist
position, but rather inhabit each and partially; for to conceptualize
the subject as either present under modernism, or fragmented,
schizophrenic, and absent under postmodernism, is to once again
evade the differential practice of cognitive mapping. (33–34)
In my investigation of zines, we are confronted with zinesters who

understand themselves as corporeal and relational beings who value
embodied knowledges not based on objective ways of knowing but rather
based on lived experiences. Work in zines often situates the dispassionate
knower as racist, classist, and (hetero)sexist.
Through her discussion of la facultad, Anzaldúa revisions what for me is
the potential for e‑motion to inform deeper meanings and understandings of
the world. La facultad is a kind of sensitivity, a consciousness, and a survival
tactic that renders one “excruciatingly alive to the world” and also psychically
and acutely aware. Acknowledging the psychic terrain and its implications
in our knowing and being can be considered a third‑space practice. The
empathetic knowledge of which Lorraine Code speaks and la facultad as
theorized by Gloria Anzaldúa are both related to the coalitional consciousness
that Sandoval reveals and advocates. Empathetic knowledge is knowledge
reproduced by the mind‑body. Empathetic and embodied knowledges,
then, are sometimes informed by anger and therefore can be understood as
motivated by e‑motion. Acknowledging e‑motion’s role in the production
of knowledge involves a willingness to be differently informed, and to
express and represent differently as well. Third‑space zines demonstrate the
different ways we can inform and be informed specifically through affective
or emotional understandings. The epistemological implications of diverse
reconstructions of knowledge speak directly to the ways in which third‑space
subjects embody the interstitial. In offering liminal and at times ambiguous
and contradictory perspectives, understandings, and re‑presentations, our

practiced worldviews express the complexities of third‑space subjectivity. The
complexities are not always liberating but can sometimes be experienced as
confining and silencing.
In her work on empathetic knowledge, Code concludes that
“[r]esponsible, empathetic knowing will start from recognition that
mutuality can never be assumed, but it can sometimes be realized” (142).
The ability to deconstruct, reconstruct, and co‑construct knowledge is a
powerful agentive tool that can be used to motivate social change and
reconfigure social relations.
As an example, Calico, #5 engages in the politics of articulation,
the practice of mutuality, and coalitional consciousness in an entry titled
“Dyke Page: We’re Queer Friendly” (14). This article defines illiteracy as
the inability to read diverse cultural con‑texts and links it to ignorance and
homophobia. The juxtaposition of a personal reflection on the experiences of
homophobia situated just after a page on illiteracy discussed earlier is a savvy
tactic that links illiteracies beyond the inability to read texts to the il‑literacy
of reading diverse bodies and sexualities. Lesbianism, in this zine, is referred
to as “either [a] choice or [biological]” and it is defined as “much more
than just sex” (14). This entry invites those who believe being lesbian, gay,
bisexual, transgender, or queer (LGBTQ) is a choice as well as those who
believe it is not a choice into conversations while it also intervenes in any
narrow understandings of the LGBTQ community as defined only through
sex. A kind of community literacy is therefore promoted for those within
and allied to LGBTQ communities. The linking of allies with gays and
lesbians demonstrates a coalitional approach to reimagining and recreating
a more just and inclusive community context. Many entries in zines express
a deep anger at the injustices that prevent such coalitions.
Zinesters are exploring a multitude of ways of being informed and
educated. They work collaboratively and creatively to subvert structures and
practices that maintain the status quo, which is experienced as limiting,
oppressive, and unjust. Their explorations are often imaginative, creative,
and sometimes humorous. Zines exemplify alternatives to dis‑embodied
(knowledge) practices. They serve as a space from which to reveal and address
overlooked concerns and un(der)represented voices. Coming to identify the
resistant practices and alternative approaches to being and knowing in the
world is both hopeful and brave. In the next chapter I explore alternatives
to capitalist imperatives and identify zines as sites of queered revisionings,
altered consumerism, and more just (as opposed to just more) production.
4
Queer‑y‑ing Consumption
and Production
Critical Inquiries and Third‑Space Subversions
As evidenced in third‑space zines, lived knowledges often inform coalitional

work and connectivities and must be acted upon to make change happen. To
better understand practices of coalition, solidarity, and subversion, especially
as these are undertaken in practices and performances of consumption and
production, I continue to pursue a focus on the practices and politics of
articulation that, in part, define the analytical method of this project.1
Racialized, sexualized, and gendered realities offer insights into material
circumstances.2 The lived knowledges of these circumstances are valid and
vital for the building of tactical coalitions across contexts of difference in
pursuit of antiracist, social justice agendas.3 Lived knowledges are acted
upon in third‑space zines and the rhetorical performances and practices that
emerge as a result offer insights into the potential for third‑space subversion
to alter practices, form connections, and make change.
Before proceeding, I want to clarify the terms at play throughout
this chapter. As third‑space interventions, working‑class conscious, of‑color
zines are innovative acts of resistance to the neocolonizing effects of
postmodern globalization.4 By “postmodern globalization,” I mean the
simultaneous homogenization, commodification, and appropriation of
difference in late‑stage capitalism.5 The process and experience of the
pressure of homogenization through normalized heterogeneity is familiar
to multiply‑situated subjects. This homogenizing tendency can erase, often
through appropriation or commodification, nondominant lived experiences,
knowledges, and expressions from social discourses and practices. These
99
invisibilizations are maintained by what Susan Bordo conceives of as

“normalized heterogeneity,” which refers to those practices that further
obscure difference. Though Bordo is specifically addressing how naturalized
standards of beauty and body image prevail in consumer contexts, I use the
concept more broadly to identify any practice with homogenizing tendencies
that overlooks and erases differences and contestations in terms of race,
class, gender, sexuality, and knowledges. Through borderlands rhetorics,
third‑space zines are, in fact, questioning the reproduction and consumption
of images, including media images, of the normalized subject. Normalized
heterogeneity naturalizes dominant representations as both the standard and
the norm. When I refer to normalized heterogeneity, I specifically mean the
ways in which difference gets reduced to sameness, especially as this occurs
in commodifying practices of consumer culture.6 Several third‑space zines
demonstrate the ways homogenizing and normalizing practices are resisted
and subverted, especially in the context of consumption and production.
Third‑space zines also destabilize ubiquitous products of consumer
culture while others subvert prescribed consumption and production practices
and imperatives through engaged second‑order consumption, bartering, and
trade. Both heteronormativity and homonormativity, in their normalizing
and hegemonic functions, are challenged, resisted, and subverted especially
in their relationship to desire. To better understand these subversions,
I introduce the practices of queering and queer‑y‑ing consumption and
production.7 Works investigating what I call “queered consumption” have
been primarily focused on queers as consumers, including how we consume,
what we consume, and when. In other words, queers in late‑stage capitalism
have been commodified for the sake of marketing and they have been
normativized as well as legitimated especially in their roles as consumers.8
While this commodification has led to greater visibility for gays and lesbians,
it is what Hennessy terms a “limited victory” (32). Commodified queer
subjects are limited by the production of a narrow subjectivity that also
falsely homogenizes the queer consumer in one particular racialized (white)
and classed (middle- to upper‑classed) location. Visibility, especially in regard
to the queer, does not translate into mobility and remains confined to the
realm of the discursively and narrowly constructed consumer. However,
visibility alone does not allow for an expanded focus to include material
circumstances and material practices of consumption and production,
especially in the context of the everyday.
While queering often refers to gender and sexuality, “queer‑y‑ing”
refers to the creative and critical inquiry and class‑consciousness performed
in many third‑space zines advocating for social change.9 Queering and
Queer‑y‑ing Consumption and Production / 101
queer‑y‑ing each unhinge and unsettle assumptions and prescriptive practices

about consumption and production, about consumers and producers, and
ultimately about desire. These dissident performances sometimes lead to
new knowledges and newly imagined practices and myths to guide everyday
practices and performances. I see these practices as Anzaldúan. Gloria
Anzaldúa is interested in rhetorical and material practices that allow people
to reimagine and to reinsert themselves into processes of transformation,
both of their own subjectivities and of the world in which those subjectivities
may be called forth, ignored, or rejected. Specifically, she asks borderlands
peoples to name and learn from what has been done to us but to then move
from victim status to consider our own practices and actively “question what
we are doing to each other, to those in distant countries, and to the earth’s
environment” (This Bridge We Call Home 2). Many zines are confronting the
perils of practices of mass consumption and mass production and working
to reimagine new practices for one another and for the earth.
Zinesters are identifying the potent networks that function to promote
a normalized and homogenized sense of the consuming as well as the
producing self. They often express the understanding of gendered difference
as it is experienced ethnically, sexually, racially, bodily, and materially.
While there is an understanding of the body as a medium of culture and
site of social control, there is also a corresponding understanding of the
different ways culture is written on and experienced by differently abled
and differently controlled bodies. Zines interrupt the construction of self
that Susan Bordo has identified as “located within consumer culture and
its contradictory requirement that we embody both the spiritual discipline
of the work ethic and the capacity for continual, mindless consumption
of goods” (15). Zinesters espouse conscious micropractices of resistance to
loosen the grip of a misogynist and commodified culture. The achievement
of raised consciousnesses is no small feat. Bordo notes that
the goal of consciousness‑raising may seem, perhaps, to belong

to another era. I believe, however, that in our present culture of
mystification—a culture which continually pulls us away from
systematic understanding and inclines us toward constructions
that emphasize individual freedom, choice, power, ability—simply
becoming more conscious is a tremendous achievement. (30)
The zines I analyze here represent a range of burgeoning, informed, and

long‑standing practices that reveal class and queer consciousness. These
zines provoke new relations and new ways of relating, as well as imagined
alternatives to dominant consumption and production practices in the

context of globalization and consumer culture. The pursuit and deployment
of the coalitional consciousness unearthed in these zines creatively resists
and subverts dominant practices and expectations of consumption and
production that have proven so alienating, exclusionary, inaccessible, and
unjust.
Reconfiguring the Objects and Subjects of Consumption and

Production: Brrls in the Material World
Many zines actively resist the neocolonizing effects of a strict and

artificial gender dichotomy while they work to revision the historic
misrepresentations of third‑space sites and subjectivities.10 The instability
of sex, gender, and anatomy translates into a fluid and perhaps trans
performance in zines. Ambiguity has a central place in the representation
of instability and indeterminacy. The borderlands rhetorical strategies of
naming this ambiguity are decidedly third‑space practices in that the need
to name as not either/or but instead both/and is a lived need steeped in
material and corporeal reality. It is in this third space beyond dichotomous
representations of self that a more fluid spectrum of subjectivity is revealed.
When this third‑space subjectivity is put into motion, process, relation,
and play, its multiplicity is exposed, offering points of affinity previously
obscured by the illusionary and artificially sutured effects of binary dualisms.
For practices of resistance, these points of affinity offer third spaces for
coalition building as it relates to deliberate practices of consumption and
production. In zines, commodification and appropriation are understood
as capitalist imperatives that necessarily obscure difference.
A number of zines include entries on different bodies and body
modification that reflect third‑space and borderlands rhetorics to represent
understanding, performing, and being the desiring and desirable queered
body in third space. The writers of the zines I examine in this section
explore and expose the body as a medium of cultural control and cultural
resistance, and they offer a discourse that dismantles and demystifies the
rhetoric of gender, and particularly femininity, as it is often spoken to
control and subordinate.11 There is a stated awareness of the ways femininity
functions to render bodies docile as well as how it functions to reproduce
a commodified and valued consumer, which is the object of sophisticated
and ubiquitous marketing schemes.
Looking with a commitment to see beyond the gender and sex
dichotomy reveals third‑space bodies and borderlands rhetorics in the
consumer culture of the material world. This commitment to see what

normative culture obscures is important for demonstrating the ways in
which bodies in and of third space become intelligible and get re‑represented
as altered and altering. The zines I analyze here are third‑space con/texts of
il‑legitimate creative acts of queering selves, sites, relations, and discourses
over time. My own play with Pirate Jenny’s notion of brrl reflects my
resistance to universalizing representations of the (imagined) consumer as a
stable and predictable category always and everywhere desiring the hetero-
and homonormative that have been normal/ized throughout dominant
contexts.12 The re‑presentation of ambiguous bodies at play in a material
world reimagines the consumer and the consumed as well as the producer
and the produced as never fixed or guaranteed.
In a section from fantastic fanzine: s is for sorry, titled “another list,”
erika offers reflections on sexuality and sexual identity, body modification,
freeganism, alternative sites of education, heterosexism, anger, patriarchy,
emotions, pleasure, and love (n.p.).13 She self‑identifies as “QUEER,” noting
that she likes “the words QUEER, FAG, and DYKE but especially queer
cause it’s inclusive and it makes uptight straights feel uncomfortable” (n.p.).
Again, this entry provides evidence of the conscious search for nondominant,
nonnormative discourse to function on behalf of nondominant beings,
becomings, and belongings. This next reflection is reminiscent for me of
Chicana writings on recognizing one another as countrywomen. erika writes,
“it’s so hard to explain heterosexism to a well meaning (?) straight. but when
my queer friends and i talk about it we just KNOW” (n.p.). This entry
functions rhetorically to reflect third‑space epistemological understandings
of ways of knowing and being that are not dominant and not normative as
well as the real desire to have these ways of knowing and being shared and
understood. In addition to materializing coalitional subjectivity, this zine
also demonstrates a communal or community orientation. The reflections
expressed are written from the perspective of a relational subject who is
in dialogue with Others. At another point on this list erika identifies rage
as the e‑motion she regularly experiences in a context she identifies as
oppressive and misogynist. In a section titled “BROTHER STRUGGLE,”
erika reflects on white male privilege and the unrealiz/ed/able revolutionary
potential of the punk music scene, which she implies is a homogenized and
homogenizing cultural formation and practice that has served to ignore,
and even erase, differences of race, sex, and gender. The alternatives she
espouses promote conscious consumption as an everyday intervention into
the imperatives of capitalism.
In an entry in Pirate Jenny titled “Sexuality, Gender and Identity:
Theories on Discursive Constructionism or Hetero Hell: My Year as a
Queer in a House of Straights,” zinester Lauren Tabak references Adrienne

Rich and Judith Butler to discuss the fluidity of gender identity. Tabak
concludes by stating that “[h]omosexuality and heterosexuality, representing
the two polarities in that metaphor, are constructions that are ultimately
self‑destructive. To perform the necessary roles (of straight or gay) is hard
work, and is problematic when you consider the ever‑expanding notion of
what constitutes human sexuality and ultimately, human identity” (2:1 58).
The back of this zine invites readers to “Look for this seal,” after which is
situated an ambiguous third‑space being who is turned away from the reader.
Beneath this figure are the labels: “Boy? Girl? Brrl.” The neologism brrl is an
example of borderlands rhetoric being deployed to represent the ambiguous,
while also functioning to subvert the normative. The quote underneath the
figure in this particular issue is by Adrienne Rich and speaks of revisioning,
a survival strategy in which language in its limiting and liberating potential
must be explored. The act of survival referenced by this author is, for me,
a tactic of third space. This zine evinces a sophisticated engagement with
academic theory as it consistently references feminist theory and theorists,
demonstrating the way zines are in creative dialogue with theory often
for the explicit purpose of holding theory specifically—and authorized and
expert knowledge generally—accountable to the communities for which
and from which it is produced. Another issue ends with a repeated “Look
for this seal,” but adds “of authenticity” (1:4 back cover). This play with
the notion of authenticity, and to a lesser degree commodification, is
important to the critical consciousness that is an integral part of third‑space
understanding (1:4 back cover).14 Notions of authenticity and objectification
are understood as empty, stultifying, and oppressing in their effects. Beneath
this representation of “Brrl” is a quote by Andrea Dworkin that speaks to
the discovery of the fictitious nature of “man” and “woman,” concluding
that we are a “multisexed species which has its sexuality spread along a vast
continuum where the elements called male and female are not discrete” (1:4
back cover)15 (see Figure 4.1).
Third‑space zines’ consistent engagement of feminist, poststructural,
and queer theory and theorists further demonstrates an awareness, and even
dialogue, between the academic and the nonacademic. The importance
of this dialogue is that it demonstrates the ways that zines are pursuing
coalition across borders of knowledge production and consumption as well as
participating in meaning‑making practices often based on lived experiences.
In another example of the deconstruction of sutured identity, volume 1,
issue 3 of Pirate Jenny has an article titled “FTM Butch Transman FTV
Gender Outlaw,” which values the ambiguity in gender identity. The author
self‑describes as not being a femme but instead existing “in some ambiguous
Figure 4.1. “Boy? Girl? Brrl.”—from Pirate Jenny (vol. 1, #4), edited by P. J. Goodman.
space between butch and femme” (9). She names her preference for “boyz,”
liking how they “exist in the in between” (9). The rhetorical function of
this entry is to highlight the location of ambiguity as well as to reveal
the desire for ambiguity. Third space here is both location and practice,
which both reflect ways of being and knowing that reveal a relationship
among third‑space sites, subjectivities, and practices.16In Tattle Tale, Herliczek
has a reproduced image of a blond female model with large eyes, full lips,
straightened hair, and a perfectly straight nose. The words “Do you look
like her? Didn’t think so. Good. Keep living. Revolution” (Tattle Tale front
cover). The back cover has a poster‑like reproduced image of what appears to
be a backward‑facing person. The words across the top of the image are “the
product is YOU.” Written at the bottom of the back cover is a quotation
attributed to William S. Burroughs, 1959: “The junk merchant doesn’t sell his
product to the consumer, he sells the consumer to the product. He does not
improve and simplify his merchandise. He degrades and simplifies the client.”
Handwritten on the outside of the image on the back cover are the words:
“check this out!!” Both the front and back cover indicate a dissatisfaction with
the homogenizing tendencies and alienating effects of consumer culture. Anger
is the e‑motion that is encouraging and generating action. The introduction
to this zine is titled “Society is a Hole” (1). This zinester addresses the anger
and alienation she feels in the contexts of consumer culture. She deploys a
borderlands rhetoric in describing her experiences of herself as fragmented
when she laments, “I can never find enough outlets for my schizophrenia” (1).
She goes on to call for micropractices of what she conceives of as revolution
at the local level in service of coming together to resist the ill effects of
consumer culture.
Products prolific in consumer culture are being creatively altered
throughout a number of zines. We have seen how ¡Mamasita! reproduces,
redefines, and alters images of Hello Kitty, for example. Other images in
this zine include childlike faces and paper doll cutouts in cheerleading outfits
holding hands and spelling G‑R‑R‑R‑L across the front of their shirts. There
is a cartoon strip of images of young women rockers playing the guitar.
The words across one page read: “Girls, you have the right to live however
you want” (1: n.p.). In an act of subverting the delimitations of dominantly
produced roles that are raced and gendered, there is a handwritten page
dedicated to “Chun Li” who is “so super cuz she . . . a STRONG asian”
(1: n.p.). While still a product of consumer culture, this particular sheroine,
in her status as Other, is reproduced as an act of resistance to an otherwise
homogenous and universal representation of Asian characters and subjects as
either subordinate or (exotically) fierce. Similarly, ¡Mamasita! acknowledges the
stereotypical misrepresentations of Asian women in consumer images. This zine
redefines “Chun Li” as a sheroe who is both strong and Asian in a conscious
re‑presentation of ethnicity and gender. The effort to promote “Chun Li”
demonstrates a commitment to re‑present difference and to reproduce and
consume it differently. This zine demonstrates an understanding of the material
and historical realities and implications of difference that are based on lived
experiences. The stated aim throughout many zines is to produce a kind of

literacy of difference in order to inform and educate community about the
realities of difference while also concentrating on difference as something
that need not be, indeed should not be normalized, obscured, or otherwise
annihilated. Importantly, difference is understood not as a static category. Its
oppositional relationship to sameness is disrupted in many of these zines that
argue for, perform, and desire the ambiguous.
Issue one of ¡Mamasita! works to intervene in and resist the influence of
commodification, especially as it relates to the reproduction of normativities.
One page reflects a suspicion about the insidiousness of media images and
messages. It begins with a cut‑and‑pasted headline “How you can . . . GET
THE SHAPE GUYS LOVE . . . IN 14 DAYS!” (n.p.). In a move that
demonstrates the continued and uncritical collapsing of sex, gender, and
anatomy, the text of the page is framed by grrrl stickers and a textbook‑like
representation of an ovary, egg cells, and uterus. The text reveals a detected
conspiracy and unearthed articulation of how women’s bodies and women
are objectified and controlled through media:
they don’t want me to be free. i fight for equal rights in a land

of classes and racism and sexism and ageism . . . and they see
me making some progress.this scaresthem. So they meet in a
stark white boardroom to come up with a plan. ‘we will tell
them they are ugly to distract them from their legal battles.
we will bombard them with images and insinuations and they
will strive for this unrealistic body (which we will control) and
won’t even know it! We will keep them oppressed, if not in the
lawbooks, then in the mind.’ Well, i know their little secret and
I’M TELLING! (n.p.)
Riot Grrrl zines serve to build community with other grrrls who share
a sense of gender disenfranchisement. The impetus is to build community
and resist the pervasive oppressions and exclusions of patriarchy in consumer
culture. The politics of articulation are overtly established in VALLEY RIOT
GRRRL, a zine reproduced by ericka babydoll and jennifur pesky. This zine
uses much of its space to define Riot Grrrl as a coalition of ‘grrrls’ in an
activist community committed to resisting proliferated media images and
the social and consumer practices they impel:
OUR NAME WAS ESTABLISHED BY WOMEN IN OTHER

CITIES, WE HAVE ADOPTED THIS NAME BECAUSE WE
ARE ROOTED IN SIMILAR CONDITIONS AND AGREE

WITH ITS STRONG IMAGE AND GENERAL CONCEPT.
VALLEY RIOT GRRRL IS COMPRISED OF INDIVIDUALS
WHOSE IDEAS AND EXPERIENCES DETERMINE THE
MOOD AND DIRECTION OF THE GROUP, SEPARATE
FROM OTHER RIOT GRRL GROUPS. (n.p.)
These zinesters go on to write about what compels them to co‑create

community with other girls: “What brings us together is a need to create
safe space among ourselves, a space in which we can communicate in order
to fight the sexism, homophobia, classism, and racism we come up against
in our daily lives” (n.p.). There is an explicit call for queer grrrls to come
forward and participate as well. This zine demonstrates a creative, playful
engagement with the imagination as it deploys the concept of valley girls
rewritten and re‑presented as Riot Grrrls. A quotation at the bottom of the
front cover that reads, “Raising a woman’s self worth and creating positive
girl energy are beyond consumerism,” speaks to the conscious deployment
of the notion of valley girl as a commitment to political activism through,
among other things, a differently informed and reimagined girl community
as well as an explicitly interrupted and redefined consumerism.
Compulsory performances regarding genders and sexualities are
ruptured in third space, which has implications for how bodies move and
consume in a consumer context. The ability and interest in going beyond,
exploring, and exposing entrenched oppositional dualisms is a third‑space
practice, one that reproduces and re‑presents third‑space subjects. In
Housewife Turned Assassin, Numero #1 there is a page identifying information
and self‑love, or “amor propio,” as keys to salvation, followed by a page with
two opposing 1950s images of a boy and a girl. Between the reproduced
images is handwritten “GIRL? BOY?” and around the outside of the page
is written “this perpetuates our bondage,” and “don’t be a slave to this crock
of shit” (n.p.). The writing continues around each image, encircling them
in separate messages. Around the little girl who is surrounded by kittens
and little chicks and delicate flowers is written: “Why do we stand for
these bullshit generalizations. People think it’s so normal not to question
these destructive lies!” (n.p.). Around the little boy who is surrounded by
a playful puppy, an active squirrel, tree leaves, flowers, and a butterfly is
written: “People fear androgyny so very much. ‘Masculinity’ & ‘Femininity’
must be redefined for our self worth & so the gaps between genders can
be united!” (n.p.). The gaps this zinester refers to are third spaces. The
understanding that dualisms are often obfuscating and always subordinating
emerges from a third-space spectrum stretching beyond the limitations of
binary divisions. Offering a rudimentary precursor to works that promote

understanding of the intersexed, this page manifests an understanding of
the complexities between sex and gender and the constructed nature of
both, as well as the dominant and otherwise heteronormative compulsory
performance each image engenders.17
Altered bodies, altered performances, and altered relationships to
products, production, consumption, and desire are subjects taken up in
many zines. On one page in ¡Mamasita!, a skeletal figure whose profile
reveals an angry alienlike face is sketched by hand. Anger is the e‑motion
that seems to motivate the words “starvation” and “beautification” that
encircle and circulate around the figure in an endless cycle (n.p.). The entry
above this figure is not completely legible as parts have been cut off by the
copy machine that reproduced the page, but it is titled “just a woomons’
problem” (n.p.). The fragmented phrases serve to alter the entry in a mimetic
act with the body being represented. The incomplete phrases give a sense
of the entry, “mirror this morning and knew . . . proper dieting . . . the
kids staring at me . . . i thought . . . fat and calories in it . . . skinny girls
watch me . . . uglier. i ran to the bathroom . . . toilet i saw the scale . . . i
washed my mouth . . . scale. the numbers zoomed by . . . pounds. i ran
into my room . . . my horrible reflection . . . and cried. i hate myself ”
(n.p.). The rhetorical function of these fragmented phrases highlights the
fracturing power of consumer culture. In a move to subvert the ubiquitous
figure of Barbie, this zinester has reproduced a Barbie logo accompanied by
the words “PURGE ACTION,” making the ad read “PURGE ACTION
Barbie,” followed by four separate but identical Barbie dolls all posed only
slightly differently (n.p.) (see Figure 4.2). The bottom of the image reads
“You too can be like Barbie,” and in zinelike fashion the words run off the
image and continue, “glamourous, trendy and popular” (n.p.). Beneath the
image is the text written in support of the ad image. It reads, “Purge‑Action
Barbie® stays fashionably thin by simply spewing up these evil meals! Just
push the button on her neck marked ‘FAT’ and watch her hi‑fat breakfast
fill up the Barbie® toilet (sold separately). Ken® loves Purge‑Action Barbie®
because she is beautiful. Don’t you want to be beautiful like Barbie®?” “i
fucking hate Barbie!!!” is handwritten perpendicularly on the margin of
the page (n.p.). In this example, Barbie is being resisted as both a product
and a cultural ideal through a performed subversion of consumption and
of production; in other words, Barbie is being consumed and re‑produced
in unauthorized and illegitimate ways.18
Third‑space zinesters question the ethics of privileged knowledges
reserved for first‑order consumers. They also confront injustices inher‑
ent in global trade to challenge the taken‑for‑granted assumptions about
Figure 4.2. “PURGE ACTION Barbie®”—from ¡Mamasita!, Issue One, edited by

Bianca Ortiz.
transnational labor practices. They question the idea of the impossibility

of a global living wage as well as the roles of not only producers but of
consumers in the working conditions of transnational workers. They often
work from spaces of the local to imagine and instigate change from the
bottom up and the inside out. They confront the heteronormative and
homonormative imperatives inherent in consumer culture and reproduced
in mass c onsumption—from reimagining Barbie products to question‑
ing the consumption of beauty products that assume and reproduce a
gender‑normative, racialized, and homogenized representation of beauty.
They are concerned with economies of scale and local practices with an
understanding that the local is implicated in the global and vice versa.
Ultimately, they insist that the cost to the earth must also be figured into
equations that address economy. Their queer‑ies provoke disruptions to
consumption and production as well as new ways of thinking about and
acting upon these practices.
In a similar act of disrupting authorized practices of consumption and
production, self‑named “Riot Grrrlz Outer Space Editor” Lizzard Amazon
reproduced and distributed The Bitch Manifesto. Amazon states that her
goal is to reproduce information and build knowledge with a community
of girls. The following note appears handwritten at the front of this zine:
Reprinted from a magazine called Notes from the Second Year

(1970) edited by Shulamith Firestone and Anne Koedt. The Bitch
Manifesto is by “Joreen” or Jo Freeman. Dear Jo, Shulamith,
and Anne I hope y’all are not offended that I’m reprinting this
w/out permission. I just want girls today to see it!’ RGOS. (2)
The act of reproduction without permission is a tactic of interrupting the

capitalist imperative for this knowledge to be produced and consumed only
for the profit of the producer; it therefore serves to circulate knowledge to
nonauthorized consumers. Also, performing the im‑possible dialogue with
Jo, Shulamith, and Anne illuminates questions of accessibility and authority,
which in turn provokes the question “Who can speak to whom?” Amazon
imagines the possibility of engaging authors and authority regarding the
proliferation of the messages set forth in their writings. She undertakes
this dissident performance as an act of community education through
unauthorized reproduction. Her overt subversion of the requirements
for reproducing this manifesto demonstrates an obvious awareness of the
parameters of intellectual property rights. Even more importantly, Amazon
names the authors and historically contextualizes the manifesto, noting that
it is important for girls today to have access to it and understand its message.
In the middle of the manifesto there is another handwritten note titled
“Editorial Note,” which states:
ok! This really SUCKS but the copy of this magazine that I have
is MISSING ONE PAGE which just happens to be right smack
in the middle of the Bitch Manifesto. That is NOT going to stop
me. So I swear & promise in the 2nd printing of this I will have
restored the missing section even if I have to drive up to San
Francisco or Berkeley to find this magazine in another library!!!
AND now our manifesto CONTINUES. (11–12)
Amazon concludes her zine with a stated commitment to the continued

dissemination and proliferation of information as well as to a sustained
engagement with feminism as community activism.
The editrix of Esperanza Issue #2, Jackie Regalas, demonstrates a
commitment to the kinds of disarticulations and rearticulations that pave
the way for reconfigured practices of consumption and production, and
pursuits of community action, coalition, and social justice. The disclaimer
in this zine, like those in other zines, that expresses this commitment reads:
“any trades I get that are racist, sexist, homophobic or otherwise offensive get
recycled in the city dumpster” (inside cover). Like many zinesters, Esperanza’s
author calls for other zines with which to make trades in order to engage in
supportive community practices and sustained community dialogue.
Imagined alternatives to consumption and production can produce
and be produced by innovative practices, perspectives, and, ultimately,
new knowledges. Critical and creative in-queeries are being reproduced in
many of the zines I have studied to question the raced, gendered, and
sexualized ecology of capitalism and to represent alternative ways of being
and doing. Additionally, new knowledges serve to inform and educate
consumer and producer practices and related choices. Finally, and perhaps
most importantly, new knowledges emerge from the practices zinesters
engage in of articulating or connecting traditional knowledges with newer
knowledges to innovate new practices, particularly in terms of consumption
and production in third‑space contexts.
In this chapter, I extend my focus from those zines that explicitly seek
to subvert the consumption and production of material products to those
that are also subverting the consumption and production of expert and
authorized knowledges. In so doing, such zines often generate what might
be called “knowledge remixes”: new knowledges born out of traditional
knowledges and recast in contemporary contexts. The disruptions and
subversions that zines pursue and enact are rhetorical performances and
practices that reveal micropractices, or everyday acts of resistance that assume
the ability to act. Importantly, though never guaranteed, this ability to act
is articulated to the potential to make change.
Queer‑y‑ing Corporatized Knowledges: Revised Practices of

Consumption and Production
In response to corporatized culture and dominant consumption patterns,

many zines propose alternative health practices, including community‑based
health care, midwifery, traditional and indigenous practices, naturopathy,
herbology, veganism and vegetarianism, and holistic care. These alternatives
may serve as expressions of community activism and anti–medical industry
tactics and strategies. The focus of these specific zines is primarily women’s
health and sexuality, and access to and understanding of healthcare
information.
One entry in ¡Mamasita!, Issue One considers how we move as
consumers in the world, addresses having asthma and the irresponsibility
of those in a community who wear perfume: “allergy girls & boys unite
& fight the evil perfume wearing assholes” (n.p.). By identifying the ways
in which consumption and production define and delimit the consumer,
zinesters are promoting community values that work to resist homogenized
and homogenizing practices as well as unreflected‑upon consumption and
production practices.
An article in issue 11 of The Urban Herbalist: a magazine of herbal
healing, do‑it‑yourself healthcare, and sexual adventure for the eco‑feminist
activist in all women is dedicated to taking “cuntrol of your body, your
healthcare, your life!” (May 1994 cover). The interconnections identified in
the title of this zine are made manifest in the explorations throughout. The
illustration on the cover of The Urban Herbalist is one of an androgynous
hand holding a speculum that is positioned around the word cuntrol. In
the background are a number of images of herbs and plants. As in many
zines across the spectrum, an anti‑industry sentiment in this zine translates
across a number of contexts to reveal a third‑space alternative in terms of
consumption, reproduction, and representation. The first page of this zine
defines and describes the process of starting a women’s self‑help health
care community network. The values of creating community, generating
knowledges, and sharing information specifically for women are evident in
the “how to” section of this zine, which is followed by success stories of
other women who have formed these community self‑help groups (3–5). In
an effort to promote what could be considered third‑space community as
well as alternative practices of knowledge reproduction and consumption,
the rest of the zine is dedicated to listing alternative resources for women’s
health of mind, body, and soul. While much information in this zine is
focused on the health benefits and multiple uses of herbs, information on
sexuality, race, and class can be found as well. There are contributions from
midwives, herbalists, and alternative health care researchers.19 The Urban

Herbalist
is printed quarterly—sort of—by the HAGS of WHAM!

(Women’s Health Action & Mobilization). WHAM is a direct
action group committed to demanding, securing, and defending
absolute reproductive freedom and quality healthcare for all
women. . . . The HAGS (Herbally Aroused Gynecological
Squad) is a working committee within WHAM concerned with
empowerment & education (both individual and collective)
around our bodies and our health care . . . we encourage
womyn to form self‑help gyn care groups; explore herbal healing
(non‑scientifically) and awaken the uncharted sexual energies and
potential left dormant by our dominant (male‑oriented, sexually
repressed/dysfunctional) culture. . . . Here’s the small print. In
accordance with the FDA regulations, none of the information
contained in The Urban Herbalist is intended to be used for
diagnostic or treatment purposes: Use at your own risk AND
FUCK THE FDA ANYHOW!!! (1)
Calico, #5, like The Urban Herbalist, promotes informed and

alternative consumption practices. The ill effects of beef consumption and
production with an emphasis on the hormones used in the beef industry
to spur production are discussed in Calico, #5. It includes a reproduced
leaflet from Beyond Beef, an organization that promotes awareness about the
environmental and health costs of beef consumption. It also serves to raise
awareness about labor standards and animal cruelty in the beef industry and
offers suggestions for alternative consumption and political action through
lobbying. It asks, for example, if burgers really are or can be “happy
meals” (n.p.). And in an answer that demonstrates an articulation of those
implicated in the consumption and production of beef, it states, “not for
family farmers going broke and native people thrown off their land by cattle
barons” (n.p.). The final page of this zine is a reproduced advertisement from
Beyond Beef where the “real cost of eating too much beef ” is reconsidered
(n.p.). The connections made in this zine are important in terms of
identifying and building community. They also demonstrate an awareness
of interlocking systems of oppression, which can maintain the invisibility
of countercultural practices, which is part of zine culture. Interestingly, the
countercultural options put forth in this zine are not dichotomous but,
instead, multiple and complex. For example, the page on the cost of beef
production and consumption does not offer a vegetarian‑or‑bust alternative.

Instead, it calls for consciousness in consumption and a reduction in the
privileged consumption of beef. The politics of reproduction and (queered)
consumption are dealt with explicitly in this zine. Desire is reconfigured
to include conscientious consumption based on identified values that are
eco‑friendly, socially aware, and equitable.
Queer‑y‑ing Histories: Dissident Performances and Discourses
Many zines resist the neocolonizing effects of globalized production and

consumption. The zines I focus on resist the consumer/consumption and
producer/production patterns that globalization implies and imposes,
including the production and consumption of knowledge and information.
Reverso is at play in the subversions and reimagined practices highlighted
in this chapter. Zinesters use reverso to question how anything produced
in exploitative or “superexploitative” conditions can be desirable.20 Desire
is reconfigured in the third space of zines to question how consuming
products that are either made in the context of exploitation and/or serve to
exploit can be desirable. Practices of consumption and production as they
relate to mental and physical health and well‑being are also questioned and
reconsidered in many zines. Zinesters are asking who is really mad in the
contexts of exploitation as well as in the production of pathologized subjects.
It is worth recalling here those zinesters who are questioning and critiquing
global labor practices and standards and even transnational tourist practices
(see, for example, Slander, ¡Mamasita!, Rubyfruit Manifesto, How to Stage
a Coup, and Race Riot). Another issue being addressed and redressed in
zines is that of citizenship. In issue 2 of Housewife Turned Assassin!, a growing
anticitizenship sentiment is engaged. In a discussion of experiences with
everyday racism and this zinester’s decision not to move from the designation
of “legal resident” to one of “citizen,” this zinester acknowledges that if s/
he “became a citizen [s/he] would only gain a title and not respect as an
individual” (20). S/he then performs a recovered history to identify, relate
to, and ultimately reject citizenship as related to those papers or “certificates
sold to Blacks and Mexicans in some regions of the southwest during the
early 1800’s” that were supposed to guarantee their “equal status” to whites
(20). It is the recovery—consumption and production—of these kinds of
contested histories that promotes and is produced by critical in-queer-ies.
The realization that citizenship has been both commodified and certified in
these ways compels this zinester to resist the trappings of citizenship from,
in her case, a queered location. She notes that citizenship would qualify her
to vote in a system she does not believe in and that it would not change
the way she and other queer citizens are treated.
In an act reminiscent of Mary Louise Pratt’s critique of the non‑innocent
imperial gaze and the ways in which subordinating practices and discourses
through taxonomies work across human differences, KariJane, in Aliencola,
reflects on the authority and power of naming from above. KariJane is
specifically interested in dominant naming practices and their implications
for creating and sustaining delinquents and deviants. She entitles this entry
“the Labelling theory,” and she uses an organizational‑like flow chart of the
processes by which youths are labeled and, as such, become delinquent. She
reproduces a quote she attributes to Howard Becker: “BEHAVIOR THAT
IS LABELLED DEVIANCE IS BEHAVIOR SO LABELLED” (n.p.). In
this entry, she is identifying the productive rhetorical force of pathologizing
mis/representations particularly of youth.
Throughout a number of zines, there is an expressed desire to reimagine
historic contexts as queer.21 Zinesters are queer‑y‑ing texts and contexts and
producing queered sites and queered subjectivities. Engaging ambiguity as
a historic potential reveals itself through recreative and generative acts in
zines. Bi‑Girl World is one such zine. While producing evidence of the
subversion of heteronormative assumptions and related imperatives, this
zine actively queers history. Historical figures often marginalized by race,
class, sex, and/or gender, and only marginally considered if considered at
all in dominant contexts, are queered. These queered figures are reclaimed
as worthy of serious engagement. Each of the four issues of Bi‑Girl World
I examined, for example, has a section titled “Historical Bi Women of
Note” that is dedicated to a practiced queering through the recovery of
bi voices and the re‑generation of re‑imagined and explicitly queered
herstories. These revisioned histories offer a means of shared exploration and
self‑understanding, responding to the urgent need to see oneself represented
somewhere. These virtual communities afford third‑space subjects the
opportunity to rewrite themselves into the past, making themselves visible.
There is a demonstrated consciousness of that which has been lost to
historical record and representation in the introduction of a section titled
“Bi Girls in Film and Video.” Invoking the history of film, it reads,
The influence of bi girls in film extends far back into the silent
film era. Biographical information of bi girls can be very sketchy
and often contradictory, so many have probably been lost to
history. However, as information from close friends, diaries, and
personal letters comes to light, we are slowly becoming able to

piece together a history of the influence these pioneering women
had on the film industry. (n.p.)
In Bi‑Girl World (summer 1993) five historical bi women are recovered

and reconsidered. Instances of the decolonized imagination at play are
evident throughout this zine as history is reimagined from a deliberately
queered perspective. Several of the voices queered in this issue are those of
women of color, including Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, Alice Walker (with
a disclaimer reading “still alive! Should she [be] on these pages?”), and
Josephine Baker. Beneath a reproduced image of Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz
(see figure 4.3), the author has written:
(Also known as “Sor Juana”) 17th Century Mexican poet—much

revered for the insight, wit & beauty of her work. Wrote love
poems addressed to women & men! Joined convent at 20, yet
led literary & intellectual salons, corresponded with writers
worldwide, had her plays performed, etc. Swore off secular stuff
then died. (goes to show ya). (n.p.)
Following this entry is a profile of Josephine Baker in which the author

writes, “To be honest, don’t know for a fact she wuz bi~ but I’ve heard
rumors” (n.p.). These entries, while also suggesting the im‑possibilities of
queered herstories, legitimate and validate the experiences of bi youth. The
desire to reconsider the im‑possibility and un‑certainty of queer women in
history can be a borderlands e‑motion that invites more participants and
perspectives in third‑space reconsiderations of the il/legitimate, im/pure, un/
authorized, and im/proper.
In Bi‑Girl World (winter 1994), for example, Dorothy Parker and
Judy Holliday are briefly profiled. Dorothy Parker is listed as a writer with
“famed acerbic ‘wit’ of the Algonquin Round Table in the oh‑too‑hip NYC
of the 30s & 40s. I believe . . . Truly funny & truly bright Pretty sure she
was bi too—should read her bio, What Fresh Hell is This?, not to mention
her collected essays and short stories. One cool gal” (n.p.). Judy Holliday
is also mentioned on this page as an “actor. Another hip chick from NY,
Judy came off as the classic busty blond, all‑American bombshell during
the 40s & 50s . . . in fact, she was a Jewish, communist, brunette bi‑dyke!
Gotta love it! A hell of a lot smarter than the women she portrayed, she
won an Oscar for ‘Born Yesterday’ ” (n.p.). Again, ambiguity is the space
of engagement, queered desire, and representation. It is from these third
Figure 4.3. Image of Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz—from Bi‑Girl World, Summer 1993,
edited by Karen.
spaces of growing coalitional consciousness, self‑awareness, and sometimes

strategic essentializing that we can begin to identify affinities and forge
alliances that can, themselves, redesign and redefine consumption patterns
even in very localized contexts.
In addition to reimagining the past and the occlusion of queer identity,
Bi‑Girl World reimagines everyday consumption to encourage alterity. This
zine expresses the immediacy of liminality, or third‑space experience, as

a part of the everyday, including using one’s buying power to promote
third‑space production and consumption, and to support a queered desire.
This zine is a tool used to unearth third‑space potential. In the summer 1998
book review section titled “Book Nook,” a brief review of Like Life by Lorrie
Moore notes that the book is “not really bi” but about the “weirdnesses
of love and relationships (do you note a theme here? the 1st story, ‘Two
Boys’ is a smashing account of one woman’s unhappiness with two different
men. Yeah. I hear ya” (n.p.). The music reviews in the summer 1998 issue
encourage readers to consume with a consciousness, calling for zinesters to
“put those feminist bucks to work and buy Grrrl tunes” (n.p.). The work of
building a “bi‑girl world” community is predicated on the imaginary used
as a lens not simply to rewrite and reproduce bi‑history but to reread and
consume the world from a queered bi‑space and through a bi‑perspective.
One page titled “Vogue Ball Grande Dame Bitchy Diva Awards” includes
the “Grand Dame Supreme” for which bell hooks and Gloria Steinem
were nominated and “Country Gals in Denial,” for which Winona Ryder
and Dolly Parton were nominated (n.p., winter 1994). Throughout this
zine, third‑space subjects are revealing their commitments to consume and
produce with a consciousness, to re‑vision histories, and to recreate spaces
from which to recover queer/ed women’s voices.
Queering practices not only reveal third space as ambiguous but also
reveal the structured exclusions of binary dualisms and representations. In
Bi‑Girl World (summer 1993), one author, “baby K,” deploys borderlands
rhetoric to reflect third‑space experience in the realm of sexuality, discussing
the ways in which, as a bisexual, she is inauthenticated on both sides of
the hetero‑homosexual border. Specifically, baby K writes about being “too
queer to be straight and too straight to be queer” (n.p.) (see Figure 4.4).
The reflections represented in the reproduced page above are remi‑
niscent of an entry in “Angst Column” from Bamboo Girl #11 where one
author similarly reflects on the borderlands experience of not being Filipina
or white enough (83) (see Figure 4.5).22
It is a mestiza consciousness that informs the representations of these
lived subversions of racialized contexts as well as other subversions of dichot‑
omous delimitations and misrepresentations. An entry in Bi‑Girl World (fall
1992) titled “Raging Bi‑Dyke: Why I love Dykes but not ‘Lezhbians’ ”
reflects on the internal policing that often goes on across named categories
of difference, specifically in subcultural contexts, and addresses heteronor‑
mativity and homonormativity to reveal how even subcultural contexts can
repeat dominant practices with exclusionary effects. In response to named
Figure 4.4. baby K’s “. . . too QUEER . . . too STRAIght”—from Bi‑Girl World,

Summer 1993, edited by Karen.
practices of exclusion and oppression, the author writes, “I mean really, gals!
I’m a feminist through and through, and I love women as much as you
do! So lighten the fuck up!” (n.p.). In the essay “Looking for the Girl in
the Boy and the Boy in the Girl,” another author asks “have I been trying
Figure 4.5. “ANGST COLUMN: How Filipino/Pilipino are you?”—

from Bamboo Girl #11, edited by Sabrina Margarita Sandata.
to reach that fabled middle ground, ‘the third sex,’ through my choice of
love object?” (n.p.). For purposes of third‑space theorizing, the importance
of this question lies in the expression of third space as both a desirable
space and as a space of desire. Another author reflects on third space, queer
desire, and the thrill of experiencing “summer‑in‑winter” and vice versa
(n.p.). Theorized through the concept of reverso, third space becomes one
not simply of inversions but of multiplicity and complexity.
Re‑Configuring Relations and Imagining Alternatives
The borderlands rhetorics that emerge in many zines address the

contradictions inherent in a critical consumer identity committed to
an antiracist, antihomophobic, anti‑industry, socially just, and radically

democratic agenda. Such a desiring consumer must necessarily confront
contradictions. Third‑space borderlands rhetorics are informed by
decolonized imaginations that consciously, critically, and creatively innovate
to intervene in taken‑for‑granted assumptions and inherent contradictions
about consumption and production. Such rhetorics develop an emergent
queered consumer(ism) that reconsiders and performs newly imagined ways
of consuming, producing, and relating. Borderlands rhetorics articulate the
global and the local to create an awareness of the implications of the global
and the transnational in the context of the everyday. Such articulations can
produce new, queered alternatives for consumption and production within
late capitalism while simultaneously pursuing coalition and the building of
a community of conscientious consumers and producers.
In stating that many of the feminist, queer, and of‑color zines I’ve
studied move beyond queer identity to queer consumption and production
practices, I am claiming that they are consciously unsettling prescriptive
expectations, practices, and imperatives of late‑stage capitalism.23 From labor
practices of factory production, to tourism industry practices, zinesters’
queer‑ies are not only questioning but also making the material practices of
consumption and production visible. They are also making material relations
visible and calling on us to be accountable to the choices we make in the
material world. As Hennessy notes,
When the commodity is dealt with merely as a matter of

signification, meaning, or identities, only one of the elements
of its production—the process of image‑making it relies on—is
made visible. The exploitation of human labor on which the
commodity’s appearance as an object depends remains out of
sight. (54)
Consuming and producing in a queer way means questioning practices

of production so that the exploitation of human labor, the history of the
production, and even the costs of consumption of any given commodity
are made visible.
Rubyfruit Manifesto probes desire by questioning how consuming (and
so reproducing) injustice can be the only option, or even an option at all.
The zine’s author notes that she is
trying to live the/a (re)evolution. not react. i want to build

connections with other women. remind myself that i am not
unholy. subvert the ever‑present patriarchy (within and outside).

smash imperialism. recognize and dismantle racism. smash
capitalism + greed. in myself even/especially . . . this is about
functionality. (n.p.)
These reflections demonstrate a questioning of the complicity of consumers

in unjust labor practices. This entry represents not only an effort to disrupt
the fallacy that there is only one way of behaving and relating within the
context of capitalism but also an effort to build third‑space community.
Ultimately, this entry queer‑ies practices of consumptions and productions
to pursue conscientious consumption from an informed, reflected‑upon,
and coalitional perspective. The politics of rearticulation at play in this zine
reveal how cultural formations are imagined and reconfigured to call for
and form a community of informed resisters.
Throughout her zine Slander, Nguyen critically investigates social
movements and progressive practices for ways in which they might,
consciously or not, reproduce injustices, oppressions, or historical omissions.
One of her rants addresses the relationship between sexual liberation and
civil rights in the United States. Specifically, she questions using sex toys as
unequivocal evidence of sexual liberation. Liberation at whose expense? Her
inqueery insists on knowing for whom such toys are liberating by asking
where they were manufactured and under what circumstances. This inqueery
extends into a critical examination of the ways in which the quest for sexual
liberation can get (and has gotten) conflated with and articulated to civil
rights movements, including the historical struggles against slavery and for
racial justice. In this entry, Nguyen questions such a conflation to consider
the question of (assumed) liberation for whom?
In an entry titled “It’s an Asian Thing,” author Lauren Martin works
to define the absorption of Asian symbols and practices into a Latina/o
context. The Latina/o context she is investigating is, itself, situated within
hip‑hop culture that is, in turn, situated in a dominant context. She struggles
to identify and define the multiple intersections of potential appropriations
and commodifications of cultural symbols and practices across borders of
difference. As a demonstration of her commitment to community education
and consumer literacy, Martin begins her investigation into the consumption
of these cultural practices and productions by defining the terms co‑opt
and appropriate. She makes her way through the layers of appropriation.
Specifically, Martin constructs a model of late capitalism’s commodification
of hip‑hop, illustrating how it moves from conscious to mainstream hip‑hop
by being appropriated and commodified. She traces her identification
and understanding of how it is “Latinized” and ultimately Orientalized,

packaged, and then consumed. She recognizes the multiple nodes of power
across nondominant cultural contexts and questions how appropriation
and co‑optation are—or are not—distinct endeavors when undertaken
from diverse cultural locations.24 Martin refers to the acts of intercultural
appropriation and to the means by which hip‑hop’s Orientalization
is reproduced for purposes of hegemonic social structures’ support of
conspicuous consumption.25 Questioning the practices of commodification
that articulate diverse nondominant cultural subjects to dominant practices
and normalized identities, she asks, “Is it appropriation? Co‑optation? I’d
have an easier time deconstructing this phenomenon if it were rich white
people sporting a new trendy Asian theme” (n.p). This quote is insightful
in its consideration of how communities of color can be positioned as allies
and/or as adversaries to one another. Her line of questioning serves as a call
to consciousness about the ways people of color may not only consume but
also re/produce oppressive practices. In her analysis she uncovers practices of
appropriation and coercions of assimilation that serve to normalize identity,
particularly through erasures of difference. Her analysis reveals the complex
practices through which diverse nondominant subjects can also reproduce
subordinating and objectifying practices and products. She locates multiple
contexts and practices that must be considered in coming to consciousness
about late capitalism and its effects, particularly on communities of color.
Martin goes on to reflect on mainstream society’s cultural
misappropriations of all things Asian. She notes that she took a performance
class earlier in the year and grew frustrated at its lack of engagement with
race and culture. She decided to write about it in a paper she wrote regarding
“performance, representation and co‑optation of the ‘Other’ ” (n.p.). She
describes how, in her paper, she grappled with the issue of performing
and misrepresenting the Other. Her conclusion was that it is problematic,
at best, for Othered communities to be fetishized and misrepresented
from without “when the power differences between the performer and the
performed are not critically examined” (n.p.). In her struggles to understand
the implications of appropriation and commodification from different
positionalities, Martin does not offer simple solutions, but instead invites
dialogue and insists on reflected‑upon action.
The subversive practices espoused in Tattle Tale #1 center on the
harnessing of youth power and the building of community to specifically
interrupt cycles of production and consumption. Herliczek calls on youth
to “[f ]orm some bands . . . trade music constantly. A constant flux. Make
a zine and stick it everywhere. . . . Write to people, make contacts. Talk,
make noise, form groups of energies” (1). She encourages peers to consume
differently, specifically by trading. She identifies the educational system
and the media as hegemonic enterprises and institutions and encourages
her peers to question everything and think critically, especially about the
indoctrinating effects of education and the media: “Don’t necessarily believe
in what you are taught to believe in. Talk to people you may have been taught
to fear.  .  .  .  Look at yourself from the outside and observe reality.  .  .  .  Look
into the bullshit of advertising and the media. Turn off MTV. . . . Make
your own music” (1). In an explanation for her zine’s title, she ends her
introduction with “The Tattle*tale rats on all the sickness. I rat on everything
that sucks right now. Wanna help?” (1). Using tactics of reverso, this zinester
is identifying sickeningly unjust practices in the context of capitalism and
capitalist imperatives. Her questioning of education, especially as it serves
to normalize such practices and the desires that are cultivated to sustain
them, demonstrates an awareness of the indoctrinating effects of education.
Education, as unquestioningly consumed, is experienced as alienating,
domesticating, and homogenizing, and so as a space and practice that
reproduces un(der)informed and unreflecting consumers and producers of
corporatized mass culture.26 This zinester actively subverts normalized desire
by making a call to queer‑y all contexts while she simultaneously makes
an effort to build coalition by envisioning and proposing alternatives across
contexts of difference. In an essay titled “WhiteWashed” in ¡Mamasita!, Issue
One, the author critiques dominant practices of representation, especially
in terms of diversity (n.p.). She deploys a borderlands rhetoric to represent
the lack of resources for kids to learn in a formal educational context about
other cultures as valid, valuable, and acceptable:
NO CLASSES that encourage pride in our diverse cultures and

so kids don’t realize that there are other acceptable RIGHT
cultures other than the white (=amerikan) culture that celebrates
christmas and thanksgiving and easter and christopher colombus
day and all this is pale and beautiful. it usually isn’t until college
(or maybe high school) that the non‑white child discovers their
culture and language they have already shunned out of fear. They
have been whitewashed by a country ruled by white men, blessed
by christianity, judged in the beauty of the european features
and leaves them wondering why. (n.p.)
This last entry identifies normalized heterogeneity as a particularly insidious

practice of late‑stage capitalism that is proliferated through consumer culture
and dominant education. The author makes the same observation other
zinesters do about conforming and assimilating in order to be safe in school.
Zinesters are questioning and attempting to resist the way difference that is
inscribed on our bodies and in our quotidian customs, rituals, and practices
can be rendered practically invisible.
In Pure Vamp, Gretchen promotes sexual education based on the
assumption of an empowered, active female. She uses a page in her zine to
reproduce a LifeStyles Condoms “How to Use a Condom” insert (n.p.). The
insert in this zine is bilingual, offering information about “how to put on a
condom/para ponerselo, how to remove a condom/para quitarselo, important
condom facts/informacion importante, condom effectiveness/eficacia de
los condones, and additional information/informaccion adicional”(n.p.).
Including this insert is an act of interrupted consumption that disrupts
the relationship between first‑order consumption and access to knowledge.
Its inclusion subverts the privileged status of first‑order consumers and
reproduces information, making it available to Others not at the moment
of consumption but prior to it or even without regard for it. The act of
reproducing information that is meant to be only available to those who
purchase this product promotes grassroots literacies to effect an irreverent
community education.
Queer‑y‑ing the Cycles of Production and Consumption:

Third‑Space Thrifting, Second‑Order Consumption, and Trades
Thrifting generally refers to consumption practices that are cost‑saving.

Thrifting, in this chapter, refers specifically to second‑order consumption
practiced or creatively called for in zines. Vintage clothing shopping can
be considered a mode of thrifting that can be expensive but nonetheless
subversive to retail operations as well as to current fashion imperatives in
that it is often carried out in secondhand stores.27 Both the practice of
second‑order consumption and the alternative consciousness that impels it
are important elements in the reconfigurations being imagined, proposed,
and pursued in zines. Tinkcom, Van Fuqua, and Villarejo, cultural studies
scholars who write about thrifting, call our attention to the value of
thrifting practices, noting that “knowledge is produced in various sectors
which licensed academic critique frequently fails to recognize” (469). More
specifically, they believe thrifting has the potential to produce “a different
awareness of commodity‑relations and the affect, or ‘aura,’ surrounding
different items which can be political” (465). They note that “this vexed
form of wearing history  .  .  .  emphatically aware of clothing as commodity, is

substantially different in its affective dimensions from the practice of buying
something retail” (465). They articulate historical, political, and intellectual
components to the practices of thrifting, stating that “thrift shopping has
its own ‘organic’ intellectuals; thrift is a field of knowledge production
outside the academy and has tentacles into zine culture,” where zines are
representative of “popular history, in the vagaries and determinations of style,
in the constitution of communities across regional and economic borders”
(459). Tinkcom, Van Fuqua, and Villarejo state that “the mere fact of thrift
stores’ existence suggests different forms of work and different social relations
than those determined by the initial productive labor of commodities in their
debuts” (461). In other words, recirculated goods reintroduce commodities
into the production and consumption circuit, upsetting any notions that
the act of buying as consuming implies the final moment in the circuit.
Thrift SCORE (spring 1994), issue one is a zine that is dedicated to
“thriftin” and promotes it as an alternative consumerism (n.p.). It promotes
a queered, retro‑consumerism that interrupts dominant notions of fashion
and value. In parodic fashion, the upcoming Thrift SCORE swimsuit issue
is advertised in this issue. Ken is queered with retro‑style eyewear and a
crocheted swimsuit and matching bolero jacket. His female companion is
dressed Doris Day‑like in a matching crocheted swimsuit. In a parodic
and queered representation of gendered and class‑affiliated consumption as
represented in and through tourism, these zinesters have added a sombrero
for her to wear. Another advertisement shows an imperfect generic body,
shirtless, and in jeans. Above the photograph appear the words “Designer
Jeans.” Beneath the photograph are the words “THE REALITY” (1 n.p.).
This zine offers queered ideas for the conscious resistance of the tyranny of
fashion. It is dedicated to consumption and performances of consumerism—
done differently. It also connects alternative consumption practices urged in
other zines. Its proposed alternative consumption practices are articulated to
alternative consumers as real, and, so, imperfect bodies in a material world.
Collectively, zines often recognize and resist intellectual property
control and first‑order consumption because these practices limit the
circulation of knowledge and practices of difference. I’ve already noted
how jackie wang, editor of Memoirs of a Queer Hapa, promotes copyleft
and the broad distribution of her work. Alternative consumption practices
are advocated and modeled to promote greater access to and for artists
and activists as well as to promote equity and social justice in localized
contexts. Issues 1–4 of Wild Womyn, a zine produced by Christy Hill of
Sutton, Quebec, promote and support women comic artists. It is dedicated
to “covering femayle comic artists world wide” (cover). It also lists other
“important grrrl and womyn power resources,” as a means of identifying,
educating, and connecting one another through alternative resources (n.p.).
“The Company of Womyn,” for example, is a feminist mail‑order catalogue
from which every order helps to support abused women and children (n.p.).
“Rock for Choice” is a resource guide for finding and organizing music
shows that are affiliated with pro‑choice politics (n.p.). Contact information
for other riot grrrl resources are listed in this zine as well. Readers are
encouraged to “photocopy the pamphlet, post it up, pass it around, give it
out, and make your own,” evincing the editrix’s commitment to queered
consumption and production (n.p.). The editrix who produces Rock for
Choice demonstrates a diverse approach to the proliferation of information
and knowledge by resisting the notion that intellectual property is simply
a commodified product produced solely for profit and requiring permission
for reproduction. While this zinester is supportive of women comic artists
generating income, she is also working to articulate their work to an activist
and coalitional agenda. Creative products and productivity are articulated
to activism. Finally, this zine once again demonstrates an effort to build
community through an identification of, and engagement with, shared belief
systems and alternative practices of consumption and production.
This critical consciousness calls reconfigured subjects to an informed
practice of consumption and production that is class and race conscious,
historically informed, and environmentally aware. New knowledges that
are based on lived experience often serve to affirm and value traditional
practice and contested histories. How dominant knowledge is resisted in its
production, consumption, and commodification is important to third‑space
efforts of resistance and reconfiguration. Zinesters demonstrate an awareness
that knowledge is commodified and reproduced. This chapter has provided
evidence from zines that zinesters are also aware of the ways they are
positioned to consume knowledges that are produced without (evidence of )
their contributions and lived realities. Zinesters are creatively redefining their
roles as consumers and producers. Sometimes this redefinition is achieved
by pursuing alternative consumption patterns, and other times zinesters
alter their relationships to products and practices. In other words, zinesters
challenge the ubiquitous nature of some products and practices in the
world by consuming them differently, even subversively. More specifically,
the queering practices discussed in this chapter challenge structures of
consumption that are steeped in heteronormativity and a consumer industry
that has built itself around commodified standards of beauty to include the
multibillion dollar diet industry.
The Re(in)Formed and Conscientious Consumer and Producer
Embodied borderlands practices of meaning making and (self‑) representations

reveal a recursive, and even an intimate relationship, between place and
self. Bodies in third space are themselves third space. Gender bending is
one example of a third‑space performance that reveals the relationship
between an ambiguous and shifting site and an ambiguous and shifting
subjectivity. Other expressions of this relationship can be found in bodies
that both reveal and interrupt dominant standards of beauty. Third‑space
sites are implicated recursively in third‑space subjectivities and (historic)
relations. Third‑space understanding allows for the extension of the idea
of borderlands beyond the geographic location of our homelands to our
psychic and cultural understandings as well as our racial, ethnic, class, sexual,
gender, and even psychosocial understandings of our complexities. Revealing
the recursivity between site and subjectivity, third‑space subjects often speak
from a (deliberately) queered space.
An alternative relationship between self and space, represented in zines
as a queering of the public realm, allows for a reimagined sense of how things
might have been or even how they could be. This creative recoding practice
is irreverent and even at times illegitimate. It is a representational tactic of
the decolonial imaginary to offer third space as both location and praxis. In
the zine Bi‑Girl World, for example, several entries question the authenticity
of sexual identities and explore bi‑desire from personal perspectives and
experiences. One entry providing a particularly good example of queer‑y‑ing
titled, “My Queerbo Desire,” asks, “Is my desire so deeply queer that I
internally, subconsciously, am drawn to that which is most subversive?”
(summer 1998 n.p.). For purposes of third‑space theorizing, the importance
of this question lies in the expression of third space as a desirable space/
space of desire.
A queering of the public realm engages in acts of reverso that are
achieved through refraction. These irreverent, illegitimate rereadings and
rewritings are representational tactics that offer space to explore and construct
alternatives in their fullest potential. Many zines name and explore queer
desire that questions sexual and gender authenticity. Chicanas and other
women of color have written about the differences we understand with being
essentialized from above and essentialized from within. I understand that for
many these differences are more discursive than material; however, the space
to explore deeper, more meaningful understandings and representations of
ourselves, especially as related to our desires, is a crucial space. Through
this reimagined space, we can come to terms with who and how we are,
how we know, and what we (don’t) want. It is from these spaces of critical
self‑consciousness and self‑awareness that transformative alliances can begin
to be forged and formed to creatively reconfigure local practices that are
informed by differently lived histories, experiences, and contexts.
Zines are tactical, strategic, and quotidian; their presence and
proliferation demonstrate a counterpublics of sorts that is working to
resist the tyrannies of homogenization and globalization from the space
of the mundane. Through the politics of articulation and disarticulation,
zinesters are resisting the structured divisions of an unjust social order.
Zinesters are sometimes reconfiguring their roles as consumers and, through
their practiced politics of articulation, reconfiguring the market space and
redefining (the use of ) material products.
Dominant politics of desire, consumption, and production are
interrupted and reinterpreted in the countercultural third spaces of zine
production. The zines I’ve considered here reconfigure relationships and
practices to subvert consumerism in its dominant mode through a reimagining
of (collective) consumption and production. The active subversion of
prescriptive practices of consumption and production are undertaken,
however, with sometimes uncertain or even unknowable material outcomes
and effects. This subversion may be as simple as using things differently
than they were intended to be used and/or using them more than once.28
Second‑order consumption, barter, trade, and do‑it‑yourself, or DIY, are
practices promoted in many zines.29 In their taken‑for‑grantedness of the
il/logic of capitalism, homonormative, heteronormative, and racialized
imperatives are often interrogated and subverted. Many zinesters are
queering practices and queer‑y‑ing the con/text to reimagine new ways of
being and relating.
5
Epilogue
Third‑Space Theory and Borderlands Rhetorics
As a concept, a methodology, a practice, and a location, third space and

borderlands rhetorics intervene in the structures, practices, and implications
of dualisms. As I have shown, cultural production in third space reconfigures
and reconceives binary structures (and the oppositional dualisms and false
dichotomies they imply and impose) as spectrums in order to illuminate
and more fully materialize third space and its potentials. I have proposed
and demonstrated that using third‑space frameworks and theories and that
investigating third‑space rhetorical activities are scholarly, pedagogical, and
activist endeavors. Such frameworks offer the potential to examine issues
of self and community formation and representation and to investigate
the circulation and explicit sharing of information and the production of
new knowledges, as well as the contradictions and ambiguities that reflect
the realities of multiply-situated, third‑space subjectivities. Though never
guaranteed, the third space of ambiguity can be a generative, creative, and
productive space, and many of the zinesters introduced here take it up as
such. The (discursive) practices and performances from these spaces offer
insights into the production of coalitions. My purpose is to apply lived
theory that first imagines, and then reconstructs and promotes antiracist
practices and politics and models of social justice.
When I refer to third space, I do so in the sense suggested by Doreen
Massey and other feminist and critical geographers. For Massey, space is
a relational production, that is to say, a product of social relations, and
thus, necessarily political. Space emerges through active material practices.1
It is never complete, never finished. A focus on the dynamic nature of
space allows for multiple, even competing, histories and experiences to be
131
identified and reconsidered. A focus on re‑spatialization is an opportunity

to more deeply understand the contested and contestable nature of space
and the potential for re‑politicization. The space of the public culture is
the product of specific power relations and as such it entails exclusions as
well as inclusions. Through a focus on spatialized practices and productions,
we can begin to consider who is included, excluded, and displaced from
the public sphere. As Massey notes, “[C]onceptualizing space as open,
multiple and relational, unfinished and also becoming, is a prerequisite for
the possibility of politics” (59). I would add that Massey’s conceptualization
of space is also a prerequisite for the politics and practices of articulation
I have examined here. Specifically, Massey’s argument implies, indeed
necessitates, a multidirectional approach to contested and contingent terrains
as important considerations in the pursuit of democratizing practices and
articulated coalitions. Material space and spatialized reconfigurations then
are important considerations in my understanding of practiced articulations
and rhetorical productions.
I have attempted to unearth and investigate third‑space sites,
subjectivities, and borderlands rhetorics as “sitios, lenguas, y empleos de
resistencia, protesta, y transformación” (Borderlands/La Frontera 36). Third
space and borderlands rhetorics are mutually constitutive such that a
reciprocal and productive relationship between third‑space sites, discourses,
subjectivities, and borderlands rhetorical practices exists as (potentially)
generative and productive.2 I have examined and applied a borderlands
rhetorical lens to better understand rhetorical relationships, interactions,
and representations that are pursued and deployed to build coalition and
enact conscious social change. Zines in this work served as materialized
third spaces that reflected borderlands rhetorics through the language of
resistance, opposition, and, most importantly, coalition. As third‑space
subjects practicing, performing, and producing third‑space theory, zinesters
are performing relational and coalitional subjectivities, building community
and counterpublics, disseminating information, questioning practices,
sharing knowledge, drawing from and contributing to grassroots literacies
and academic knowledges across the seemingly impervious boundaries and
borders of language, disciplinarity, race, class, color, gender, size, sexuality,
geography, education, and ability. Borderlands rhetorics, as investigated here,
work to consciously reimagine and reconfigure community and community
agendas that are attentive to difference, consciously resisting the conflation
of differences for political expediency while also recognizing how difference
itself is not a static category. I have demonstrated that academic scholarship,
too, is reflecting third‑space practices. This recognition serves as a call to
Epilogue / 133
rethink knowledge claims and practices of its production across disciplinary

borders in order to reconsider notions of authority, expertise, legitimacy, and
validity in terms of knowledge production.
This book has been an effort to understand the relationship between
our contexts—cultural and geographic, gendered, abled, classed, (inter)sexed,
and raced—and how meaning is made together and across contexts. There
are many contexts in which the crossing of borders and boundaries can be
identified as lived experience informed by and informing lived knowledges.
I chose zines—specifically feminist, queer, and of‑color zines—as spaces
for exploration because of their innovations, their potential for radical
cooperation, and the practices and performances they speak to that imagine
and pursue social change based on idea(l)s of social justice.3 Zines and their
rhetorical function and force instantiate fusions, perhaps even collisions
of sorts, of diverse lived experiences and knowledge systems. In zines as
third‑space sites, I have explored not only how we make meaning but also
how we pursue change—especially in coalition—based on that meaning.
What emerged in my explorations are borderlands rhetorics that reveal a
both/and consciousness with particular implications for the everyday.
Applied Theory and the Everyday
It is significant to me that the end of my father’s life marked the end

of this project as well as an inspiration for theorizing third space. My
family’s daily life provided me with such rich examples of lived borderlands
experiences and rhetorics. My own borderlands experiences taught me so
much including how to be in the world more complicatedly as a strategy
of inclusion and understanding. We lived out a both/and way of being,
knowing, and doing in the world as a result of his own borderlands identity.
Our lives are a demonstration of the challenges and the joys of liminality
or nepantla that Gloria Anzaldúa has written of as those we can experience
as borderlands beings.
During my process of writing this book, Gloria Anzaldúa died. I
dreamt of never‑had conversations with her, and I returned to reading her
publications, as her work had validated my ways of knowing and being, and
my right, if you will, to be a part of academic conversations.4 I note that, in
the course of my graduate studies, Anzaldúa had gone from being invisible
in rhetorical studies to having a place at the back of the book; that is to
say, a small portion of her work was placed in Bizzell and Herzberg’s The
Rhetorical Tradition: Readings from Classical Times to the Present. Anzaldúa’s
Borderlands/La Frontera is the penultimate entry in a volume of more than

1,600 pages. The primary reasoning offered for including Anzaldúa’s work
is that it “raises powerful questions that challenge the Western rhetorical
tradition’s assumptions of cultural homogeneity among speakers or writers
and audiences.” They continue, “Can communication and persuasion take
place when such homogeneity does not exist?” and finally, “The theoretical
work and the popular success of twentieth‑century women rhetoricians
suggest that it can” (1201).
The zines I analyzed suggest that communication can indeed take place
when cultural homogeneity does not exist. Even more importantly, these
zines demonstrate how communication occurs in contexts of heterogeneity
and why it is important that it take place. Anzaldúa’s work gave me
permission and courage to make such claims. While I am familiar with
those who rightfully caution us against taking her work out of context,
I read her work as an imperative to extend her ideas into new ways of
making meaning based on the grounding she provides. She calls us to make
applications and innovations. If we can take the works of traditional scholars
in rhetoric and apply them to current contexts, then why not apply the work
of a more contemporary scholar? As Norma E. Cantú notes in her 2004
poem, “Con el corazón de Coatlicue poema pa’ Gloria Anzaldúa,” wherever
there are borders Anzaldúa is there: En todas las fronteras donde vivimos
ahí, está tu espíritu, hermana, amiga profeta, pensadora. What I hope this
work encourages is dialogue that can and should occur across contexts—
borders and boundaries—to achieve the potential of borderlands rhetorics
as rhetorics that function to build relationships and understanding and that
also are implicated in the production, consumption, and circulation of (new)
knowledges. This process may only be accomplished without disregarding
the knowledges that have come before in terms of times and spaces as
traditional, generational, indigenous, and local through everyday stories of
lived practices.
The rhetorical activity that takes place in third‑space borderlands
contexts—contexts of ambiguity, contradiction, and resistance—are of
importance in understanding multiply situated subjectivities and discourses.
As Herndl and Nahrwold argue, rhetoric is influenced by scholars’ perceptions
of what is important. Borderlands are important to me. Relationships and
relational understandings are important to me. My purpose has been to
make visible the third‑space sites, subjectivities, and (discursive) practices
of resistance undertaken to generate alternative knowledges, practices, and
relations that first imagine and then reconstruct and promote antiracist
agendas and models of social justice.
Epilogue / 135
Third‑Space Peregrinations and Lived Borderlands Rhetorics
Borderlands rhetorics should be understood as an expressed survival skill,

a third‑space tactic and strategy, a reading and interpretation strategy as
evidenced by my own elementary school efforts shared earlier to, in my
first grade reader, read myself into dominant con/texts. Borderlands rhetorics
are steeped in spatialized contexts that began, for me, on the U.S./Mexico
border where a river serves as the dividing line. One river with two names,
both true and each rhetorically produced and imposed as acts of empire.
Standing on one side and looking south it is the Rio Grande. Standing on
the other side and looking north it is the Río Bravo. As someone who lives
the liminality, knowing that one river has two established names helps me
to know, also, that before these names, and still now, this river has other
names. These names represent the specialized contestations over time that
speak to the plethora of people who have made meaning around this river.
All the names are meaningful, true, real. The river, over time, produced a
border that was stabilized and fixed in my lifetime because some couldn’t
live with the flux and uncertainty—but many of us did. Do. And there
are lived his/stories and her/stories that speak to the contradictions and
ambiguities lived around this river.
Historical fiction fascinates me. Imagined im/possibilities. Reading and
now writing against the grain. I was awakened by feminist authors and then
invigorated by feminist authors of color, third world feminism, the collision
of the sciences with feminisms and indigeneity, nomadic philosophies, and
the politics of identity in motion, the veil, the dark, playing in the dark,
the liminal, “betwixt and between,” the borderlands, the queer, the Other,
the hybrid, the fused, the rhizomatic, the bridge, intersexed, elsewhere, the
postcolonial, the deconstructed, the cyborg, mestizaje, double‑consciousness,
neither this nor that but both this and that, the margins, the everyday,
all understood as third space. Third‑space rhetorical functions, practices,
performances, frameworks. Lived liminalities, border and boundary crossings.
I suspect I could have made the connections between third‑space and
hybridity, postcoloniality, queer theory, and transnational theories even more
explicit, but I will leave the connections yet to be made and those to be made
more explicitly to the efforts and imaginations of my readers. I believe that
third‑space hermeneutics, theories, epistemologies, and ontologies are relevant
in ways I have implied but also not yet fully imagined. They are produced
by and can produce hopeful rhetorics that can bring about transformation
informed by valuing multiplicity, contradictions, and ambiguities offering new
perspectives valuing the past and imagining the future.
Third‑space theory can help identify and explain creative resistances

and responses to marginalizing structures and practices. Importantly, it can
contribute to understanding multiply situated subjects, coalitional subjectivity,
and community activism. My aim has been to advance understanding of
third‑space theory as well as third‑space discursive and rhetorical practices
and to contribute new knowledges at the interstices of feminist and
of‑color rhetorics, queer studies, LatCrit, critical feminist pedagogy, critical
race and race critical studies, cultural studies, and community literacies.5
This work participates in the practice and production of a value system
that focuses on egalitarian social relationships, equity, and social justice.
Third‑space hermeneutics have widespread potential and application, and
can be identified across a broad spectrum of disciplines. I know there are
connections and realizations yet to make, and I know that they need not
be born of borderlands beginnings but can be about a consciousness and
informed by a desire for bringing together at least two parts to create
newness to include new opportunities for inclusiveness and to practice a
radical openness.
Why Zines/Why Now: Unleashing Radical (Rhetorical)

Third‑Space Potentials
I have argued for a relationship between third space and borderlands

rhetorics, paying particular attention to the relationship between the two,
and to their implications for subject formation, representation, and action.6 I
have explored third‑space sites, subjectivities, our dissident performances and
rhetorical practices as materialized in feminist and some queer zines‑of‑color.
I am continuing to explore the coalitional potential I believe such zines‑of‑color
promote and pursue. Throughout my consideration I have attempted to draw
parallels with the borderlands rhetorical practices within the academy and in
zines.7
Zines are vibrant and important evidence of third‑space productivity.
Their radical rhetorical performances constitute a third space: dissident
performances that offer insight into the double or multiply‑voiced discourses
and lived locations that, in turn, characterize third‑space subjectivities. The
con/texts and visual rhetorical representations in the zines I have researched
are creative and generative third‑space sites in which borderlands rhetorics
represent nondominant lived experiences and the conscious pursuit of political
coalitions. Anzaldúa spoke of activist authors who have gone before us as
“luchadoras que nos dejaron un legado de protesta y activismo por medio
de la pluma” (Anzaldúa and Keating 2002 5). The very act of writing
Epilogue / 137
zines is undertaken as an act of subversion and revision. Countercultural or

oppositional writing in zines represents a technology of (self‑) determination,
community representation, coalition, and potential transformation.
Questions regarding agency and authority, and the complex relationship
between the two, emerge in this work. Each is demonstrated only and
always in relations that are contextualized in time and space. My previous
work on agency and authority suggested a relationship between agency and
authority that is complex, differently expressed, and differently constrained
in diverse contexts (see Herndl and Licona 2007). I want to continue to
explore third‑space practices that reveal agentive and authoritative relational
potential within the same subject and context. Investigating the dynamics
of agency and authority together in terms of how change occurs—or does
not—in third‑space cultural contexts is a continued area of interest for
me. Third‑space zines offered insights into their coalitional potential and
possibilities for social action. The reality of agency is a question of positioning
within what Bordo describes as the “multiple ‘processes, of different origin
and scattered location,’ regulating and normalizing the most intimate and
minute elements of the construction of time, place, desire, embodiment”
(1993 165). If agency is defined as relational and conscious action that
effects change in the social world, then agency is contingent on a matrix of
material and social conditions.8 It is diffuse and shifting, and as such, not an
attribute or possession of individuals. The potential for action is relational.
Agency is a social location and opportunity into and out of which rhetors,
even postmodern subjects, move. Radha Hedge has referred to agency as
“the coming together of subjectivity and the potential for action” (288).
Rhetorical action is neither wholly determined by structures nor the sole
domain of the autonomous individual. It is instead, as Carl Herndl and
I have argued, the conjunction of the relational subject’s dispositions and
the temporary and contingent conditions of possibility of rhetorical action.
This understanding of agency articulates the poststructural subject to the
radical contextualization of cultural studies. There are, then, third‑space
implications to be (re)considered in theoretical and practical understandings
of (rhetorical) agency.9
Throughout this book, I have tried to show the creative ways in which
third‑space subjects put language into play by using disruptive (discursive)
strategies that reflect our borderlands, third‑space lived experiences as
interconnected, partial, real, and imagined, and always in the process of
becoming. Third‑space sites, subjectivities, our dissident performances, and
discursive practices are materialized in the zines identified here. Crossing
borders of differing knowledge systems represents manifest resistance to
the academic apartheid that Sandoval describes as reductive, divisive, and
exclusionary. These interdisciplinary border crossings are third‑space practices

that reveal new perspectives and new knowledges and offer a revitalized
approach to the transformative potential of academics and activism. While
not altogether a new phenomenon, crossing disciplinary boundaries is an
increasingly visible practice being undertaken across a range of academic
disciplines. Evidence of these academic peregrinations can be found, as I
have demonstrated elsewhere, in myriad academic journals, contexts, and
practices. These sometimes cross‑disciplinary, third‑space practices have
the potential to generate new perspectives and new knowledges that are
represented by borderlands rhetorics.10
Zines are often used as a tool of self‑discovery and community
building through the development of coalitional consciousness. Practices
of this developed consciousness serve to reimagine and revision
(mis)representation. As materializations of borderlands rhetorics, zines
re‑present sites and discourses—sitios y lenguas—in which we can identify
movement in the form of multiple border crossings and locate (constrained)
agency and the authority to (self ) represent. Many zines explicitly reflect
and materialize the voices of multiply-situated Others. It is in this context
that zines demonstrate a radical coalitional, community, activist, and
pedagogical potential.11 As resistance to the delimiting and exclusionary
effects of dominant discursive practices and representations, zinesters often
deploy a multitude of reimagined rhetorical strategies in their efforts to
speak from and of third space and generate, practice, and perform new
knowledges while building coalitions.
Entremundista: Third‑Space Navigations and

Zines as Familiar Terrain
In order to practice the theory‑building work I am engaged in, I have

slipped and consciously traveled the terrains between the academic and the
nonacademic, the authentic and the inauthentic, the legitimate and the
illegitimate, the pure and the impure, and the proper and the improper. I
have demonstrated the potential in reading and writing con/texts through a
third‑space framework, a practice that may be identifiable and understood
by others who share a third‑space epistemology as well as those open to
considering nondominant ways of knowing and being. I deployed the
concept of embodiment through my discussion of corporeal and relational
subjectivity to see myself, and Others, in third‑space theory and practice.12
I speak as a corporeal subject of the borderlands. My great‑aunt Tata named
Epilogue / 139
me la prieta chula que no es una mula. Perhaps this naming of me helped

me understand my right and my privilege to be/come an academic. But
never only an academic. I am always also part of my family and part of my
community. These truths must come together in whatever meaning‑making
practices I engage in. I hope that in this work I have been true to myself,
my family, and my multiple communities.
At the beginning of this book I noted that zines were inexplicably
familiar to me when I first encountered them. It has taken the completion
of this work to understand the why of this familiarity. While I continue to
believe there are others, zinesters, who could better tell the stories of zines, I
hope my connections, insights, and understanding prove thought‑provoking
and generative of third‑space theory and theorizing. Zines, as I have argued
throughout, are critical and creative sites of what I continue to believe are
hopeful, borderlands rhetorics; the understanding of which has application
well beyond zines. Because I value storytelling as the communication of
lived knowledges, I will share a story that explains, in part, my sense of
zines as so utterly familiar and worthwhile as sites of study.
My father was born in el Segundo Barrio, the Second Ward, of El
Paso, Texas. He had roots there. He also claimed Zacatecas as home. And
Chihuahua. And San Diego. He held dual citizenship. He was bilingual.
His class positioning shifted multiple times in his lifetime. And he was
deeply curious. He loved history. And politics. And he moved in contexts
across national boundaries. His life found him on the streets early in life.
Was it age five? He rode the milk trucks and learned to navigate local and
then transnational spaces because of this experience. He fell in love with
selling things and with serving others. He loved spontaneity. And he was
fun. He was unable to finish high school. He valued in/formal education
and this sentiment only grew as he aged. He also valued street knowledge
and lived wisdom, and he valued the people who hold these knowledges.
One knowledge system without the other was incomplete for him. And so
he taught us—to listen, to value people across contexts, and to be at ease in
multiple contexts. He encouraged us to read, to learn, to travel, and to have
compassion and act on behalf of and with others when our own privilege or
any other opportunity presented itself. We were not to underestimate, nor
were we to overestimate, anyone. His life ended when I began the revisions
for this work and the three-year anniversary of his passing marks the end
of my revisioning efforts.
This realization and these reflections help me to understand why zines
are so familiar to me. The zines I have collected and analyzed here express and
espouse similar values to those so familiar to me as lived expressions of the
everyday. I do not underestimate the value of zinesters’ lived experiences, nor

do I devalue zinesters’ efforts to reach back to traditional knowledge or the
everyday stories that circulate as wisdom in many zines. I value the collision
and synthesis of knowledge systems—formal and informal, academic and
nonacademic, critical and creative—as well as the social locations and the
alliance politics practiced in zines. Zines feel familiar and like home to me.
They are birthed of a borderlands epistemology that I have lived and share,
that I know formally and informally. And that I, myself, value. Though I
know my father was proud of my accomplishments as an academic, he
always asked me to write in a way that would be accessible to our people.
And I knew what he meant. I’m not sure that I have accomplished what he
asked of me but in valuing the knowledges that circulate in and from local
and everyday locations, I have achieved something of his wish. I dedicate
this book, of course, to him. And to every entremundista or third‑space
subject and to those who otherwise experience third space as familiar.
In their manifesto for new cultural studies, Jenkins, McPherson, and
Shattuc acknowledge the phase of institutionalization of cultural studies as
one of both freedom and danger. They note that the “hard fights of the
past won us space to reexamine our own relationship to the popular, to
rethink our own ties to the general public, and to experiment with new
vocabularies for expressing our critical insights” (3). I understand this to
mean that as scholars who study popular culture, we must engage both the
joys and responsibilities of doing so. I mean to say that our work cannot
merely reflect but must connect. In this work I have moved from Jenkins,
McPherson, and Shattuc’s manifesto through zinesters’ desires as I have
understood them to Anzaldúa’s imperative to participate in the creation of
another culture and a new story to explain the world and our participation
in it. Any success I have had in creating new ways of explaining third space
as a location and as a practice is shared with those who have shared my
third‑space contexts, those whose work has inspired and influenced me,
every in/formal teacher I have had along the way, as well as friends, and
most importantly mi familia.
Notes
Chapter 1. Borderlands Rhetorics and Third‑Space Sites
1. I draw almost exclusively from the zine collection at the Sallie Bingham
Center for Women’s History and Culture, Rare Book, Manuscript, and Special Col‑
lections Library, at Duke University. Specifically, most of the zines I analyze in this
book may be found in either the Sarah Dyer (ca. 1988–1999) or Dwayne Dixon (ca.
1984–1995) collections or from the Sarah Woods collection. The Bingham Center
women’s zine collection was created when Sarah Dyer donated her collection of
more than one thousand zines in the year 2000. Since then, there have been several
other named collections donated. Currently there are more than 3,500 zines in the
collection, with a majority dated from 1985–2005. The Bingham Center collects
zines primarily by “women, girls, and women‑identified people” (from ZineWorld).
Since I began my research, the library has acquired the Ailecia Ruscin collection,
which appears to have the greatest number of of‑color zines in the library holdings.
2. Third space is a term I was first introduced to through the works of
Chicana scholars including Gloria Anzaldúa, Emma Pérez, and Chela Sandoval. This
concept, which I first understood as a space between, was at once utterly familiar
and altogether overwhelming. It explained so much to me about having grown up
on what I always referred to as “the” border. I spent a great deal of time understand‑
ing my own lived history through the concept of, and sense of locatedness in third
space. In graduate school I realized the power and utility of a third‑space framework
for a deepening understanding of feminist and queer theory in that it necessitated
a transcendence of dichotomy and oppositional dualisms. It began to influence my
reading, my writing, and my play with language. Through a continued engagement
with the work of these and other scholars over time, third space became not only
an understood location for me but it also became a way of understanding my own
process of reading, writing, and comprehending the world. In other words, I came
to realize that it was, for me, both a location and a practice as well as a worldview.
In using the term “third-space theory” here I mean to build on the work of these
Chicana scholars and I seek to connect, extend, and apply what I first learned from
them in multiple directions.
141
142 / Notes to Chapter 1
3. See Chris Atton, Michelle Comstock, and especially Stephen Duncombe’s
“ ‘I’m a Loser Baby’: Zines and the Creation of Underground Identity,” in Hop on
Pop: The Politics and Pleasures of Popular Culture.
4. See Elke Zobl’s 2009 essay “Cultural Production, Transnational Network‑
ing, and Critical Reflection in Feminist Zines.”
5. In “Cultural Production, Transnational Networking, and Critical Reflec‑
tion in Feminist Zines,” Zobl points out that many zinesters continue to write
paper zines in an acknowledgment of the ongoing digital divide as well as out of
an appreciation for the process of paper production.
6. While zines are written and reproduced from perspectives that represent
a full range of the political spectrum, I analyze contemporary zines whose authors
self‑identify as feminist, antiracist, queer, and/or of color, and who seek to build
and mobilize community, and work to forge alliances across lines of difference for
purposes of pursuing agendas that are framed in terms of social justice and equity.
An emergent coalitional consciousness is evident in the zines I study. While I am
interested in zines that may be informed by the counterculture of punk in the
United States, I move beyond U.S. punk culture, which is often represented in
zines here as andro- and ethnocentric. Instead, I identify zines that advocate for
change based on identified intersections of oppression. These identifications, forged
across borders of difference, prove coalitional and inform the emergent borderlands
rhetoric I am working to define. My emphasis in this project is on the potential of
feminist, queer, POC zines to build and inform coalition.
7. One example of intertextual dialogue can be found in How to Stage
a Coup, which has a call for submissions to Indian Attack, an apparently then
newly forming zine that was boasting a circulation of 1,500. This call is a demon‑
stration of cross‑zine dialogue and an expression of desire to assemble communities
for coalition and reveals. Also, in Housewife Turned Assassin!, Numero #1, there is
an announcement for a zine entitled Function zine with the caption, “kill the image
that is killing you.” This “advertisement” is evidence of the conversations zinesters
are having between zines and among themselves about other zines engaged in related
rants and critiques. It is evidence, too, of the building of community I reference
throughout this work.
8. In her essay “Kochinnenako in Academe: Three Approaches of Interpret‑
ing a Keres Indian Tale” (1986), Paula Gunn Allen demonstrates how interpreta‑
tions undertaken from a one‑dimensional perspective (limited by a hierarchical and
binary framework) overlook the multidimensional possibilities of interpretations and
representations available when doubleness is employed. Gunn Allen demonstrates
the restrictive nature of any binary or oppositional framework, especially as it is
applied to representations. The doubleness born of third‑space subjectivity is not
constrained by the binary that has proven so restrictive and reductive in its repre‑
sentational capacity. For further discussion of notions and experiences of doubleness,
and multiply-voiced discourses and subjectivities, see Anzuldúa 1987; Gates 1998;
DuBois 1998; Bakhtin 1998; and Herndl and Licona 2007.
Notes to Chapter 1 / 143
9. It is important to acknowledge the work of Stephen Duncombe, who

has written thoughtfully on the subject of zines and who sees in them a potential
that is not fully realized. He notes their political potential while also noting their
limited effect beyond their own community of like‑minded others. I see in the
zines I focus on (feminist- and queer‑identified, antiracist and of‑color zines) the
potential he initially identified. It is these zines that I think might provoke the kind
of awareness that changes practices in community contexts. The emphasis in these
zines is often on community education, which I think has longer‑term implications
beyond their rants.
10. See “Cultural Criticism and Society” in Adorno’s Prisms. There Adorno
argues that criticism must be articulated to a more profound understanding of the
roots of inequality in order for change to be pursued. In noting that “[w]henever
cultural criticism complains of ‘materialism,’ it furthers the belief that the sin lies in
man’s desire for consumer goods, and not in the organization of the whole which
withholds these goods from man,” I believe he is suggesting the need to move
beyond criticism to a kind of critical consciousness that must be connected to and
inform reflected‑upon practice (24, 25).
11. My understanding of radical and participatory democratics is drawn from
the works of Gloria Anzaldúa, Chantal Mouffe, and Chela Sandoval. Sandoval’s
notion of democratics is action‑oriented and implies the pursuit of new standards
(political and social) that are informed by and pursue egalitarian and participatory
social change. Anzaldúa’s ideas about radical democratics are directly related to the
(right to the) production of knowledges, and in “Feminism, Citizenship, and Radi‑
cal Democratic Politics,” Mouffe outlines them as part of a political theory that is
broadly inclusive. See also Gilyard on deep democracy.
12. One work that has informed my understanding of the need for and
power of revisioning practices and practices of self‑representation is Paula Gunn
Allen’s Spider Woman’s Granddaughters: Traditional Tales and Contemporary Writings
by Native American Women. There Gunn Allen notes that “when its image is shaped
by its own people, the hope of survival can be turned into a much greater hope;
it can become a hope for life, for vitality, for affirmation” (18).
13. My understanding of lived theory (the transformation of theory into lived
experiences and lived experiences into theory) has roots in Anzaldúa’s Borderlands/
La Frontera, Carla Trujillo’s edited Living Chicana Theory, and Aída Hurtado’s edit‑
ed Voicing Chicana Feminisms. These works together highlight the lived connection
between our writings (for academics, our scholarship) and our daily lives and activ‑
ism. More importantly, they remind me that theory is not produced in isolation but
instead in our everyday lives, communities, and relationships.
14. Now that I have defined the parameters around the zines that will
be the focus of this work, I will use the terms “zines” and “third‑space zines”
interchangeably.
15. Philomena Essed writes about instances of everyday racism in her book,
titled Understanding Everyday Racism and Interdisciplinary Theory. Her study of black
women in higher education in Europe holds many poignant moments about the
mundane realities of racisms and about the lived insights of being racialized Others.
Her work inspired my interest in everyday contexts and those lived instances that
make up racialized quotidian contexts. Zinesters often write about the everyday, the
relational, the personal, and the local. I have used Essed’s insights into everyday
contexts to inform my own analysis of the work being expressed in zines, especially
regarding the everydayness of racialization as a lived experience. In her work on
the culture of cloning and the cloning of culture, Essed extends her analysis from
the effects of and responses to racism to the reciprocal implications of racialization.
That is to say, she investigates the processes of racialization as relational and related
to practices of (resisting) being Othered and Othering. Zinesters also investigate the
relational implications of practices of racialization.
16. I am informed by Judith Butler’s discussion in Precarious Life: The Pow-
ers of Mourning and Violence (2006) of the potential for solidarity and coalitional
activism in post‑9/11 contexts. I am particularly drawn to her consideration of
the First Worldist emotional experience of realizing borders as (more) populated
and permeable. This realization might move First Worldists to better understand
borderlands as always potentially productive spaces.
17. In our introduction to our NWSAJ cluster issue titled “Moving Loca‑
tions: The Politics of Identities in Motion” (2005), Aimee Carrillo Rowe and I
move from identity politics to the politics of identity in motion. Our efforts were
undertaken to identify and pursue the potential in alliances formed across borders
of difference. We began from an understanding that identities and locations can be
shifting and fluid, and so they imply movement. Moving, for us, is both spatial‑
ized and affective. A spatialized approach to identity and location (and here I am
drawing from the work of a number of feminist geographers, including Doreen
Massey) allows us to move from a fixed listing of identity markers along different
axes of power to a fluid and relational understanding between people and places,
which is what Massey refers to as “stories‑so‑far” (For Space 12, 24). My ideas
about the strictures and structures of discourse, fixity and fluidity, and the creative
potential of language, as well as about how these ideas relate to understandings of
subject formation were first informed by Jacques Lacan particularly in The Seminar
of Jacques Lacan, Book 1.
18. Elsewhere I have written of the borderlands rhetorics that circulate spe‑
cifically in academic third spaces to reveal new perspectives and new knowledges.
I am especially intrigued by the work of feminist biologist Anne Fausto-Sterling,
whose work engages a borderlands rhetoric to actively subvert a rigid gender binary.
My work in this book will shift the focus from academic third space to nonacademic
third space only to demonstrate how the two overlap and how even the academic/
nonacademic divide is rather artificial. My goal is to reveal a way of seeing, being,
and knowing in the world that is third‑space, which is reciprocally related to the
borderlands rhetorics I am working to define.
19. There are dissimiliarities between third space and notions of the contact
zone and autoethnography. While I do believe third space can be considered a
“contact zone” as defined by Mary Louise Pratt, I do not believe they are neces‑
sarily so (6). My project is an attempt to understand and engage the world from
a third‑space perspective and deployed borderlands rhetoric. While there can be
similarities identified between my efforts and those defined by Mary Louise Pratt
as autoethnographic, there are some distinctions to be made. While I do, at times,
engage the misrepresentations others may have made of me, my purpose is to reclaim
the promise and potential of nondominant ways of making sense of the world.
This other way is a borderlands rhetoric and third space. It is a space from which
to pursue coalitional understandings and new ways of being collectively. Because I
believe my considerations work to subvert dichotomy, they are also distinct from
autoethnography as defined by Pratt. Pratt notes that autoethnography works by
using or appropriating colonial (mis)representations to re‑present oneself and one’s
history. I am searching for ways—through a borderlands rhetoric that is informed
by a both/and worldview—of speaking our locatedness, which is always shifting,
always relational.
20. I am informed here by the discussion of imagetext in Virve Sarapik’s
2009 article in Semiotica, “Picture, text, and imagetext: Textual polylogy,” which
investigates the relations between pictorial and textual representation to argue for
the relational import and impact of text and picture.
21. For a more in‑depth discussion of transtextuality, see Genette (1997)
and Sarapik (2009).
22. My own argument about the value of a discursive and visual rhetorical
analysis of zines to better understand third‑space potential is informed by the work
of Charles Hill and Marguerit Helmers titled Defining Visual Rhetorics. The relation‑
ship between image and text is thoroughly explored in this book, which argues for
the understanding that images are crucial components in rhetorical production and
persuasion. Visual images in zines are important cultural productions with rhetorical
import, influence, and rhetorical force. As a means of connecting my visual analyses
to my argument regarding the production of social alliances, solidarities, and action
in zines, I draw from the argument J. Anthony Blair makes in his chapter “The
Rhetoric of Visual Arguments.” Specifically, Blair argues that much in the same way
that rhetorical arguments include enthymemes, so, too, do visual rhetorical artifacts,
as they also produce a kind of visual argument that is composed of missing parts
or gaps that call an audience or a community forward to actively fill in those gaps.
Blair’s visual enthymemes are rhetorical devices and strategies that are implicated in
the coalition‑building capacity I am arguing for in this work.
23. My understanding of neocolonization, as informed by reading Chela
Sandoval and Susan Bordo together, is that the neocolonial is the appropriation and
commodification of difference in late capitalism to effect what Bordo conceptualizes
as a kind of normalized heterogeneity or, for me, sameness. For discussions on the
colonizing and what I consider as also the neocolonizing effects of discourses and
discursive practices, see also Anzaldúa (1987), Nye (1990), Pérez (1999), Tuhiwai
Smith (1999), Gray‑Rosendale and Gruber (2000), and Carrillo‑Rowe (2005).
24. Because I was not then attempting, and am not altogether now attempt‑
ing, to have dominant audiences understand the subversiveness in this third‑space
naming practice, I do not see this effort as autoethnographic. Instead, more like
the survival skills identified by Sandoval, it is what I did to legitimate my presence
in an elementary school that otherwise erased my lived experience and invalidated
my tactics for understanding the context within which I was learning to be and
to know. See also Tey Diana Rebolledo’s The Chronicles of Panchita Villa and Other
Guerilleras and especially her call there for continued guerillera practices of inserting
ourselves, our histories, and our writing into authorized academic spaces.
25. Articulation is about the organization and reorganization of relationships
as well as knowledge shifts and (cultural) productions under specific conditions.
Articulations are not particularly stable. The theory of articulation is related to
practices of coalition, each of which deploy certain critical apparati to disconnect
and reconnect for certain purposes, which are never guaranteed. Laclau and Mouffe,
for example, focus on the politics of articulation in terms of its partiality and are
thus able to challenge totalizing notions of class and class formations. For Stuart
Hall, articulation can represent a linkage between social discourses and social forces
allowing mindful readers of culture to make sense of their historic situation without
being reduced to their socioeconomic or class location. The theory of articulation
is a way of understanding how ideological elements come together under particu‑
lar conditions to cohere within a discourse, and it represents a way of examining
how ideologies do or do not become connected at specific junctures to particular
political subjects. Hall’s work provokes readers to ask: Under what circumstances
can a connection be forged? Donna Haraway examines the politics of articulation
that work to link diverse sites and subjectivities in pursuit of activist coalitions
(1992). She notes that boundaries shift and take provisional shape in articulatory
practices. Haraway suggests that people have a responsibility to pay attention to
these shifting boundaries because they create a kind of imagined elsewhere, a ter‑
rain that can inspire newness in terms of practices, perspectives, and knowledges.
I want to thank Amy Kimme‑Hea for a particularly helpful conversation we had
around the politics of articulation.
26. Methodologies of the oppressed, as defined by Sandoval, are comprised
of both “inner and outer technologies” (2000 3). As third‑space subjects, we uti‑
lize these skills or technologies to reveal third‑space meaning in our practices of
rereading, rewriting, reinterpreting, re‑presenting, and re‑membering ourselves, our
stories, our histories, and our futures. These technologies, identified by Sandoval as
semiotics, deconstruction, meta‑ideologizing, differential movement, and democrat‑
ics, are undertaken and utilized in passages from oppositional consciousness through
differential consciousness on to coalitional consciousness and back again (2000
3). They are creative technologies of movement and transformation undertaken in

fertile third‑space terrain by mobile, border‑crossing, third‑space subjects. More
specifically these technologies demonstrate how signs are reread or decoded, and
rewritten or recoded from different locations and with the purpose of transform‑
ing misrepresentations and other injustices. These technologies further demonstrate
how some practices are interrupted and others are proposed and perpetuated as
acts of orthopraxis, or reflected upon right‑action. By technologies, then, I mean
techniques as written about by Chela Sandoval (2000). Sandoval uses it to describe
and examine methodologies of the oppressed. Specifically she deploys the term to
describe the application of lived knowledges and skills to the sense‑making practices
of nondominant subjects. I realize that this term, like several of those I deploy, has
a long and complicated history. I use the term, however, in the spirit of reclaiming.
27. In addition to lived experience, many disciplinary strands inform my
critique of dichotomy. I recall Homi Bhabha identifying the limiting nature of
polarities and the potential value of what lies beyond. For me, the “beyond” of
such considerations is third space.
28. In my collaborations with Professor Marta M. Maldonado, we have
begun to investigate the question of immigrant incorporation and integration as
a pressing one, particularly in the Midwest and in Iowa, which are among the
“new immigrant destinations” that are experiencing the highest rates of growth
and rapid demographic changes (128). Our work is an effort to analyze and better
understand the dynamics unfolding in those spaces. For us, new destinations reveal
how borderlands contexts are being produced in Midwestern spaces experiencing
shifting demographics. In our latest work, we specifically focus on what we call
the social production of im/migrant in/visibilities and im/mobilities, the spatial‑
ized practices by individuals, families, communities, and institutions, which are
implicated in conditions of im/possibilities for survival, community integration, and
political praxis. In this context, we consider how the regime of deportability that
currently operates in the United States creates racialized and gendered conditions
for in/visibility and im/mobility of heterogeneous Latino/a im/migrant populations,
and for Latino/as more broadly. While seemingly disparate, my work to rhetori‑
cally analyze “new destinations” contexts is very much related to my analysis of
zines as spatialized representations of third‑space contexts in which borderlands are
embodied and reproduced.
29. Interestingly, Anita Harris (1998) has identified Riot Grrrl zines as par‑
ticipating in new spaces of engagement. My notion of third space, while related
to Harris’s discussion of space, is a space also defined by the transcendence of
oppositional binaries and so reproduced through practices that subvert dichotomous
structures and discourses.
30. Understandings of ambiguity and contradiction are often associated with
third‑wave feminism though the experience of ambiguity and contradiction is by
no means exclusive to third‑wave contexts. I am reminded of Beverly Guy‑Sheftall’s
“Response from a ‘second‑waver’ to Kimberly Springer’s ‘Third Wave Black Femi‑

nism?’ ” There, Guy‑Sheftall argues for “a re‑visionist approach in the writing of
feminist history in the United States that interrogates our notion of the ‘first‑wave’
women’s movement” (1092). She also argues that a “significant amount of feminist
organizing occurred in the years following 1919 when women were finally granted
suffrage, so that our notions about ‘second wave’ may need to be altered as well”
(1092). Like Guy‑Sheftall, I too believe that the wave metaphor has obscured contri‑
butions by women of color to feminist movements and feminist theories. My efforts
here are to produce the kind of scholarship that, through a decentered and post‑
structural approach, can reclaim contributions by those who have been overlooked or
otherwise excluded from dominant narratives and their related practices. The waves
metaphor often obscures the intellectual and material labor of women of color. I
am thus hesitant about such namings as they are implicated in the reproduction of
the normative hegemon of white feminism by overlooking the fact that tactics and
strategies named in dominant texts as third‑wave were often practiced long before,
particularly by women of color whose work may not have made it into the wave
metaphor and whose work may have been informed by the displacement of multiple,
contradictory, and ambiguous social locations. This intersectional understanding
and approach is why I argue for the politics of (relational) identity in motion over
time and across contexts and in conscious solidarity across metaphors and material
space. While the tracing of zines can be made through the three waves of feminisms,
such an unproblematized division does not serve my project well. My broad argu‑
ment is about reconceptualizing such divisions toward the concept of spectrums in
order to trace and reconfigure the traversing and transgressing rhetorics that serve
to construct and entrench such divisions. What this book will foreground is an
engagement with transgenerational, of‑color feminists and queers who are situated
variously and whose work is taken up variously as well. Rather than engaging the
waves metaphor, I will demonstrate through theories of third space and borderlands
rhetorics that the divisions imposed by the waves in this metaphor are often blurred
in creative and generative ways. Again, to reinscribe such divisions would not only
make my argument inconsistent but could also compromise the integrity of my
greater project. See works that continue to trouble the waves metaphor, including
an article titled, Is It Time to Jump Ship?: Historians Rethink the Waves Metaphor
(Laughlin et al. 2010, Feminist Formations). See also Kinser (2004); Mack‑Canty
(2004); Purvis (2004); Jacobs and Licona (2005); Tirado Gilligan (2009); “feminist‑
ing” (http://feministing.com) blog.
31. See also Edward Soja on Third Space and Maria Lugones on “streetwalker
theorizing” (2003 225) See also Memoirs of a Queer Hapa on an explicit notion
of radical impurities.
32. See Massey (2005); Katz (2006).
33. See Massey (2005); Hayden (2006).
34. I offer a more detailed treatment of the relationship between critical and
feminist geography and third space in a manuscript I collaborated on with Marta
Maldonado titled “Rethinking Integrations as a Reciprocal and Spatialized Pro‑
cess” (2007). We delivered this paper at the Cumbre 2007 Conference in Omaha,
Nebraska.
35. For further discussion of bodies inscribed with history, see also Cixous
(1986), Kristeva (1984), de Lauretis (1987), and Pérez (1999). Feminist theorists
across disciplines have been writing about the body and the ways in which (dis‑
cursive) borders have marked and played themselves out on bodies. Cixous, in
particular, has written about the discursive disorderings effected by language on
the body of the Other. Ultimately Cixous opposes and sees as artificial the sexual
and gendered dichotomies dictated by the heterosexual imperative on the body and
beyond. See, too, de Certeau, who writes, “a body is itself defined, delimited, and
articulated by what writes it” (1984 139).
36. The decolonial imaginary, broadly deployed, allows us to reclaim certain
spaces in time to retell our stories and thereby resist and transform historical mis‑
representations. Specifically, for Chicanas to revision ourselves as active participants
in history, Pérez’s emphasis on the decolonial moves us to remember, even reimagine,
our history from a noncolonial perspective.
37. Chicanas are utilizing collective imaginations in literature to retell our
decolonized tales. Imaginative historical reversals, revisionings, and rememberings
allow us to see ourselves as active agents in history.
38. In “Memoria is a Friend of Ours: On the Discourse of Color” (2004),
Villanueva notes that memoria calls and pushes us forward. He insists that we must
“invite her into our classrooms and into our scholarship.” This call itself reveals a
borderlands rhetoric that invites dissidence through rememory. See also Toni Mor‑
rison (1984) on remembering as a necessary act of survival and Doreen Massey
(2005) on concepts of narrativized space.
39. According to Chela Sandoval, a differential consciousness “arises between
and through [different] meaning systems” (Methodology of the Oppressed, 180). In
my work I aim to bring together different meaning systems to make visible the
ways in which knowledge is contested and reproduced especially while informing
coalitional potentials and practices. See also Gloria Anzaldúa and her discussion of
mestiza consciousness in Borderlands/La Frontera.
40. I am presently at work on a spatialized approach to the study of roadside
memorials as situated in liminal spaces that I consider third spaces with rhetorical
significance. While this study offers a solid material context within which to make
my claims of the spatialized implications of borderlands rhetorical contexts and
practices, I argue that zines that promote alliances across difference in terms of race
and in terms of knowledge systems allow us to imagine such alliances in spatial‑
ized terms. These proposed and pursued alliances transcend and defy dichotomous
divisions, blurring boundaries to reveal new spatialized understandings of social

formations as well as of knowledges and activist coalitions across lines and lived
material experiences of difference.
41. Here I am invoking conocimiento, as Anzaldúa does, to imply knowing.
However, I draw from her later engagement with this term where she proposed
and developed seven stages of gaining knowledge that all lead to implied action.
(See Anzaldúa’s essay “now let us shift . . . the path of conocimiento . . . inner
work, public acts,” in this bridge we call home: radical visions for transformation). I
also understand this sense of knowledge as implying informed action to my earlier
discussion of the need to move beyond criticism through critical consciousness to
critical action.
42. As I write, the State of Arizona has passed SB1070, one of the most
regressive anti‑immigration laws in the United States. It has also passed HB2281,
an ethnic studies ban in public schools. Such measures are material reminders of
the ongoing lived oppressions in borderlands contexts. However, the responses to
such measures are also reminders to the coalitional strategies and relational politics
that emerge in these same borderlands contexts.
43. See Lugones (2003), Butler (2004), Carrillo Rowe and Licona (2005),
Martin Alcoff (2005).
44. I am grateful for conversations with Victor Villanueva (July 2007), who
helped me both clarify the definition of third space and more clearly articulate its
potential.
45. For full discussions about interstitial, third‑space subjectivity and its
implications for matters of representation, see also Anzaldúa (1987), Pérez (1999),
and Sandoval (2000).
46. I am grateful to the conversations I had with Victor Villanueva and
Aimee Carrillo Rowe at different times in my process of revising this manuscript.
These conversations helped me to articulate this important relationship as one that
moves beyond both a fixed geography and a fixed identity.
47. The work that helped me to understand the potential of a decolonized
imagination is Emma Peréz’s The Decolonial Imaginary: Writing Chicanas into His-
tory (1999).
48. More specifically these technologies demonstrate how signs are reread or
decoded, and rewritten or recoded from different locations and with the purpose
of transforming misrepresentations and other injustices. These technologies further
demonstrate how some practices are interrupted and others are proposed and per‑
petuated as acts of orthopraxis, or reflected‑upon right‑action.
49. See Carrillo Rowe and Licona (2005) on the politics of identity in
motion.
50. I learned a great deal about the value of studying cultural artifacts with
transformative potential, whether or not that potential is always realized, by study‑
ing the work of Ken McAllister. Specifically, his book titled Game Work: Language,
Power, and Computer Game Culture (2004) helped me learn to carefully consider
the potentials and contradictions that are realized (or not) in practice. Notably, he
achieves an in‑depth analysis of the ideologic coding of games and how games can
be both potentially emancipatory and exploitative.
51. Stephen Duncombe’s work on zines, which is considered comprehensive,
questions whether or not zines actually create change. I suggest they do though
we cannot always know the extent to which they do. I am less interested in macro
change than I am in micro change in localized contexts. I believe change that occurs
in these relatively smaller contexts has implications for change in greater contexts.
Zinesters Celia Perez and Mimi Nguyen offer examples of this potential relationship
between micro and macro change. In Perez’s zine we witness a move from public
school teacher to public librarian committed to free speech and a broader circula‑
tion of zines in public libraries. In Nguyen’s zine writings, we witness her move
away from the punk scene as a result of insightful theoretical analysis and shared
reflections informed by lived experiences regarding the shortcomings of punk to be
broadly inclusive to of‑color participation. When I consider her in both an academic
as well as a subcultural context, I imagine an embodiment of the conversations and
work I am suggesting is taking place across academic and nonacademic contexts.
What I have noted in this work is change‑oriented zines that consciously seek
coalition based on an intersectional awareness and progressive politics of inclusiv‑
ity. I see evidence of the promotion of grassroots literacies (to include historical
reclaimings), community education, personal reflection, and innovative practices
that have implications for community contexts. This is what this book is intended
to illuminate—spaces or contexts within which zines are circulating and effecting
dialogue and practice.
52. Chicanas are utilizing collective imaginations in literature to retell our
decolonialized tales. Graciela Limón, for example, in Song of the Hummingbird
(1996), offers a historical account of the conquest of the Americas from the per‑
spective of an Aztec princess. For a comprehensive account of the ways in which
Chicana lesbians have used fiction and our imaginations to tell our stories, see
Catrióna Rueda Esquibel’s With Her Machete in Hand (2006).
53. Subjects and representations of subjects are being reimagined by
third‑space feminists who are theorizing across academic contexts in order to inves‑
tigate and explain agency and subject formation. In addition to Emma Pérez, many
other feminist theorists across disciplinary borders, including Lois McNay, Donna
Haraway, and Lorraine Code, believe that the imagination creatively resists the
restrictive nature of language and linguistic taxonomies, especially as these serve
to define gender and gendered experiences. There is emancipatory and agentive
potential in acknowledging and employing the imaginary. If we can reimagine our‑
selves beyond the limits of language as it has traditionally been utilized in matters
of representation to reproduce a dominant social order, we can begin the creative,
generative, and agentive process of renaming ourselves and reclaiming our herstories.
54. It is important to acknowledge that not all zines accomplish change or

resistance. I don’t want to discount or overstate what zines do—and can do—in
the world. When a zinester claims, for example, that she wants to or will smash
imperialism, I consider it evidence of transformation in process and lived potential.
There is discursive evidence of transformed understandings and reflected‑upon and
revised actions in many of the third‑space zines I consider throughout this work.
While I do not consider all zines to be third‑space zines, the zines I have selected
and included here are those I consider to be third‑space. Therefore, the terms zines
and third-space zines are interchangeable for me.
55. Trinh Minh‑ha describes the role of the “neighborhood scribe,” which
coincides with the role many zinesters might define for themselves (10). Specifi‑
cally, distinguishing between the “I” of singular subjectivity and the “I” of “plural,
non‑unitary” subjectivity‑in‑community context, Minh-ha notes how for those who
call themselves writers “in the context of a community whose major portion ‘not
only can’t read but seems to think reading is a waste of time’ (gossett), being ‘the
neighborhood scribe’ is no doubt one of the most gratifying and unpretentious ways
of dedicating oneself to one’s people” (10). Gratification comes from recording lived
experience, especially in its potential to represent a different truth. My aim is not
to romanticize the intentions or accomplishments of every zinester or to consider
them all third‑space writers but to acknowledge instead a subversive, and potentially
coalitional, approach to the generative and reproductive act of writing in third‑space
(con)texts undertaken for the purposes of recording, representing, informing, and
educating a community.
56. Third-space academic peregrinations also work beyond oppositional dual‑
isms to reveal new discursive tactics and rhetorical performances. Academic examples
of third‑space projects unearth the creative terrain from which a borderlands rhetoric
is being deployed to reveal activist pursuits of alternative perspectives and new
knowledges. I want to acknowledge (and in the future further explore) the relation‑
ship between academic and nonacademic third‑space sites and the borderlands rheto‑
rics that emerge from each to represent new understandings. My focus, however, is
on zines as nonacademic examples of third‑space sites, subjectivities, and discourses.
57. Duncombe’s categorization of perzines as personal and honest makes me
somewhat uncomfortable in the same way that notions of an authentic subject do.
58. I am grateful to my colleague and friend Ken McAllister, who helped me
think through my word choice in this sentence. Originally, I had thought that the
word continuum worked here, but it is difficult to name the ends of a continuum.
While spectrum may hold related limitations, the conversation helped me move
from the abstract to the material. What I am attempting to accomplish in naming a
spectrum is a consistency of disrupting binaries and oppositional dualisms. In keeping
with my efforts to move beyond binary structures, I have (re)conceptualized zines on
a spectrum of practices, locations, and transformational potentials with an explicit
focus on the end of the spectrum I identify as action‑oriented and coalitional. The
space between one identified kind of zine and the next is necessarily blurry.
59. It is important to note others who have written extensively of zines

across a number of different contexts. In a Cultural Studies context, Stephen Dun‑
combe has analyzed zines particularly focused on punk culture. Michelle Comstock
has written from a Composition and Communication Studies perspective to inves‑
tigate what zines can teach us about writing practices. And Allison Piepmeir has
written from a Girls’ Studies perspective regarding the activist potential in what
she considers to be third‑wave feminism expressed in girl zines. My work extends
these projects to focus on the rhetorical force and function as well as import and
implication of feminist and queer‑of‑color zines and those zines conscious of the
politics of identity in motion that pursue alliances and serve a radical coalitional
democratics.
60. Second‑order consumption disrupts the capitalist imperative and circuit
of production and consumption that rely on the individual to value the new, the
first, the singular, and the latest, including planned obsolescence. It is not a singular
practice stemming from one, cohesive ideal, but rather it is a number of prac‑
tices, including subversive product use that effect product life cycles and functions.
Second‑order consumption often ensures that the benefits of consumption accrue
beyond the individual to community contexts, effecting grassroots literacies. Thrift
store shopping, sharing hand‑me‑downs, DIY, urban gardening, sharing, barter, and
trade are all examples of second‑order consumption.
61. Throughout my work I reference the notions of the imaginary, the
imaginative, and the imagination, which I mean as distinct from my use of the
decolonial imaginary. My use of the decolonial imaginary is informed by the work
of Emma Pérez, particularly in her engagement of it as a “political project for
reconceptualizing histories” (1999, 4). The zines I consider here often do work
to resist the historic misrepresentations—or misrecognitions—of third‑space sub‑
jects, sites, and discourses and many zinesters actively engage the right to imagine
themselves as relevant historical subjects and social actors engaged in meaningful
work. When I use these terms without the decolonial prefix, I move toward a less
scholarly engagement of what I have come to understand as third‑space imagi‑
naries. Third‑space imaginaries are deployed to critically and creatively explore—
imagine—a more just world. I feel strongly that imagination understood in this
way, too, is vital to the kind of social change being considered and pursued in
third‑space zines.
62. I have tried in this book to replicate the original, and often incon‑
sistent, citation style of volume and/or issue number of each zine. In this way I
have attempted to capture and reproduce the creative and disruptive discursive
practices and representational strategies that occur even there. Also, and perhaps
more importantly, in the interest of the dialogue that I am hoping to evoke across
academic and nonacademic borders, as well as because I value the sometimes raw
and spontaneous expressions in zines, I have neither imposed corrections nor identi‑
fied unconventional language practices as textual errors. To the best of my ability,
I have reproduced titles and quotes as they appear in the zines I have analyzed.
Chapter 2. The Role of Imagination in

Challenging Everyday Dominations
1. The term democratic, even when preceded by the term “radical,” can be
problematic, especially in its history vis‑à‑vis citizenship and citizen rights. I have
decided to use the term as Chantal Mouffe and Chela Sandoval do in Methodology
of the Oppressed—to imply an emancipatory potential through engaged coalitions
formed in solidarity against dominations, subordinations, and oppressions and in
pursuit of equity and justice (87).
2. See Bonilla Silva’s work, particularly Racists without Racism: Color‑blind
Racism and the Persistence of Racial Inequality in the United States.
3. See the work of Patricia Hill Collins, The Combahee River Collective
Statement, and bell hooks. See also María Lugones on pluralist feminism (2003
65–75).
4. For academic engagements with the concept of racialization, space, and
materiality, see Goldberg (2006); Essed and Goldberg (2002); Essed (2005), (1991);
Low and Smith (2006).
5. My own understanding of intersectionality is drawn from Kimberlé Wil‑
liams Crenshaw, whose work on gender, race, women, and violence demonstrates
how intersecting elements of location and identity illuminate the multiple ways in
which oppressions operate across contexts. Her ideas on terms of unity are at play
throughout my work. Crenshaw’s illuminating discussion of structural intersection‑
ality reveals overlapping structures of experienced and embodied subordination.
For me these overlaps and intersections are spaces within which and from which a
conscious politics of articulation can emerge as intentional, relational, and connec‑
tive. I am aware of and appreciate the critiques of intersectionality and find Jasbir
Puar’s “I would rather be a cyborg than a goddess: Intersectionality, Assemblage,
and Affective Politics” especially insightful and compelling. I understand Puar’s
discussion as related to Cornel West’s essay “A Genealogy of Modern Racism” in
that each is interested in the ways that difference is constituted always as “differ‑
ence from” established norms and whiteness. Puar’s critique, however, moves beyond
the ways in which “difference from” reinscribes hierarchy. Her critique helps us to
see how intersectional categories do not always translate transnationally and how
these categories are not as sutured as such an approach assumes and implies. I
am persuaded by her discussion of assemblages, how they are produced, and what
they do. I am choosing to discuss the zines of my inquiry through the language
of assemblages and also intersectionality as it is the language that predominates in
these zines. I do believe, however, that many of the zinesters discussed here are
destabilizing categories and actively questioning theories and practices that reproduce
dominance across contexts.
6. Of‑color zines have long been addressing the need and advocating for
the right to learn about their own and other nondominant cultural heritages and
histories. The ban on ethnic studies, and other regressive legislation in the State
of Arizona, as well as the sentiments and practices such legislation engenders and
unleashes, make such efforts in zines particularly timely, relevant, and even urgent.
Recently passed and pending legislation in Arizona, such as SB1070 (anti‑immigrant
legislation), SB1309 (legislation to establish a parent’s bill of rights and restrict
sexual education and resources), and HB2281 (legislation to ban ethnic studies) are
a demonstration of the continued need to advocate for the right to access knowledge
and to understand history as a contested process. As I write, Arizona Governor Jan
Brewer has signed HB2281, which bans “ethnic studies” from primary and second‑
ary school curricula, into law. She has stated that such classes promote “ethnic
chauvinism.” Unidos, united Non-Discriminatory Individuals Demanding Our
Studies!, a youth group in Tucson is actively working to address the ban on ethnic
studies as well as the hateful anti‑immigrant legislation (SB1070) that has recently
passed in the Arizona legislature. Additionally, the Tucson Youth Poetry Slam, TYPS,
is using slam poetry as a way of speaking up and out about these injustices. Finally,
youth groups at the Tucson YWCA’s Nuestra Voz/Our Voice Racial Justice program,
queer and allied youth from Eon Youth Program at Wingspan (Southern Arizona’s
LGBT Community Center), and grrls and transgender youth from Kore Press’ Grrls
Literary Activism are working to speak out against this regressive suite of legislation
and its implications for keeping youth from knowledges and resources.
7. On the evening before my departure from the Duke archives, I found
this zine. It brought together much of what I had been thinking about throughout
my time in the archives and in my efforts to make a connection across academic
and nonacademic spaces and conversations.
8. At the time of this writing, Nguyen is an assistant professor of feminist
cultural studies and queer theory, and she continues engaging in critical writing
and activism as tools of social transformation and education.
9. The experience of racism in the everyday for women of color, and the
ways in which dominant society does not acknowledge the everydayness of racism,
is the subject of Philomena Essed’s work titled Understanding Everyday Racism: An
Interdisciplinary Theory, which contains descriptions of dominant dismissals and
disbeliefs of perpetuated acts of everday racism.
10. These zines are addressing the very same issues being addressed by several
Tucson youth groups including UNIDOS, a youth group dedicated to actively work‑
ing against the Arizona ban on ethnic studies and the anti‑immigration bill passed
in the 49th legislature. See Jeff Biggers’ May 3, 2011, essay “Arizona’s Choice Today:
Tucson Students Lead New Civil Rights Movement,” which appeared in The Nation.
11. Lived experiences and lived knowledges as tools of activism and grass‑
roots literacies are ones that youth in Tucson value and promote especially in their
current efforts to address the injustices of some legislation that recently passed and
some that is pending in Arizona. Using alternative media as a means of document‑
ing lived histories, recording injustices, promoting activism, and teaching about
community rights is advocated in zines and in community- and youth‑produced

media. Youth here in Arizona demonstrate a savvy understanding of the articulated
implications of legislation that serves to ban rights to knowledge and that seeks to
render vulnerable populations more vulnerable through fear tactics and practices.
Another youth‑driven local response to these injustices is in the circulation of
media produced by youth and their allies that captures the injustices such legisla‑
tion promotes. In a personal correspondence with Mary Charlotte Thurtle, the
Executive Director of Pan Left (a media collective that promotes progressive voices
and visions, and that works to put the tools of media production in community
hands), I learned of the Yo Soy Testigo (I Am a Witness) program. According
to Thurtle, “[Pan Left] began getting reports of police collaboration with border
patrol, so we set up a hotline that people can call to report it. The hotline is
called Yo Soy Testigo (I Am A Witness) and the number is (520.261.5890). The
person who gets the call sends out text messages to a text tree, and people respond
immediately with cameras to document what is going on. The incidence is also
put in an international database on police abuse. The project is a collaboration of
Pan Left, Coalición de Derechos Humanos and Migra Patrol/Copwatch (which is
a Pan Left project as well). Although some of the youth organizing against 2281
were also a part of Migra Patrol/Copwatch they are mostly now concentrating on
the ethnic studies issue but do occasionally participate when they can. The youth
did invigorate Migra Patrol. . . . In all I estimate that there are 35 people on the
text tree. Although we don’t know everyone’s ages (nor do we ask) I suspect maybe
1/3 to 1/2 are under 25 and I know of at least 3 people under 20. All of the
people on the tree receive a brief training from Pan Left on their media rights,
what to say to the police, and some camera tips. We post the videos as quick
as we can on YouTube, on the Pan Left channel. The first such video we posted
received over 60,000 views worldwide in one month, and generated a bunch of
media (newpapers, blogs, chat rooms, TV news) including a spot on Russia Today
and CNN Español. Here is the link: http://www.youtube.com/user/panleft#p/u/0/
Q7pomFrlMyM” (personal e‑correspondence December 28, 2010).
12. Though used also as a diminutive, “editrix” appeared in a number of
zines, suggesting to me that the title is being reclaimed. However, it is worth not‑
ing that the issue was not explicitly engaged. I reproduced the word here as my
own act of reclamation and resignification as the title of an assertive and proactive
zine author and editor.
13. It is important to acknowledge critiques of the limits of this borderlands
rhetorical expression of coalition as some have argued that “brown” thusly deployed
dilutes blackness and whiteness so as to obscure both ends of the spectrum of racial‑
ized realities to focus instead on the middle. For me, the coalitional potential in
“brown” is in its subversion of a dichotomy that reifies race as binaristic and some‑
how reflective of purities that, for me, are always myths that perpetuate racialized
hierarchies with their concomitant subordinations. Also, “brown” in Bamboo Girl

is an explicit effort toward inclusivity, especially to those written out of the black/
white binary. It can, however, include antiracist whites and blacks. While in final
edits for this book, I was fortunate to be in José Muñoz’s April 4, 2012, audience
at the University of Arizona for his presentation titled “The Brown Commons: The
Sense of Wildness.” In this lecture, Muñoz introduced and explored his concept
of the “brown commons.” I understand him to be treating “brownness” as always
potentially generative. As such, it is legible to me in and through the possibilities
of its (borderlands) rhetorical force and function as well as through its applicability
to third‑space contexts. While his concept of brownness can and does accommodate
shared experiences of harm, in it he is also identifying such experiences, and the
indignations they can and should engender, as linked to hope. I see in this con‑
ceptualization, then, a direct relationship to work being undertaken and expressed
in many of the zines I am considering here. I look forward to learning more about
the possibilities Muñoz’s “brown commons” hold for shared understandings, experi‑
ences, practices, and encounters in the world. Although his concept is new to me,
I feel certain there are elements of the coalitional and relational work at play in
zines that could inform and certainly be informed by Muñoz and his work on and
in the brown commons.
14. See my discussion above regarding the concepts of intersectionality and
assemblages. It seems to me that the concept of assemblages as discussed by Puar
(2007), though not named here as such, is being explored.
15. My understanding throughout this work is of subjects as multiply situ‑
ated and occupying what Chantal Mouffe refers to as an “ensemble of subject
positions” (1997 535). It is the multiply-situated subject, for me, whose lived experi‑
ences can be defined as a borderlands rhetorical context and from which third‑space
consciousness can inform articulatory practices.
16. I borrow the term scribe from Trinh T. Minh‑ha who, in Woman Native
Other: Writing Postcoloniality and Feminism (1989), discusses writing as having a social
function (10). She names herself and other third world women writers as holding
the responsibility and privilege of being “neighborhood scribes” (10). While she is
explicitly addressing contexts of differing levels of literacy, I think there is an impor‑
tant connection between her discussion in her work and the role zinesters play in
bridging discourses and communities, promoting critical literacies and community
education, and in writing as social action. See also Delgado Bernal’s work known as
LatCrit Theory. She addresses the need to identify the production of knowledge that
is a part of any community so as to see learners as creators and holders of their own
knowledges. My efforts here are also informed by critical and feminist pedagogical
works that call us to asset‑driven approaches to community literacies and knowledges.
See the work of Angela Valenzuela (1999) who explicates how schools function to
subtract community knowledges. See too the work of Gonzales, Moll, and Amanti
(1992) who identify and reclaim the power and potential of the funds of knowledge
that circulate in nondominant community contexts.
17. In keeping with my suggestion that academic and nonacademic
third‑space practices are producing (and produced by) borderlands rhetorics, I am
encouraged by the academic work being accomplished on behalf of community
literacies. Specifically, I want to acknowledge the Community Literacy Journal. The
Council of Editors of Learned Journals (CELJ) awarded the CLJ the Best New
Journal Award at MLA Conference in December in San Francisco. The journal is
published collaboratively between Michigan Technological University’s Department
of Humanities and the University of Arizona’s Department of English and program
in Rhetoric, Composition, and the Teaching of English. In her remarks at the awards
ceremony, Joycelyn Moody, Vice President, Council of Editors of Learned Journals
and Editor of African American Review noted that judges “expressed admiration for
the far‑reaching scope and visually pleasing design of Community Literacy Journal as
well as its democratic approach to literacy studies. About its focus on the important
but under‑rated aspect of literacy studies, the judges found that Community Literacy
Journal makes an original contribution using a compelling presentation. Finally, the
judges remarked CLJ’s fearless reach beyond ‘the usual boundaries of academia to
topics of interest out in the wider world.’ ” See http://www.communityliteracy.org/
index.php/clj.
18. I am inspired by Keith Gilyard’s work to pursue King’s vision of a “radi‑
cal, transcultural democracy” that can be potentially achieved through “maximizing
various epistemologies, searching for transcultural understandings, opening up spaces
for imaginative wanderings, [and] for scholarly recreation” (CCC 52:2, December
2001).
19. For a related academic discussion, see Aimee Carrillo Rowe and Adela
C. Licona, “Moving Locations: The Politics of Identities in Motion.” NWSA 17.2
(2005):11–14.
20. In The Practice of Everyday Life, de Certeau investigates quotidian lan‑
guage and the tactical and strategic practices and deployments of discourse, especially
for purposes of resistance and disruption. He states that “the approach to culture
begins when the ordinary man becomes the narrator, when it is he who defines the
(common) place of discourse and the (anonymous) space of its development” (5).
In his discussion about discourse at work in the world he believes that normative
discourse becomes operationalized when it becomes a story “recounted by bodies”
(194). For academic discussions and deployments of counter‑story see the works of
Richard Delgado, Daniel Solorzáno, and Tara Yosso.
21. See Devault, Penelope (1990), and Kramare (1989).
22. erika’s identification of the articulated mechanisms of control are reminis‑
cent of Foucauldian analyses that unearth the disciplining and normalizing effects
of dominant structures, discursive practices, and social relationships.
23. It is worth noting that the code switchings I am speaking of are nega‑
tively viewed in dominant contexts and are necessarily distinct from the kind of
specialized discourses that get invoked in professional situations, where people are
already speaking in accepted registers, then hop up or down a register to gain more
authority or credibility. Examples: theory talk, budget talk, teacher talk, pop culture
talk, subcultural patois, etc.
24. Edén Torres notes in her book, Chicana Without Apology: The New Chi-
cana Cultural Studies, that “attacks on bilingualism, English‑only laws, and the
elitism of European Spanish mean that our code‑switching abilities are seen as
colloquial and thus insignificant in public discourse” (22).
25. For an excellent critique of post–civil rights era discourse and policies of
color‑blindness, see Bonilla Silva’s Racism without Racists: Color‑Blind Racism and
the Persistence of Racial Inequality in the United States (2006).
26. Foucault notes that “connections, cross‑references, complementarities and
demarcations” are established between “family, medicine, psychiatry, psychoanalysis,
the school, and justice,” with each to varying degrees retaining its own modalities
(1972 159).
27. These reflections are reminiscent for me of my earlier discussion about
being introduced to the concept of third space through Chicana feminists and
through an understanding of my own situatedness as “in between.”
28. In picaflor, another zine by Celia Perez, she uses the image of the hum‑
mingbird as a connection to cross‑cultural and class‑conscious understanding. “The
Aztecs believed that the sprits of the dead returned as hummingbirds”(backflap no. 1
copyright). This zine focuses more on class and class consciousness and it describes
her own class context and shifting positionality juxtaposed with the pursuit of her
second master’s degree in library science.
29. See Eyerman and Jamison (1991) on knowledge production, social
change, and social movements.
30. Such approaches to space as contested and comprised of multiply-situated
subjects with often competing or contradictory narratives are also referenced in
the work of feminist geographer Doreen Massey whose work (together with David
Harvey’s) also informs my collaborations with Professor Marta M. Maldonado and
our analyses of “new destinations” as dynamic, contested, and racialized spaces
(2007 128).
31. Because my own practices of reading and interpretation are necessarily
third‑space, the number of scholars whose work I understand to be contextualized
by third space and by borderlands rhetorics is expansive and I cannot begin to list
all of them. I do, however, want to mention two other works that I experience
as third‑space productions. Both of these works value the space and experience
of queer/ed Chicanidad. Sandra K. Soto’s recent work, Reading Chican@ Like a
Queer: The De‑Mastery of Desire, articulates race and sexuality to better understand
subjectivity as always multiply situated, flexible, and fluid as well as to recuperate

the potential of radical queer critique. Soto uses a third‑space tactic in the title of
her work to actively subvert assumed binaries. Catrióna Rueda Esquibel’s online
database of Chicana lesbian fiction is also a third‑space production (http://online.
sfsu.edu/~ktrion/Jotas/). It is a bibliography of twentieth‑century Queer Chicana
fictions and “a few Latinas” (n.p.). I mention this work as a third‑space produc‑
tion as it is accessible beyond the academy and calls for suggested contributions
to continue to build a database that highlights Chicana work as resistance to the
exclusions such work has historically experienced in and beyond the academy. Her
work is licensed under the Creative Commons. Interestingly, as a way of validating
and valuing varied literatures and literary styles, in her database she offers the fol‑
lowing disclaimer: “I use the term ‘fictions’ pretty loosely here to include cuentos,
teatro, novels, and other stories people tell” (n.p.). She also acknowledges that
“[n]ot all of these writers are lesbians. However, in my humble opinion, they do
deal with romantic and/or erotically charged relationships between women, and/
or lesbian or bisexual characters” (n.p.). Like Soto, she queers the reading and the
writing to offer a nondominant reading and interpretation strategy and to make it
accessible, relatable, and meaningful beyond singular contexts.
32. http://www.gws.illinois.edu/people/mimin/.
Chapter 3. Embodied Intersections
1. In “Reading Cyborgs, Writing Feminism: Reading the Body in Contem‑

porary Culture,” Anne Balsamo (re)considers the disappearance of the female body
in postmodernity (Technologies of the Gendered Body 1996). She contends that in
a postmodern context, technology renders the female body (nothing more than) a
discursive entity. Balsamo turns from the discursive determinism and limitations of
Foucault, and thereby speaks to the potentially agentive implications of identifying,
speaking, reading, and writing about and through the embodiment of different(ly)
lived realities. In order to (re)claim and (re)introduce the female body, Balsamo
looks to the material, the historic, the ideological, and the affective. This reclaim‑
ing of the body as intelligent or knowing and feeling, as well as complicated and
fragmented, reveals the multiple contradictions that can inform understandings of
embodied subject formation. She specifically calls for radical contextualizations in
our reading and writing practices to reflect our multiple locations and intersubjec‑
tivities in historic, cultural, gendered, and (em)bodied contexts. In this way, Balsamo
demonstrates how we can resist dominant (mis)representations that have served to
silence and obscure our (non)dominant, third‑space, lived experiences, relations, and
realities. Balsamo complicates subjectivity, especially as it is expressed through the
body, as (con)textual representation and social agent. According to Balsamo, the
“cyborg (re)connects a discursive body with a historically material body by taking
account of the ways in which the body is constructed within different social and
cultural formations” (33; italics not in original).

2. My analysis of zines was influenced by academic examinations of embodi‑
ment (also in a psychosocial context) and embodied knowledge as reflected in the
works of Lorraine Code, Alison M. Jaggar, Edén Torres, and Lois McNay as well
as by the works of Rosemarie Garland‑Thomson.
3. It is important to note that the mind/body or reason/emotion split did
not reveal itself as absolute in early rhetorical considerations. Plato, and Aristotle
too, seemed to understand emotion as a function of our humanity that did not
require total suppression but instead control. As Theresa Enos writes in her essay “A
Call for Comity,” “Aristotle tells us that anyone can get angry, but what we should
strive for, when necessary, is disciplined anger; to be angry with the right person,
and to the right degree, and for the right purpose, and in the right way—that is
disciplined anger” (215). In the same way that the emotions are considered by Jag‑
gar to be outlaw emotions, I suspect the anger being expressed in third‑space zines
could be considered outlaw and undisciplined as it is anger that is not necessarily
directed at the “right person,” but rather as a response greater than that and neces‑
sarily positioned outside of the singular and individual, as well as the acceptable,
and reasonable.
4. Raia Prokhovnic’s notion of the corporeal is helpful in my efforts to speak
of the body as a lived experience as well as a relational site and practice. She states
that “[t]he objection to gender divisions is that they express a difference which is not
innocent; it is not an innocuous contrast but a dichotomized difference characterized
by opposition” and, I would add, necessary subordination (2002 10). Prokhovnic
goes on to discuss the subordinating effects naturalized by dichotomies to reproduce
a stable social order where difference and its potential is rendered invisible, not‑
ing that “[o]nce gender divisions are de‑dichotomized there remains no significant
foundation for preferring the notion of ‘gender’ to the notion of ‘corporeality’ ”
(11). For Prokhovnic, corporeality represents porousness and permeability so that
our transmigrations not only contextualize us but morph us as well. This concept
is similar to Patton and Sánchez‑Eppler’s ideas regarding the recursive relationship
and potential transformations between bodies and places. The notion of corporeality
allows us to consider relational subjects as subjects‑in‑process in and throughout our
quotidian travels. Noting an active relationship of recursivity, Prokhovnic argues that
“the social construction of sex refers to the interaction of action and social context
in the construction of sexual meaning” (129). It is precisely this interaction between
corporeality, embodied action, and spatialized social contexts that is reflected on and
performed in zines and that zinesters work to imaginatively re‑present themselves
and their pursuits for coalitional change. For an academic example that considers
negotiations of identity, performativity, and mestizaje in literary and theoretical
contexts see Ellen Gil‑Gomez’s work, Performing La Mestiza.
5. The lived experiences of both/and dilute notions of purity and even
authenticity so that neither are meaningful signifiers to me. Purity and authentic‑
ity fit neatly into a framework of either/or but not so neatly into a framework
of both/and. I am aware, painfully at times, of the consequences and risks of

my names, how I self identify, and how I make meaning. Saldívar‑Hull notes
that when the new mestiza “names all her names, once again she enacts the cul‑
mination of unearthing her multiple [and I would add, at times, contradictory]
subjectivities”(La Frontera 7). See Sonia Saldívar‑Hull, “Introduction to the Sec‑
ond Edition,” in Gloria Anzaldúa, Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza (San
Francisco: Aunt Lute Books, 1987).
6. This zinester provides an example of the ways in which understood
intersectional categories do not always translate across contexts or otherwise meet
the needs of those who are trying to reimagine or realign themselves outside of
normativized categories of representation.
7. The consciousness expressed in this entry is deeply reminiscent for me
of Anzaldúa’s mestiza consciousness as I understand it.
8. See Foucault (1977).
9. My concept of reverso has affinity with Foucault’s discussion of the prison
system panopticon. For him, the panopticon reverses the principles and functions of
the dungeon by shedding light on the previously obfuscated space, seeing “visibility
as a trap” (1995 200). My concept of reverso can also be linked to Mary Louise
Pratt’s postcolonial perspective regarding the gaze of imperial eyes.
10. In her discussion of outlaw emotions and feminist theory, Jaggar privileg‑
es the standpoints of people of color based on our lived knowledges and perspectives
on reality. The potential she identifies in this privileging is in our ability to more
thoroughly imagine, consider, and engage what inclusivity writ large might mean.
Lorraine Code, by contrast, acknowledges the potential for the re‑marginalization
of those of us who are dissimilarly situated in nondominant spaces from which we
are (distinctly) informed by empathetic knowledge. For me, it is third‑space con‑
sciousness that can inform articulatory practices that resist the re‑marginalization of
difference and different strategies of political action and coalition.
11. The e‑motions that are the impetus of such shatterings are those named
as outlaw emotions by Alison M. Jaggar in her essay titled “Love and Knowledge.”
In this essay, Jaggar writes that “when certain emotions are shared or validated by
others . . . the basis exists for forming a subculture defined by perceptions, norms,
and values that systematically oppose the prevailing perceptions, norms, and values”
(396). While I find the reversal Jaggar posits as too neat and not reflective of the
refraction that I think can get accomplished in third‑space zines, it is also helpful
to understand how e‑motions are implicated in the formation of coalitions.
12. For a study on the risks, complexities, and necessity of telling one’s story
regarding sexual abuse and incest, see Brenda O. Daly’s Authoring a Life: A Woman’s
Survival In and Through Literary Studies (1998). This work both discusses and dem‑
onstrates the healing potential in writing as therapeutic and coalitional practice.
13. In working on the documentary film aguamiel: secrets of the agave I recall
interviewing a Maryknoll sister who helped co‑establish a women’s cooperative in
New Mexico. She has since turned her attentions to detained women crossing the
border or apprehended on the U.S. side of the border. She learned through speaking
to the detained women that in preparation for the border crossing and the trans‑
national trek women made to find employment in the United States, they would
begin taking birth control as they assume they will endure rape as part of their
passage into the United States and Canada. The front cover of this zine becomes
even more urgent in this context. See <http://www.aguamiel‑documentary.com/>.
14. All translations of entries in this zine are my own.
15. I know very little about the medicinal implications of certain animals
in indigenous traditions. Many zines, however, appear to use Native American
symbols as signs representing healing and empowerment. I do not know if the
zinesters writing in Apoyo identify as indigenous or if their intent was to use the
raven in this way. I offer my interpretation as one that is not meant to be defini‑
tive but possible based on the number of zines I have read and those that work to
explicitly, consciously, and respectfully engage distinct knowledge systems. For an
engaged critique of “New Age Native Americanism” see Laura Donaldson’s essay
“On Medicine Women and White Shame‑ans: New Age Native Americanism and
Commodity Fetishism as Pop Culture Feminism” (677).
16. For an academic exploration of the writing cure see Diane Price Herndl’s
“The Writing Cure: Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Anna O., and ‘Hysterical Narrative,’ ”
National Women’s Studies Association Journal 1.1 (1988): 57–79.
17. Mary Ellen Sanesey, 1984: correspondence in Housewife Turned Assassin,
Numero #1 (n.p.).
18. In the chapter “I Know Just How You Feel: Empathy and the Problem
of Epistemic Authority,” Lorraine Code reconsiders the role of empathy in the
construction and interpretation of embodied knowledge claims. Code’s (1995) dis‑
cussion of empathetic knowledge offers insight into the relationship between feelings
of the mind‑body, authority, and the (re)production of knowledge that is revealed
throughout the zines I have explored. She identifies the distinctions between certain
kinds of knowing, focusing on the differences between empathetic and observational
knowledges. In what for me is an act of third‑space theorizing, Code problematizes
the idea that knowledge is simply revealed through observation alone and that it, in
turn, reveals either/or truths to be understood in binary or oppositional constructs.
Code further acknowledges that within a patriarchal context, men have been associ‑
ated with observational knowledge and women with empathetic knowledge. This
artificial, but nonetheless powerful, dichotomy has served to privilege observational
knowledge in a postpositivist context as still scientific and so thereby objective.
Code’s efforts in this essay are undertaken to (re)vision empathy as a valuable
knowledge form and practice. This is what jackie is revisioning in her zine—the
valuing and validating of empathetic knowing as important for purposes of reimagin‑
ing, representing, and engaging orthopraxis, or reflected‑upon and undertaken right
action, in the context of radical democratic contexts.
19. In an academic example of articulating the psycho- and the social, Lois
McNay’s third‑space work establishes a generative paradigm of subjectivity by iden‑
tifying the inherence between the psychic and the social. She argues that if subjects
are to move beyond the notion of themselves as products, to reconsider themselves
as subjects always‑in‑process but also always historical and material, it is crucial to
speak to the implications of both the psychic and the social. In order to do so, the
import of a reciprocal relationship between the two must be considered. Boundaries
between the interior and the exterior, and the psychic and the social. The reciprocal
space revealed is the space of the interstitial, the liminal—a fertile new space. It is
the place from which third‑space subjects can reimagine and reform and re‑present
themselves based on embodied understandings.
20. See Toni Morrison for an extended and extensive exploration of the act
of rememory.
21. For a further discussion on the role of authorized discourse and knowl‑
edge and the expert refer to de Certeau’s The Practice of Everyday Life.
Chapter 4. Queer‑y‑ing Consumption and Production
1. For a compelling discussion on production and consumption as they

are related to performance and performativity see Miranda Joseph’s, 1998, “The
Performance of Production and Consumption.”
2. Chicana feminism, too, must be named here especially in the works
anthologized by Carla Trujillo in Living Chicana Theory, a work that insists on
engaging lesbian and queer voices to develop an intersectional theoretical approach
to the value of lived experience.
3. David Roediger’s essay “The Retreat from Race and Class” critiques works
that retreat from race to focus on class or retreat from class to focus on race. Roediger
is correct in his conclusion that neither issues of race nor class are fully addressed
when either is isolated from the other. I identify his work as intersectional in its
engagement with racialization and class‑conscious analysis.
4. See Sandoval 5.
5. See Bordo; David Harvey’s The Condition of Postmodernity, especially
his discussion regarding Mandel’s and Jameson’s understandings of late capital and
state‑monopolized capitalism, commodification, and appropriation; also see Patton
and Sánchez‑Eppler.
6. Much of Susan Bordo’s work problematizes the promotion of sameness
or normalized heterogeneity and its totalizing and universalizing effects. Promoting
a Foucauldian notion of discipline and power differentials in her discussion of
normalization of the subject, she investigates the tyranny of media‑driven body
images and fashion. She identifies the racist implications of beauty standards that
serve to glorify and promote dominant physical, if also unattainable or unsus‑
tainable, attributes and characteristics, and she impels readers to consider the
distinct positions and relations people have within different and perhaps compet‑
ing spheres of power. Her conclusions imply that a focus on cultural difference
that elides social, political, material, and economic distinctions runs the risk of
masking sociohistorical injustices and inequalities that can be revealed in critical
reflections about the past.
7. I have been informed and inspired by Rosemary Hennessy’s “Queer Vis‑
ibility in Commodity Culture,” in which she deploys the notion of queer‑y‑ing as
a critical inquiry that is destabilizing and insightful.
8. See Lisa Duggan’s insightful discussion in The Twilight of Equality of
the rhetorical recodings that are a function of a homonormativized and therefore
demobilized gay constituency.
9. In his edited collection, “More Unequal: Aspects of Class in the United
States,” Michael D. Yates argues that a lack of class consciousness is what, at least
in part, allows the growing disparity between rich and poor in the United States to
thrive. According to Yates, the class chasm his book engages will only widen unless
class consciousness is raised and used to inform action. Yates rightly contends that
left‑wing alternatives “must be centered in alliances among the dominated classes
and other dominated groups, with a political movement that must be built upon
the process of class struggle” (34).
10. I borrow the neologism “Brrl,” which I see as an expression of borderlands
rhetorics, from the zine Pirate Jenny, A Saucy Little Zine for Your Inner Feminist
Revolutionary.
11. In Unbearable Weight, Bordo writes that “consumer capitalism depends
on the continual production of novelty, of fresh images to stimulate desire, and
it frequently drops into marginalized neighborhoods in order to find them” (25).
Bordo’s identification of late capital’s movement toward increased commodification
through practices of homogenization and appropriation reveals the need for alterna‑
tive and conscientious consumption patterns. Bordo considers notions of self and
identity in the context of late capital and global homogenization. She demonstrates
particular concern that a normalized heterogeneity expressed by the rhetoric of
body transformation and modification “effaces the inequalities of social position
and [history]” (Bordo 182).
12. I am playing with the term queer as an anti‑identification. My ideas in
this regard were first informed by, among others, the provocative work of Judith
Jack Halberstam on queer(ed) identity practices and performances (F2M).
13. To learn about the notion of freeganism I turned to the Web. Inter‑
estingly, a multitude of sites to promote the ideas and practices associated with
freeganism came up. Freeganism represents an altered relationship to a consumer
economy in regard to food consumption and production. It identifies the human
and environmental strains of a capitalist economy, especially in terms of exploita‑
tion. It is a strategy deployed to interrupt a capitalist imperative and a cash‑based
economy by finding ways to consume for free, to acknowledge the overabundance of
food and food production, especially as it exploits people and land, and to promote
peace. Freeganism promotes practices of trade, exchange, and bartering. The “Food
Not Bombs” movement has been associated with freeganism. Finally, freegans can
range, in practice, from vegans to dumpster‑diving, junk‑food eating consumers with
a consciousness about the alienating and exploitative effects of capitalism.
14. Donna Haraway also offers examples of cross‑disciplinary, third‑space,
academic work on subverted binaries. Specifically, Haraway employs the notion
of transgenics to challenge and transcend the restrictions inherent in taxonomic
dualisms, or what Haraway refers to as “the binary system of nomenclature” in
the study of genetics and evolution. The “trans” of “transgenics” represents a bor‑
derlands rhetoric of representation invoked to capture the movement across the
(imaginary) border between the natural and the artificial (Modest Witness 55). The
idea of “transgenics” is of interest to me for purposes of my discussion regarding
queered consumption in that Haraway deploys it to represent a “simultaneous fit
into well‑established taxonomic and evolutionary discourses and also blast widely
understood senses of natural limit” (56). She states that “transgenic organisms are at
once completely ordinary and the stuff of science fiction” (57). Additionally, to navi‑
gate the contested, third‑space terrain of techno‑science, Haraway has theorized that
mythical late‑twentieth‑century character—the hybridized cyborg. Haraway’s cyborg,
a hybrid of machine and organism, challenges notions of purity, thereby resisting
totalizing (coding) practices in a techno‑scientific context. Her cyborg represents
a third‑space practice of recoding that blurs the boundaries between the technical
and the organic. Haraway deploys a borderlands rhetoric to theorize and describe a
hybrid subject that defies dichotomy and calls into questions notions of authenticity.
15. Pirate Jenny Volume 1, Issue 4: back cover.
16. Several academic examples may help clarify and even complement the
expression of gendered, sexed, and/or corporeal ambiguity in zines. In fact, there
is evidence of a kind of ongoing dialogue between academic practice and theory
produced in third‑space contexts—academic and nonacademic. Academic examples
will also help to theorize third‑space subjects as consumers and producers in queered
contexts. Representations of ambiguity subvert and corrode naturalized dichotomies.
Through expressions of intersexuality, corporeality, and transgenics, a space outside
of normalized and dichotomized gender and subjectivity is materialized. Borderlands
rhetorics that reflect third‑space representations of gendered, sexual, and embodied
ambiguity are found, for example, in the works of Anne Fausto‑Sterling. Third
spaces are being recognized and explored from feminist and biological perspectives
throughout her work. Fausto‑Sterling reveals the spaces beyond gender binaries
by reconceptualizing and naming the middle spaces of the biological construction
of sexuality. Third space for Fausto‑Sterling is about variation beyond what she
considers to be the false and limiting dichotomy of the female‑male construct.
Her deployment of the notion of intersexuality materializes a borderlands rhetoric
of representation. Her work challenges medical practitioners’ blind allegiance to
a dichotomized notion of male and female. In her border‑crossing scholarship,
Fausto‑Sterling offers a “new ethic of medical treatment, one that permits ambiguity
to thrive, rooted in a culture that has moved beyond gender hierarchies” (Sexing the
Body 101). Her work promotes the “thriving” of ambiguity, especially in regards to
sexual subjectivity, and in doing so it illustrates, from a medical‑ethical perspective,
the generative potential of third space.
17. See Fausto‑Sterling’s Sexing the Body.
18. The identification and exploration of altered consumers and alternative
consumption practices can be found in both nonacademic and academic sites. The
zine entry on Barbie explored here is one that manifests the complexities Diane
Price Herndl addresses in her discussion of the contradictions, and, to varying
degrees, inescapabilities of our part in the reproduction of mass (consumer) culture.
The reproduction of the Barbie logo and the subversion of Barbie is reminiscent
of Price Herndl’s confrontation with the ubiquity of AT&T—a global corporation
she finds herself unable to control but which she simultaneously understands does
not altogether control her. In her article “Johnny Mnemonic Meets the Bimbo:
Feminist Pedagogy and Postmodern Performance,” Price Herndl discusses the chal‑
lenges, complexities, and contradictions that are born of an ill body in the context
of the everyday. Zines, too, look to performances that result from bodies altered
to conform to—or resist—the demands of a commodified, corporatized, and het‑
erornormativized mass culture.
19. Other examples of zines identifying women as re‑producers and addressing
their health and well‑being include Zuzu and the Baby Catcher: midwife‑meets‑moth-
erhood, No. 3, 03/03/03, and Miranda: motherhood and other adventures, Number
Nine.
20. Karl Marx, Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, Vol. 1 (New York:
Penguin, 1990). For an extended and exciting discussion of the concept of superex‑
ploitation, particularly as this applies to black left feminists of the U.S. communist
party, see Erik S. McDuffie’s 2011 Sojourning for Freedom: Black Women, American
Communism, and the Making of Black Left Feminism.
21. This queered reimagination of the past constitutes a new space in the
present. Historian Yolanda Leyva notes that scholars across a number of disciplinary
borders are exploring the psychic and social importance of historical reconsidera‑
tions and rememberings. Leyva engages the significance of revisioning practices and
potentials particularly for marginalized communities. She writes that learning a “once
silenced history [brings] forth a range of emotion . . . [to include] growing pride, a
new understanding of our individual and community histories, and a sometimes‑over‑
whelming anger” (5). As discussed earlier, anger at the invisibility of third‑space sites
and subjects in history is a common and often motivating e‑motion in zines. The
desire for access to (including the consumption and production of ) contested histories
implies a critical approach to historical re-presentations.
22. See also Licona (2005).
23. See Fredric Jameson (1991); Ernest Mandel (1978).
24. Martin’s efforts to investigate the multiple otherings is reminiscent for

me of Said’s work in Orientalism.
25. Martin offers a Foucauldian understanding of power dispersed across
societal contexts and relationships as she struggles with sociocultural and economic
practices that have commodified and reproduced cultural formations (and misrep‑
resentations) for mass consumption.
26. I borrow the concept of domestication as proposed in scholarship in
higher education and the sociology of education to imply how nondominant others
are “conditioned to subordinate their critical impulses” as well as how they work
to resist such domestication (See Muñoz et al. 169).
27. In their essay regarding explicitly alternative consumption patterns enti‑
tled “On Thrifting,” Tinkcom, Van Fuqua, and Villarejo detail the ways in which the
practice of thrifting has informed their understandings and critiques of late capital.
Tinkcom, Van Fuqua, and Villarejo offer an informed late‑capital critique resulting
from the acts and practices of thrifting. Their reflective analysis begins with the more
complicated approach to understandings of value in thrifting contexts. They argue
for a distinction between first‑order consumer goods and second‑order goods, or
recirculated commodities. Value, they note, is embedded in hierarchical distinctions.
They also note that in addition to a more complicated approach to value and value
coding, thrifting and thrift stores further complicate understandings of circuits of
production and consumption. They go on to describe what they have termed the
crisis of value that is tied to complicated notions of class. Specifically, these authors
note the velocity of fashion that often moves commodities into second‑order status.
Thrift commodities have a history, one with no guarantees.
28. I am grateful to Marta Maldonado and Ken McAllister who helped me to
think about second‑order consumption and its necessary interruption of the impera‑
tive of a product’s life cycle in capitalism. Second‑order consumption is equivalent
to a materialized practice of questioning the life cycle of things and the timing at
which one should dispose of them. In terms of bodies which this chapter takes up in
the section on material brrls in the material world, I think there is a connection to
be made regarding the framing/positioning of (racialized/gendered/sexualized) bodies
themselves as disposable, and marginal (see Maldonado 2006; 2009).
29. In her queer scholarship, Biddy Martin notes that femmes queer feminin‑
ity and, in so doing, call heteronormativity into question. I see and have attempted
to draw a relationship here between this queered version of femininity and its
potential effects on material relations, material practices, and even the materiality
of discourse and identity.
Chapter 5. Epilogue
1. See also Katz (2006).

2. In reading de Certeau’s discussion of (discursive) frontiers, I was struck

by his description of the divisions and orderings of discourse and discursive practices
in the everyday (The Practice of Everyday Life 1984). De Certeau’s spatialized refer‑
ences to the effects of discursive division are further defined as “an ‘in‑between’—a
‘space between” (128).
3. It was also in the process of producing this manuscript that I corre‑
sponded with Lina Suárez who, with Noemi Martinez through Café Revolución
Productions, edited a zine dedicated to Gloria Anzaldúa, “la mera nepantlera.” I
submitted a poem heavily influenced by Anzaldúa’s work to this zine as well as to
TRIVIA: VOICES OF FEMINISM, Resurrection Issue.
4. The importance of Anzaldúa’s work to first‑generation Chicanas and oth‑
ers as well as Chican@ and Latin@ students in general is significant. It is part of
the impetus for “El Mundo Zurdo: The First International Conference on the Work
and Life of Gloria E. Anzaldúa,” which was organized by UTSA’s Women’s Studies
Institute and the Society for the Study of Gloria Anzaldúa.
5. On third space and literacies see the work of Scott Whiddon (2010).
6. I want to acknowledge Andrea Lunsford and Lahoucine Ouzgane’s Cross-
ing Borderlands: Composition and Postcolonial Studies (2004). In this work, Lunsford
and Ouzgane identify the counterhegemonic potential in representations from and
of “difference” identified as the nondominant. Their project puts postcolonialists,
compositionists, and rhetoricians in conversation with one another. My efforts move
from their reference to a middle way as a space of suggested compromise to third
space as borderlands rhetoric.
7. In Alt Dis: Alternative Discourses and the Academy (2002), Schroeder,
Fox, and Bizzell identify the mixed forms of intellectual work being produced from
within the academy. See also Victor Villanueva, Mike Rose, and Keith Gilyard. I
like to think my efforts are in keeping with their understanding of what alternative
discourses are and what democratic functions they might serve from within, and
beyond, the academy.
8. See Herndl and Licona (2005).
9. Independent and community media, especially as they are enacted and
deployed to address grassroots literacies, represent third‑space sites and practices
that provide a rich context ripe for exploration. Another context within which
a third‑space framework might be productive is exposed in those practices that
demonstrate an active relationship between the local and the global. Finally, I see a
third‑space framework as implicated in the exploration of the liberatory potential of
third‑space discourse and borderlands rhetorics deployed across multiple contexts. I
hope to have made room for others with different experiences to feel a relationship
to a third‑space framework and to use this framework to practice and continue to
theorize other third spaces and the borderlands rhetorics that emerge therein.
10. I define third space in an academic context as the space resulting from the
crossing of disciplinary borders. As illustrated, for example, in the work of Anne
Fausto‑Sterling, Susan Bordo, Donna Haraway, Emma Pérez, Trinh T. Minh‑ha, and
Juana María Rodríguez, academic border crossings can be knowledge‑generating acts
of resistance to imposed disciplinary orderings—be they scientific, social, sexual,
historic, or cultural.
11. I have produced zines with students who use them to speak out, honor
their community voices and stories while developing their academic voices as well.
By utilizing zines in the classroom, I demonstrate to students that we do not have
to render parts of ourselves invisible, invalid, and inaccessible while learning the
language of the Other.
12. Raia Prokhovnic contends that embodied subjectivity focuses on the
materiality of the body while corporeality exceeds the body to include the mind
and emotion as well as social context (2002). I like the idea of corporeality moving
us beyond the body. The beyond relates to third space. For me corporeality implies
the excesses of the body that can connect us beyond ourselves to Others. Finally,
movement beyond implies motion that allows me to utilize this notion to theorize
relational subjectivity. For further discussion on relational subjectivity, especially as
it resists compulsory individuality, see Keating (2005).
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Index
Note: Page numbers in italics indicate figures.
academic apartheid, 63, 137–38 Apoyo, 75, 75–77, 163n15

addiction, 81–82, 93 April Fool’s Day, 81
adoption, 69–70, 93 Aristotle, 161n3
Adorno, Theodor, 143n10 articulation, politics of, 27–28, 31,
affirmative action programs, 35–36 58–64, 146n25, 157n15
Afghanistan, 54 Atton, Chris, 50, 56
aguamiel: secrets of the agave (film), Aztec myths, 94, 151n52, 159n28
162n13
Alexander, Mike, 44 “baby K,” 119, 120
Ali Gutoc, Samira, 41 Baker, Josephine, 117
Alien, 47–48 Balsamo, Anne, 160n1
Aliencola, 116 Bamboo Girl, 18–19, 21, 31, 36–42,
Allen, G. G., 43 43; code switching in, 54–55; on
alternative medicine. See herbal families, 69–70; on herbal medicine,
medicine 37, 37–38, 42; on Iraq War, 38, 39,
Amazon, Lizzard, 111–12 89, 90; on race, 43–44, 89, 119,
American Indian Movement (AIM), 121
48. See also Native Americans Barber, Emily, 89–92, 91
anorexia. See eating disorders Barbie dolls, 91, 109–11, 110, 167n18
Anzaldúa, Gloria, 10, 101; on activist Becker, Howard, 116
authors, 19; borderland defined Bhabha, Homi, 17, 147n27
by, 13; “decolonial imaginary” of, Bi-Girl World, 18–19, 116–21, 120,
4–5; on egalitarianism, 2; on “la 129
facultad,” 96; on imagination, 18, bilingualism, 24, 52–53, 55, 80–81,
27; legacy of, 133–37, 169n4; 159n24
on “linguistic terrorism,” 80; binaries, 8–16; mind-body, 24, 88,
on mythopoeia, 95; on radical 95–96, 113, 161n3, 163n18;
democratics, 143n11; on stages of sexuality and, 102–12, 119–21, 120;
knowledge, 150n41; on stories for social, 3, 6, 42, 65–70, 119, 121.
change, 85; zine dedicated to, 169n3 See also mixed race
185
186 / Index
Bitch Manifesto, 111–12 class, 59–60, 86, 93–94; consciousness

Bizzell, Patricia, 133–34 of, 2, 21–22, 34–36, 55, 165n9;
Blair, J. Anthony, 51, 145n22 sexuality and, 44, 100
bloody murder, 94 coalitions, 28–31, 86–94; consciousness
Blowin’ Chunxx, 42–43 of, 8–10, 15–19, 22, 45, 96, 142n7;
body image, 3, 73–74, 83, 86–88, 87, definition of, 3; human rights, 54,
91–92, 95, 107 156n11; intertextual dialogue and,
Borderlands: It’s a Family Affair, 61 142n7; media, 156n11
Borderlands: Tales from Disputed Code, Lorraine, 96–97, 151n53,
Territories between Races and 162n10, 163n18
Cultures, 31, 66, 68–69, 69, 79, code b(l)ending, 24, 45, 49–50
79–81 code switching, 42, 50–54, 158n23
borderlands rhetorics, 23, 63–64, 86; color blindness, 28, 55, 154n2. See
decolonized imagination and, 122; also racism
definitions of, 4, 13, 27–28; social commodification, 30, 99; appropriation
controls and, 47 and, 42, 123–24; of difference,
Bordo, Susan, 72, 73; on 146n23
consciousness-raising, 101; on community literacy. See grassroots
consumerism, 165n11; on cross- literacies
disciplinary studies, 63; on mind- Community Literacy Journal, 158n17
body duality, 88, 95; on normalized Comstock, Michelle, 3, 153n59
heterogeneity, 100, 146n23, 164n6, consciousness, 101; class, 2, 21–22,
165n11 34–36, 55, 165n9; coalitional, 8–10,
Bowers, Detine, 6 15–19, 22, 31, 45, 94, 96, 142n7;
“brown commons” (Muñoz), 157n13 critical, 3; differential, 7–8, 12, 15,
“brrl,” 103–4, 105, 107. See also 17, 19, 149n39; mestiza, 12, 15,
gender 119, 149n39, 162n7; third-space,
Brummett, Shane, 6 14. See also imaginary
bulimia. See eating disorders consumerism, 25, 100, 106–14,
Burroughs, William S., 106 165n11; critical, 121–22, 129–30.
Burt, Mary, 93–94 See also “thrifting”
Butler, Judith, 104, 144n16 “contact zone,” 145n19
copyright, 111, 127, 128
Calico, 51–52, 52, 97, 114–15 Coyolxauhqui, 94
Cantu, Norma E., 134 Crabb, Cindy, 75
Carrillo Rowe, Aimee, 144n17, Crenshaw, Kimberle, 154n5
150n46 criticism, 3
Certeau, Michel de. See de Certeau, cross-disciplinary studies, 63–64
Michel Cruz, Sor Juana Inés de la, 117, 118
Chicana movement, 5, 11, 65, 115– cyborgs, 135, 154n5, 160n1, 166n14
16; decolonial imaginary and, 18
Chomsky, Noam, 56 Daly, Brenda O., 162n12
CITYAXE coalition, 44 de Certeau, Michel, 15, 149n35,
Cixous, Hélène, 149n35 158n20, 169n2
Index 187
de Lauretis, Teresa, 149n35 Fausto-Sterling, Anne, 95, 144n18,

Delgado Bernal, Dolores, 157n16 166n16
democratics, 64, 154n1; radical, 3, 22, feminism, 2, 10, 86–87, 92, 96; Islam
28, 143n11, 146n26 and, 41; poststructural, 104; racism
Design Active Collective, 39 and, 19, 33–34; third-space, 14;
diasporas, 15, 17 third-wave, 148n30; transnational,
Dick and Jane primers, 7. See also 63; “womanifesto” and, 30
literacy Fields, Alison Byrne, 83–84
dictionaries, 16, 49, 54, 88 Filippinas, 41–42, 55
Disco Fred’s Got a Vasectomy, 83–85 Firestone, Shulamith, 111
Dix, Dorothea, 78 Foucault, Michel, 72, 159n26; on
Donadey, Anne, 4–5 power, 50, 71, 158n22, 164n6,
Donaldson, Laura, 163n15 168n25; on surveillance, 71, 162n9
Don’t Turn your Back on Her— “freeganism,” 103, 165n13. See also
She’s…HURRICANE GIRL, 82–83 “thrifting”
Dorothea, 78–79 Function zine, 87, 142n7
Duggan, Lisa, 165n8
Duncombe, Stephen, 21–22, 63–64, gardening, urban, 153n60
143n9, 151n51 gaze: imperial, 116, 162n9;
Dworkin, Andrea, 104 normalizing, 24, 70–72
gender, 2, 24, 34–36, 47–48, 86;
East Timor, 50 binaries of, 102–12, 119–21, 120;
eating disorders, 74, 88, 109, 110; blending of, 102–9, 105, 121,
sizeism and, 71, 73, 82–83, 91, 132 129; knowledge and, 71, 99–100;
Eng, Phoebe, 89 sexuality and, 47, 59–60, 100
English-only laws, 80–81, 159n24. See Genette, Gérard, 145n21
also bilingualism Gift Idea, 57, 88–89
Enos, Theresa, 161n3 Gil-Gomez, Ellen, 161n4
enthymemes, 51, 145n22 Gilbert, Ronnie, 58–59
entremundista, 138–40 Gilyard, Keith, 158n18
Eon Youth Program, 155n6 globalization, 22, 25, 109–11,
Epicenter Women’s Outreach Koalition 115–16; coalitions against, 32, 34;
(EWOK), 32 postmodern, 99–100; sweatshops
Esperanza, 30, 112 and, 28–30, 29, 122–23; tourism
Esquibel, Catrióna Rueda, 151n52, and, 32
159n31 Gonzalez, Norma, 157n16
Essed, Philomena, 143n15, 155n9 Goodman, P. J., 105
ethnicity, 34, 55, 70, 145n19, 146n24, grassroots literacies, 2, 19–25, 32,
155n6. See also race 45–50, 126, 155n11
Evolution of a Race Riot, 31 Gunn Allen, Paula, 142n8, 143n12
Guy-Sheftall, Beverly, 147n30
fantastic fanzine: s is for sorry, 48–49,
77–78, 103 Haberkorn, Tyrell, 29
fanzines, 1–2 Halberstam, Judith Jack, 165n12
188 / Index
Hall, Stuart, 146n25 70, 122, 149n36, 153n61; third-

Haraway, Donna, 45, 62, 95, 146n25, space, 16–19. See also consciousness
151n53, 166n14 immigrants, 49; Arizonan laws against,
Harris, Anita, 147n29 150n42, 155n6, 155n11; human
Harvey, David, 11, 159n30 rights of, 36, 54, 156n11; marriage
Hedge, Radha, 137 and, 56
Helmers, Marguerit, 145n22 Indian Attack, 142n7
Hennessy, Rosemary, 100, 122, 165n8 Inkworks Press, 90
herbal medicine, 37, 37–38, 42, intellectual property rights, 111, 127,
113–14 128
Herbally Aroused Gynecological Squad intersectionality theory, 22–23, 30, 49,
(HAGS), 114 154n5
Heresies, 57–59 Iraq War, 38, 39, 89, 90
Herliczek, Misi, 106, 124–25 Islam, 38, 41
Herndl, Carl, 134, 137
Herzberg, Bruce, 133–34 Jaggar, Alison M., 65, 161n3,
heterogeneity, 40, 118–21, 120; 162nn10–11
normalized, 28, 99–100, 125–26, Jewish people, 69–70, 93, 117
134, 146n23, 164n6, 165n11 Joseph, Miranda, 164n1
heterosexuality. See sexualities
hijab (wearing the veil), 41 Kimme-Hea, Amy, 146n25
Hill, Charles, 145n22 King, Nia, 66, 68–69, 69, 79, 80
Hill, Christy, 127–28 Kingsolver, Barbara, 58
hip-hop music, 123–24 knowledge(s): corporatized, 113–15;
Holliday, Judy, 117 embodied, 65, 94–96; empathetic,
homelessness, 32, 47 96–97, 163n18; experiential, 20,
homosexuality. See sexualities 37–38, 45–50, 99, 147n26; expert,
hooks, bell, 119 72, 83, 109; gendered, 71, 99–100;
Hou, Lynn, 36 situated, 62; stages of, 150n41
Housewife Turned Assassin, 45–46, Koedt, Anne, 111
86–88, 87, 108–9; on citizenship, Kristeva, Julia, 149n35
115–16; intertextual dialogue in,
142n7 Lacan, Jacques, 144n17
how I learned to do IT bloody Laclau, Ernesto, 146n25
murder, 94 Lamm, Nomy, 83
HOW TO STAGE A COUP, 31, LatCrit Theory, 136, 157n16
33–36, 35, 44–45, 49; intertextual Lauretis, Teresa de, 149n35
dialogue in, 142n7; on tourism, 115 Leach, Emily, 79, 79–80, 79
human rights, 36, 54, 156n11 lesbianism. See sexualities
Hurtado, Aída, 143n13 Leyva, Yolanda, 63, 167n21
Library Bill of Rights, 56
I Dreamed I Was Assertive, 28, 55–56 Limón, Graciela, 151n52
i’m so fucking beautiful, 83 literacy, 7, 45; cultural, 97; volunteers
imaginary: Anzaldúa on, 18, 27; for, 51–52, 52. See also grassroots
decolonized, 4–5, 12–18, 24, 44, literacies
Index 189
Love, Courtney, 74 Mouffe, Chantal, 62, 146n25, 154n1,

Lovey v Virginia (1967), 85 157n14
Lugones, Maria, 9, 21, 46 Muñoz, José, 157n13, 168n26
Lunsford, Andrea, 169n6
Luu, Helen, 33–36, 35 Nahrwold, Cynthia, 134
National Endowment for the Arts, 57
Macbeth (Shakespeare), 46 Native Americans, 22, 48; healing
Maldonado, Marta M., 147n28, practices of, 113, 163n15; zines of,
149n34, 159n30, 168n28 42–43
¡Mamasita!, 52, 52–53, 57, 58, 72–74, naturopathy, 113
106–7; on asthma, 113; on cultural neocolonization, 145n23
diversity, 125–26; on tourism, 115 neoliberalism. See globalization
Mansbach, Adam, 68, 69 neologisms, 8, 24, 57, 104
Marston, William Molton, 72 New York State Council on the Arts,
Martin, Biddy, 168n29 57
Martin, Lauren Jade, 123–24; Mixed- Nguyen, Mimi, 31–33, 63, 123,
Race Queer Girl Manifesto by, 67 151n51, 155n8
Martinez, Noemi, 169n3 Nike Corporation, 28–30, 29
Massey, Doreen, 11–12, 45, 60, 9/11. See September 11th attacks
131–32, 144n17, 159n30 Nuestra Voz/Our Voice Racial Justice
Matsuda, Mari, 30 program, 155n6
McAllister, Ken, 150n50, 152n58,
168n28 obesity. See eating disorders
McNay, Lois, 95, 151n53, 164n19 Ortiz, Bianca, 53, 72–73, 110
Memoirs of a Queer Hapa, 18–19, 21, “other question” technique, 30
40, 45, 61, 67, 93, 127 Ouzgane, Lahoucine, 169n6
mental health, 3, 71, 78, 106; herbal
medicine for, 37, 37–38 Pan Left (media collective), 156n11
mestizas. See mixed race Parker, Dorothy, 117
midwifery, 113 Parton, Dolly, 119
Migra Patrol/Copwatch, 156n11 Patton, Cindy, 12, 15, 17, 67–68,
mind-body duality, 24, 88, 95–96, 161n4
113, 161n3, 163n18 Peltier, Leonard, 48
Minh-ha, Trinh, 19–20, 152n55, Perez, Celia, 28, 55–56, 63, 151n51
157n16 Pérez, Emma, 63; “decolonial
mixed race, 11, 41–42, 55, 66–69, 69, imaginary” of, 4–5, 12, 14–18,
79; consciousness of, 12, 15, 119, 149n35, 153n61; on third-space
149n39, 162n7; laws against, 85; feminism, 14
queer people of, 42, 67, 93. See also Pérez-Torres, Rafael, 12
race perfume allergies, 113
Mixed-Race Queer Girl Manifesto, 67 perzines (personal zines), 22, 152n57
Mohanty, Chandra Talpade, 19, 27 Piepmeir, Allison, 153n59
Moody, Joycelyn, 158n17 Piepzna-Samarashina, Leah Lakshmi,
Moore, Lorrie, 119 37–38
Morrison, Toni, 149n38, 164n20 “pigmentocracy,” 89
190 / Index
Pirate Jenny, 103–5, 105 Rubyfruit Manifesto, 28–30, 29, 115,

Plato, 161n3 122–23
POC (people of color) 142n6 Rutgers University, 54
poetry slams, 155n6 Ryder, Winona, 119
Pratt, Mary Louise, 116, 145n19,
162n9 SAD, 93–94
Price Herndl, Diane, 163n16, 167n13 Said, Edward, 168n24
Prokhovnik, Raia, 161n4, 170n12 Saldívar-Hull, Sonia, 11, 162n5
Puar, Jasbir, 154n5, 157n14 Sánchez-Eppler, Benigno, 12, 15,
Puerto Ricans, 54 161n4; on identity markers, 67–681;
punk culture, 20, 43, 55; feminist, 22; on self-invention, 17
Luu on, 33–34; manifestos of, 2; Sandata, Sabrina Margarita, 21, 31,
Nguyen on, 31–33 43, 121; on racial labeling, 41, 89;
Pure Vamp, 46–47, 126 on September 11th attacks, 38, 39,
89, 90
queer, 25, 97–102, 165n11; labeling Sandoval, Chela, 6–9, 12, 15, 17,
of, 103; race and, 42, 67, 93; 19; on academic apartheid, 63,
“reverso” and, 72. See also sexualities 137–38; on cyberspace, 44; on
Queer Latinidad: Identity Practices, inner/outer technologies, 146n26;
Discursive Spaces, 50 on postmodernism, 96; on radical
democratics, 154n1; on survival
race, 37, 59–60, 99–100, 144n15; skills, 7–8, 57, 146n24
labeling of, 11, 19, 31, 38–41, 68, Sanesy, Mary Ellen, 88
156n13. See also mixed race Sarapik, Virve, 145n20
Race Riot, 33, 68, 115 Schoeder, Christopher, 169n7
racialization, 2, 37, 144n15, 164n3 Scott, Kathy, 82–83
racism, 49–50, 86, 90; affirmative September 11th attacks, 38, 39, 89, 90
action and, 35–36; assimilation sexualities, 3, 24, 34, 82, 97–100;
and, 66; coalitions against, 10, 28, binaries of, 102–12, 119–21, 120;
33–34, 60, 99; color-blind, 28, body image and, 86–88, 87, 95;
33, 55, 154n2; feminism and, 19, class and, 44, 100; gender and, 47,
33–34; sexualities and, 43–44 59–60, 100; harassment and, 56–57,
rape, 3, 56–57, 94 59; racism and, 43–44; violence
Rebolledo, Tey Diana, 146n24 and, 75–77, 162n12. See also queer
Regalas, Jackie, 112 Shakespeare, William, 46
reverse discrimination, 35–36 Shorish-Shamley, Zieba, 54
“reverso,” 24, 70–86, 115, 162n9 Silva, Bonilla, 154n2
Rich, Adrienne, 104 sizeism, 71, 73, 82–83, 91, 132
Riot Grrrls, 2, 22, 33, 107–8, 147n29 Slander, 31–32, 115, 123
Road, Cristy C., 75 Soto, Sandra K., 159n31
Rock for Choice, 128 Springer, Kimberly, 148n30
Rodriguez, Favianna, 39, 90 Steinem, Gloria, 119
Rodríguez, Juana María, 15, 50, 63 Suárez, Lina, 169n3
Roediger, David, 164n3 substance abuse, 49, 81–82, 93, 106
Index 191
survival skills, 7–8, 56–57, 146n24 Villanueva, Victor, 144n17, 149n38,

sweatshop practices, 28–30, 29, 150n44, 150n46
122–23. See also globalization Villarejo, Amy, 126–27, 168n27
visual rhetoric, 51, 136, 145n22
Tabak, Lauren, 104
Tater Taught, 89–92, 91 Walker, Alice, 117
Tattle Tale, 106, 124–25 wang, jackie, 21, 40, 45, 61, 67, 93,
third space, 27, 46; academic, 127
144n18, 158n17, 166n14, 169n10; West, Cornel, 154n5
borderlands rhetorics and, 11–16, Whiddon, Scott, 169n5
22–25; code switching in, 52–53; Wild Womyn, 127–28
definitions of, 11, 13, 141n2, Will & Grace (TV show), 56
152n54 Winant, Howard, 19
Thrift SCORE, 127 “womanifesto,” 30
“thrifting,” 100, 103, 126–27, 153n60, Women’s Alliance for Peace and
165n13, 168n27, 168nn27–28 Human Rights in Afghanistan
Thurtle, Mary Charlotte, 156n11 (WAPHA), 54
Timor, East, 50 Women’s Health Action &
Tinkcom, Matthew, 126–27, 168n27 Mobilization (WHAM), 114
Torres, Edén, 65, 159n24 Women’s Peace Encampment, 59
Torres, Rodolfo, 89 Women’s Self Defense: Stories &
tourism industry, 32, 115 Strategies of Survival, 56–57
transformational practices, 10, 19–20, Wonder Woman comics, 72
24, 45, 60, 68, 78, 152n58 word play, 103
“transgenics,” 166n14, 166n16 writing cure, 163n16
transtextuality, 7, 145n21
Trujillo, Carla, 143n13 Yale Journal of Law and Feminism, 56
Tucson Youth Poetry Slam, 155n6 Yarbro-Bejarano, Yvonne, 4
Yates, Michael D., 165n9
Unidos (youth group), 155n6, 155n10 Yo Soy Testigo program, 156n11
urban gardening, 153n60
Urban Herbalist, 113–14 Zamora, Luisa, 80
zines, 136–40; history of, 2, 20–21;
“valley girls,” 107, 108 libraries of, 56, 63; personal, 22,
Van Fuqua, Joy, 126–27, 168n27 152n57; production of, 2, 20, 60;
Vázquez, Francisco, 89 purposes of, 2–4, 23–24. See also
vegetarianism, 32, 43, 113–16, 165n13 specific zines
Vietnamese sweatshops, 28–30, 29 Zobl, Elke, 142n5

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Zines in Third Space

Zines in Third Space

I need to acknowledge that earlier versions of excerpts from chapters in my book

Published by State University of New York Press, Albany

© 2012 State University of New York

All rights reserved

Printed in the United States of America

No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever

For information, contact State University of New York Press, Albany, NY

Production by Kelli W. LeRoux

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Acknowledgments for the Gifts of Knowledge xi

Embodied Resistance and Coalitional Subjectivity 86

Works Cited 171

2.1 “she is always and never the same”­—from Rubyfruit

2.2 “think about it”­—from Rubyfruit Manifesto #2, edited by

2.3 Cover of HOW TO STAGE A COUP: an insurrection of the

2.4 “HerBaL aLLIes FOR crazy Grls”­—from Bamboo Girl #11,

2.5 “NO RACIST SCAPEGOATING”­—from Bamboo Girl #11,

2.6 “NOT IN OUR NAME”—from Bamboo Girl #11, edited by

2.7 “Bamboo Girl”­—from Bamboo Girl #11, edited by

2.8 “Listen Up! ¡Escuchan!”—from Calico, #5 52

2.9 “. . . YOU’RE GOING TO HAVE TO FIGHT ME FIRST”­—

3.1 “WE ARE NOT A MONOCHROMATIC PEOPLE”­—

3.2 Cover depicting a river crossing­—from Apoyo, edited by

3.3 “Self-portrait in Black & White”—from Borderlands,

3.4 “PELA, SKIN, NARIZ, TALK”—from Borderlands,

3.5 “kill the image that is killing you”—from Housewife

3.6 “WE ARE NOT THE ENEMY”­—from Bamboo Girl #11,

3.7 “JUSTICE NOT VENGEANCE”—from Bamboo Girl #11,

3.8 “Fight Sizeism”—from Tater Taught #1, edited by Emily Barber 91

4.1 “Boy? Girl? Brrl.”­—from Pirate Jenny (vol. 1, #4), edited by

4.2 “PURGE ACTION Barbie®”­—from ¡Mamasita!, Issue One,

4.3 Image of Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz­—from Bi-Girl World,

4.4 baby K’s “. . . too QUEER . . . too STRAIght”­—from

4.5 “ANGST COLUMN: HOW FILIPINO/PILIPINO ARE

first introduced me to such meaningful literatures at New Mexico State

Denise Uyehara, Christina Hanhardt, Miranda Joseph, Laura Gutiérrez,

I am grateful to everyone who included Aida, Sophia, and Grannie

Borderlands Rhetorics and

I am participating in the creation of yet another culture, a new story to

“fanzine” but the sharply concatenated “zine”—the genre is by no means

I distinguish critical consciousness from criticism as I argue that

investigation of rhetorical and countercultural production that is connected

Recognizing Borderlands Rhetorics

While first reading zines, I experienced a familiarity that initially made

with Yarbro-Bejarano that what Emma Pérez (1999) would call

into a disembodied metaphor that all can come to claim, it is also

Coming to identify and name a borderlands rhetoric is not without

Identity configured accordingly disallows the visibility of lived experience

Additionally, differential consciousness enables us to value and recognize

sameness but, rather, can be a relational and experiential term of third‑space

the social space represented by these “third‑term” identities is that

Borderlands rhetorical practices in third‑space contexts reveal a shared

Borderlands Peregrinations: Traveling beyond Borders

sphere of dynamic simultaneity, constantly disconnected by new arrivals”

borders. Borderlands spaces can be considered material narratives; that is

subjects, coalitional consciousness, and community activism. The lived

borderlands experiences began when I was a child. Words, meanings, and

Third-Space Imaginary, Coalitional Consciousness, and Zines

As a demonstration and an application of the theory and method of

the knowledge/s we co‑construct, and the complicated understanding we

reconsiders that which has been “unspoken and unseen” as representative

supremacy. Third‑space zinesters demonstrate an ability, which many claim

2.1 “she is always and never the same”—from Rubyfruit

2.2 “think about it”—from Rubyfruit Manifesto #2, edited by

2.4 “HerBaL aLLIes FOR crazy Grls”—from Bamboo Girl #11,

2.5 “NO RACIST SCAPEGOATING”—from Bamboo Girl #11,

2.7 “Bamboo Girl”—from Bamboo Girl #11, edited by

2.9 “. . . YOU’RE GOING TO HAVE TO FIGHT ME FIRST”—

3.1 “WE ARE NOT A MONOCHROMATIC PEOPLE”—

3.2 Cover depicting a river crossing—from Apoyo, edited by

3.6 “WE ARE NOT THE ENEMY”—from Bamboo Girl #11,

4.1 “Boy? Girl? Brrl.”—from Pirate Jenny (vol. 1, #4), edited by

4.2 “PURGE ACTION Barbie®”—from ¡Mamasita!, Issue One,

4.3 Image of Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz—from Bi-Girl World,

4.4 baby K’s “. . . too QUEER . . . too STRAIght”—from

Figure 2.9. “. . . YOU’RE GOING TO HAVE TO FIGHT ME FIRST”—from

helpless . . . If you do not do what the guidelines suggest