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Not for you? Ethical implications of archiving zines

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Abstract

The archival value of zines (self-published pamphlets often produced by radical and marginalized communities) as historical records has been well documented in academic research. Red Chidgey refers to zines as ‘sources of advocacy and empowerment for those who make them, an attempt to bear witness to their own lives’. As evidence of networks, cultures, linguistics and experiences of marginalized individuals and communities, zines often exist as the only representation of ephemeral and otherwise undocumented spaces, which makes them incredibly valuable as the primary source material. Following the establishment of large zine collections at heritage spaces including the Women’s Library, British Library, Wellcome Library and Tate, zines are now regularly collected and used in programming at heritage organizations. But what does it mean to archive and make use of zines – particularly those created by marginalized makers and communities – in an institutional heritage context? This article considers the ethical implications of archiving zine practice and cultures – anti-institutional in its nature – in institutional spaces. Through a case study analysis of the community-led archive project Queer Zine Archive Project, I argue that, if zines are archived, it is imperative that archive workers are critically thinking about and incorporating the originating politics of zine culture into protocols for cataloguing, access, interpretation and use of these materials.
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PUNK 8 (2) pp. 227–242 Intellect Limited 2019
Punk & Post-Punk
Volume 8 Number 2
© 2019 Intellect Ltd Article. English language. doi: 10.1386/punk.8.2.227_1
KIRSTY FIFE
University College London
Not for you? Ethical
implications of archiving
zines
ABSTRACT
The archival value of zines (self-published pamphlets often produced by radical
and marginalized communities) as historical records has been well documented in
academic research. Red Chidgey refers to zines as ‘sources of advocacy and empow-
erment for those who make them, an attempt to bear witness to their own lives’.
As evidence of networks, cultures, linguistics and experiences of marginalized indi-
viduals and communities, zines often exist as the only representation of ephemeral
and otherwise undocumented spaces, which makes them incredibly valuable as the
primary source material.
Following the establishment of large zine collections at heritage spaces includ-
ing the Women’s Library, British Library, Wellcome Library and Tate, zines are
now regularly collected and used in programming at heritage organizations. But
what does it mean to archive and make use of zines – particularly those created by
marginalized makers and communities – in an institutional heritage context? This
article considers the ethical implications of archiving zine practice and cultures –
anti-institutional in its nature – in institutional spaces. Through a case study analy-
sis of the community-led archive project Queer Zine Archive Project, I argue that, if
zines are archived, it is imperative that archive workers are critically thinking about
and incorporating the originating politics of zine culture into protocols for catalogu-
ing, access, interpretation and use of these materials.
KEYWORDS
zines
archives
community heritage
DIY
punk
music heritage
music subcultures
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INTRODUCTION
The value of zines as historical objects has been well documented in scholarly
research. Red Chidgey refers to zines as ‘sources of advocacy and empower-
ment for those who make them, an attempt to bear witness to their own lives’
(2006: 6). As evidence of networks, cultures, linguistics and experiences of
marginalized individuals and communities, zines often exist as the only repre-
sentation of ephemeral and otherwise undocumented spaces, which makes
them incredibly valuable as a primary source material.
Following the establishment of large zine collections at heritage spaces
including the Women’s Library, British Library, Wellcome Library and Tate,
zines are now regularly collected and used in programming at heritage organ-
izations. Examples of this use include the facilitation of zine-making work-
shops in recent queer history programming at Tate Britain (2018), themed
blog posts exploring intersections of zines and health by the Wellcome Library
(Cook and Vigour 2017) and the announcement of a collection of zines relat-
ing to DIY sound and vision technologies at the National Science and Media
Museum (Fife 2017). This, and other uses of zines by large heritage organiza-
tions, affords value to these objects within an institutional context. In relation
to popular music heritage, Roberts and Cohen refer to this process as author-
izing heritage:
Heritage can be officially authorised in a number of different ways. In the
UK, for example, government bodies may categorise a building as ‘herit-
age’ by including it on an official register or awarding it a commemora-
tive plaque. This gives it a special status and may have moral and legal
implications, increasing its value and importance and making it worth
protecting and placing under formal protection.
(2014: 244)
The aforementioned programming and projects situate zines as historically
and culturally significant in national heritage contexts. By bringing zines into
a library, archive or museum, the creating communities are legitimized and
authorized – and as such, community-led projects might be more able to
access funding from heritage bodies (such as the Heritage Lottery Fund) to
undertake other projects.
However, this also raises further questions when we consider the anti-
institutional and punk ethos that underpins zine-making practice. What does
it mean to archive and use zines – often made by marginalized makers – in
perpetuity? This article considers the ethical implications of archiving zine
practice and cultures from marginalized communities. I begin by introducing
zines as medium, practice, community and historical record. Following this I
will summarize academic research on the interrelation between archives and
societal power by postmodern archival theorists, and then go on to exam-
ine the impact of this power upon marginalized subjects, particularly (in the
context of this article) zine-makers. I conclude by looking at the ways in which
zine communities and other marginalized groups resist institutional power
through the establishment of their own community-based archives using
the case study of Queer Zine Archive Project (an online and community-led
zine archive, hereafter referred to as QZAP). QZAP is selected as a case study
because it is a community-led archive collecting zines made by a marginalized
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group (in this case, LGBTQ people) with both a physical and an online access
function – thus making it an appropriate case through which to explore archi-
val practice in this context. I will argue that, to preserve and facilitate access
to zines as archival objects, it is important to incorporate the originating non-
hierarchical and radical politics of DIY cultures and cultural production into
archival practice.
WHAT IS A ZINE?
Zines, ‘non-commercial, small circulation publications which are produced and
distributed by their creators’ (Spencer 2005: 17), are commonly produced as a
method of engagement with, and documentation of, countercultural move-
ments and communities, and incorporate a variety of narrative and visual
techniques that may include autobiographical writing, music and gig reviews,
comics, illustration, collage, essays, political commentary, satire, life testimony
and personal reflection. Zine-making practice began with science fiction fans
in the early twentieth century, who produced ‘fanzines’ containing their own
stories (in language informally referred to as ‘fanspeak’ within the culture),
which were then traded and sold in the community (Spencer 2005: 82). These
zines also contained extensive letter sections that enabled fans to communi-
cate with each other through the medium and established networks for fans
of the medium. Zines were later adopted by the Beat Generation in the 1950s,
small presses in the mid-twentieth century and the punk community in the
1970s. A variety of communities have adopted the medium in the decades
since, including football fans, third-wave feminists, queer people, anarchists
and independent music fans.
Zines are often made by creators without any formal knowledge of
publishing, and as such often possess a haphazard aesthetic that is colloqui-
ally referred to as ‘cut and paste’ in the community. Many creators will piece
together zines by hand or through a basic grasp of desktop publishing, employ-
ing whatever few resources and skills that are available to them. This choice
of aesthetic breaks down the boundaries that divide professional and amateur
cultural production – as Stephen Duncombe writes, ‘In an increasingly profes-
sionalized culture world, zine producers are decidedly amateur […]. By their
practice of eroding the lines between producer and consumer they challenge
the dichotomy between active creator and passive spectator that characterises
our culture and society’ (1997: 133). A zine may more resemble a photocopied
scrapbook rather than anything that we would otherwise consciously iden-
tify as a ‘publication’ – creators often appropriate, annotate and re-print copy-
righted images, text and other copyrighted materials. This technique illustrates
further some of the central politics of zine culture – disrespect for institutional
rules, professional techniques and the re-writing of majority and mainstream
culture to reflect subcultural and often subversive values.
DIY politics also factor into the ways in which zines are distributed. Zine
creators are also often the people who manage the circulation and distribu-
tion of zines throughout the network. As Lymn writes, it is not only the zines
themselves that are thus important, but ‘how they exist within communi-
ties […] [as] the people who write them (zinesters) are often the producers,
distributors, collectors and consumers – roles in a zine’s production and life
cycle are not discrete’ (Lymn 2013: 45). Zine creators thus not only control the
content of their zines, but the people who have access to it.
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The way in which they are circulated and distributed ensures that the crea-
tor of the zine is still able to maintain some control over who has access to it –
it is thus hard to entirely consider them as publicly available and/or published
documents. For example, a zine may have a total of 30 copies printed to
distribute within a friendship group or local network, handed out individu-
ally by the zine maker. This method of distribution can make a zine markedly
different to a published document such as a magazine or periodical, which is
widely available from online retailers (for example) and that requires little or
no interaction with the original creator(s). As Chidgey writes, these methods
of circulation act
as a safety net giving zine writers a little more freedom to speak out
about their personal lives, yet with the belief that their disclosures will
remain relatively private to the general public and their immediate fami-
lies. They are therefore written within a context based on an imagined
community of truth-telling and the safe sharing of secrets and testi-
mony.
(2006: 6)
These methods thus not only allow the creator to control who accesses their
writing, but also provide the protection and anonymity needed to publish
their testimonies.
WHY ARE ZINES IMPORTANT AS HISTORICAL RECORDS?
Alison Piepmeier (2009) has linked zines to other historical practices of self-
publication including scrapbook making, radical pamphleteering and commu-
nity newsletters. Piepmeier writes that each of these genres of documents
shares similar qualities; they are ‘created by hand, reproduced on a small scale,
and shared in intimate settings’ (2009: 39). Elizabeth Keenan and Lisa Darms
(2013) connect zines to manuscript traditions because they share commonali-
ties with personal archival documents including diaries and journals, which
illustrate the way in which individual subjects have experienced events, time
periods and passages of life. Sue McKemmish conceives of record-keeping
as ‘a “kind of witnessing”’. On a personal level, record keeping is a way of
evidencing and memorialising our lives – our existence, our activities and
experiences, our relationships with others, our identity, our “place” in the
world’ (1996: 175). Zines, often produced by one person, serve both as a repre-
sentation of the way in which one person experienced an event or period of
life; however, in turn they can also act as allegories for the experience of a
wider group within society e.g. young women. As such, zines, as personal
archives, represent both evidence of ‘me’, and what McKemmish refers to as
‘an accessible part of […] society’s memory, its experiential knowledge and
cultural identity – evidence of us’ (1996: 175).
Zines are rarely created with the intention of becoming historical records;
however, processes of documenting and memory making are central to many
activist communities involved in zine creation and distribution. Zine-makers
often engage with their exclusion from mainstream history and knowl-
edge production practices, choosing to create and circulate their knowledge
independently rather than interact with more formalized and academicized
practices of history making. As a result, zines may be the only archival traces
of marginalized communities. As Chidgey writes,
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zines are considered sources of advocacy and empowerment for those
who make them, an attempt to bear witness to their own lives. This
often occurs through a politicised historical consciousness (written in
the vernacular) which seeks to privilege and explore the agency and
actions of the non-elite; that is, to give testimony to the movements and
complexity of their own lives.
(2006: 4)
Zines, thus whilst not intended to be historical records, offer rich amounts
of materials for research into subcultures, communication and commu-
nity networks and marginalized subjects who are otherwise not represented
within archival holdings. In her article about zines made by young women,
Kelly Wooten also draws attention to the historical merit of zines as evidence
of networks and communities. As she writes,
Zines are artefacts of a particular moment in culture, where women and
girls have access to the technology to publish their own works full of
their opinions and ideas about the world in which they live. Their value
lies not in the individual issues, but in the network and community that
they represent as a whole.
(Wooten 2002: 25)
In addition to this, the zine network itself is of interest both academically and
historically because of what it represents – the creation and maintenance of a
community and space in which marginalized subjects are able to share expe-
riences, strategies and resources. Whilst zine-makers may never meet, the
processes of correspondence and interaction through letters, e-mails, fliers
and commentary in zines allow participants in the community to ‘instigate
intimate, affectionate connections between their creators and readers, [creat-
ing] not just communities but embodied communities that are made possible
by the materiality of the zine medium’ (Piepmeier 2008: 214). This network is,
thus, a lens through which it is possible to understand zines not as isolated
objects created by one person or a single collective, but as a record represent-
ing the ways in which zine-makers communicate and relate to one another,
and to society as a whole.
ARCHIVES AND POWER
The interrelation between archival institutions and societal power struc-
tures has been explored extensively in archival theory since the turn of
the twenty-first century. Theorists including Joan Schwartz and Terry Cook
(2002) and Eric Ketelaar (2005) have addressed ‘the power reflected in the
records and of the power of the records’ (Ketelaar 2005: 184). Archives, often
part of powerful institutions, hold the right to write and shape history, with
archivists in control of what is kept, made available and how it is under-
stood by users. Power has the capacity to oppress and marginalize minor-
ity groups, particularly when understood in conjunction with national and
international histories of cultural appropriation. As Ieuan Hopkins writes,
the very practices of acquiring, describing, arranging and exhibiting ‘are
inextricably linked to and implicated in past projects of colonialisation, with
heritage institutions having been deployed in the establishment of domi-
nance and control’ (2008: 89).
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These practices of collecting and exhibiting become particularly politi-
cally charged when the collecting institution and/or archivist and the archived
subject come from different positions of power within society. Hopkins writes
about two ways in which materials relating to minority communities are
(or are not) managed in heritage institutions. These are
Firstly, through ‘erasure’ or ‘censorship’, creating an ‘absence’ of evidence
of different groups within the heritage. Secondly, where there is a pres-
ence within these institutions, through a misrepresentation or percep-
tion that the presence was ABOUT us rather than FOR us’.
(Hopkins 2008: 90)
This tension is omnipresent in heritage institutions, where calls to ‘diversify’
our heritage are often misinterpreted and lead to tokenistic or even exploita-
tive approaches of marginalized subjects. As Flinn writes,
in reality the mainstream or formal archive sector does not contain and
represent the voices of the non-elites, the grassroots, the marginalised.
Or at least if it does, the archive rarely allows them to speak with their
voice, through their own records.
(2007: 152)
It is not enough to merely include materials relating to marginalized subjects
in our holdings without also further considering the way in which the very
action of archiving can lead to further oppression and silencing of these
groups.
The consequences of our failure to acknowledge the power imbalances
between the archivist and the archived subject or community are drastic
– as Joan Schwartz and Terry Cook write, ‘when power is denied, over-
looked, or unchallenged, it is misleading at best and dangerous at worst.
Power recognized becomes power that can be questioned, made account-
able, and opened to transparent dialogue and enriched understanding’
(2002: 13) Whilst we may not be able to entirely undo the privilege that
remains embedded within the sector as a whole, we can actively question
our role to remain transparent and accountable to those whose records we
manage.
ZINE-MAKERS AS MARGINALIZED SUBJECTS
In defining zines as a medium in the first section of this article, I also began
to situate them as documentation created to engage with, subvert and
critique the politics of mainstream knowledge and culture production. The
zine maker is frequently positioned as a marginalized subject in scholar-
ship. Duncombe believes that zines are most frequently made by ‘losers’ with
‘loser ethics’ that
stem from and appeal to those considered losers in a societal sense:
people who are losers not because they are awkward and shy, but simply
because they are denied or reject the wealth, power, and the prestige of
those few who are the winners in society.
(1997: 25)
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Julie Chu also perceived zines as offering a place for the disenfranchised, writ-
ing that ‘zine publishing […] reclaims the importance of “small people” by
articulating a place where those on the margins of power and, particularly,
“outcasts” are central to the vitality of the space’ (Chu 1997: 78).
Freedman sees zine-makers as ‘people who have chosen to claim the
margins’ (Freedman 2012: 13). This process of choosing to claim the margins
allows zine creators to find agency in this position, and to use it to docu-
ment and record their methods of resistance. Writing about third-wave femi-
nist activism as a whole, Lincona perceives this position as a ‘third space’
which ‘reveals a differential consciousness’ capable of engaging creative and
coalitional forms of opposition to the limits of dichotomous (mis)represen-
tations. As a location, third space has the potential to be a space of shared
understanding and meaning-making’ (2005: 105). Subjects producing docu-
mentation at the fringes of society thus produce ‘decolonized imaginary […]
that creatively resists and actively challenges the entrenched oppressions of
structures and practices that have perpetuated dominant (mis)representations
historically’ (Lincona 2005: 105).
The zine-making community makes up a proportion of society that is struc-
turally oppressed and excluded in practices of knowledge production, history
making and preservation. The inclusion of zines within traditional archival insti-
tutions is, in itself, a radical act, given the types of voices and narratives present in
their content, and the absence of these voices within pre-existing archival hold-
ings. However, it is important to acknowledge that this process of collecting can
in turn disempower the zine subject – through taking the materials out of their
control, archivists can create what Julia Downes (writing in reference to riot grrrl
culture) calls ‘a set of meanings that reaffirm cultural power in masculine hands’
(Downes 2007: 12). Archival workflows including access protocols (including
handling guidance, arrangement and description, digitization and interpretation
through exhibition and display) all individually contribute to the way in which
zines are understood and incorporated into history writing and other research.
If these protocols do not align with the participatory context from which zines
emerge, we risk further marginalizing the creators of these records.
NEGOTIATING MARGINALIZATION: COMMUNITY-BASED ARCHIVES
As a marginalized subject, engagement with history and knowledge produc-
tion within an institutional context often involves negotiating the aforemen-
tioned processes of erasure or assimilation. The establishment of archives by
marginalized communities indicates an awareness within these groups of both
the importance of their histories and the need to retain control and ownership
over the way it is used, who accesses it and how it is interpreted. Flinn defines
community-led archive projects as incorporating ‘the grassroots activities of
documenting, recording and exploring community heritage in which commu-
nity participation, control and ownership of the project is essential’ (2007: 153).
Community-led archives are often established in a way that directly
engages with the politics of history making and knowledge production.
They are, in a parallel sense, another form of counter-cultural knowledge
production – often created in response to feelings of invisibility and exclu-
sion within more traditional or institutional archival organizations; they seek
to establish spaces in which marginalized voices are recorded, documented,
preserved and made accessible for those seeking them. As Stuart Hall says,
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234 Punk & Post-Punk
‘the activity of “archiving” is thus always a critical one, always a historically
located one, always a contestatory one, since archives are in part constituted
within the lines of force of cultural power and authority’ (2008: 92).
The establishment of alternative spaces that allow communities to manage
their own records without institutional support or management can be read
as an act of resistance against these processes of assimilation and integration
within problematic institutional structures. In addition to retaining ownership
and custody of their records, this process of refusal also highlights the prob-
lems inherent in archival processes as a whole. As Barriault writes,
by removing themselves from the public archives arena, these special-
ized research centres have been able to challenge, to deconstruct, and
to redefine what an archival institution should be in order to meet the
needs of the […] community they strive to document.
(2009: 226)
This process of deconstruction and redefinition acknowledges the complexity
and dynamism of the archive as a conceptual, physical and political space. As
Long et al. write in relation to archives of popular music, this ‘promiscuous
deployment of the title archive, the exploration of it as idea and its ontological
status presents particular challenges to conventional practice for both archivist
and user’ (2017: 63).
However, it is also important to acknowledge the issues and struggles
that community-led archives can also face. Existing outside of an institutional
context means less access to resources including funding, preservation qual-
ity storage, online catalogues and professionally qualified staff, less protection
for heritage assets and a higher likelihood that an archive will need to move
or relocate due to property development or other causes of loss of physical
storage space. Community-led archival practice is a constant balancing act
between navigating these precarious circumstances and limited resources, and
the benefits of the autonomy of community-based contexts.
The following section of this article uses the case study of Queer Zine
Archive Project, a community-led zine archive project that focuses on collect-
ing zines made by LGBTQ people, to explore the ways in which marginaliza-
tion, zine collecting and archival functions (such as digitization, cataloguing
and access facilitation) intersect. The following is not intended to be a series of
recommendations, but rather as a way to make visible and critically consider
the impact of daily archival workflows on archives of and research into
marginalized people (whether zine creators, users or archivists).
CASE STUDY: QUEER ZINE ARCHIVE PROJECT
Queer Zine Archive Project (‘QZAP’) is an online and physical archive project,
created in 2003 by Chris Wilde and Milo Miller. The project holds a collec-
tion estimated during this interview to contain over 1200 zines. The website
consists of a database of categorized and searchable archived zines. Each zine
is viewable as an embedded document and is downloadable in PDF format.
Topics range from queer punk music, queer culture, short stories, poetry, poli-
tics, to art, gender and sex. The physical archive is located in a flat in the base-
ment of Miller and Wilde’s home in Milwaukee, with physical access facilitated
by Miller and Wilde. Researchers are able to stay in the apartment/archive
during their visits.
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1. Queeruption is an
annual international
queercore festival
and gathering started
in 1998 where queer
people can exchange
information, network,
organize, inspire
and get inspired,
self-represent and
challenge mainstream
society with do-it-
yourself (DIY) ideas
and ethics. Shows
featuring queer punk
bands, performance
artists and other
entertainment are
put on at night,
while workshops
and demonstrations
take place during the
daytime. Queeruption
generally takes place
in a different city in a
different country every
year.
Radically different to most traditional archival organizations, Milo classes
the project ‘as a (dis)organization’‘we are collectively run, and our members
are a mix of punks, librarians, academics, burlesque dancers, and BMX bikers’
(Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh Zine Collection 2012) Formed from within the
radical queer community itself, QZAP’s mission statement is as follows:
The mission of the Queer Zine Archive Project (QZAP) is to establish a
‘living history’ archive of past and present queer zines and to encourage
current and emerging zine publishers to continue to create. In curating
such a unique aspect of culture, we value a collectivist approach that
respects the diversity of experiences that fall under the heading ‘queer’.
The primary function of QZAP is to provide a free on-line searchable
database of the collection with links allowing users to download elec-
tronic copies of zines.
(Queer Zine Archive Project 2013:)
By enabling access to zines across a wider context than was perhaps initially
intended by their creators (via digitization and an online catalogue), QZAP
allows the zine community to engage not only with their peers in the specific
geographic and generational context in which they are producing work, but
also on international and cross-generational levels, facilitating new levels of
discussion and discovery.
The motivation for establishing QZAP came from an awareness of the
continuing relevance of queer zines to current activism projects, instead of the
value of zines for future research. As Milo says,
When Chris and I met, we were doing organising work for Queerruption1
[…] questions kept coming up about what is queer, or what are we talk-
ing about, or how do we provide safe spaces? […] And because Chris
and I had both been making zines and collecting them, we kept looking
at each other and looking at some of the other folks in the room and
saying ‘this is in a zine somewhere, I know that somebody wrote this!’
(Miller and Wilde 2013)
This comment illustrates both the impetus behind the founding of QZAP
and a wider issue about the lack of historical documentation within activist
communities, leading to what Sarah Dyer calls ‘the discontinuity of history’,
that so often happens when material is ephemeral or marginal […] So
much information and thinking is lost, and then so much information
has to be rediscovered again and again, wasting time and energy that
could be used to move forward.
(2012: 12)
The lack of preservation of materials often leads activist communities to have
to ‘reinvent the wheel’ when issues recur and problems need solving. In this
sense, QZAP functions as much for current generations as for future research-
ers. As Sarah Baker and Alison Huber write, projects such as this
are not solely about the creation of storerooms ‘for the future’, but are
equally as important for the memory practices of ‘the present’; by this
we mean that those involved in the DIY enterprise are engaged in the
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236 Punk & Post-Punk
process of materialising their own experience and expertise through the
collection, declaring and naming its importance.
(2015: 122)
QZAP is both housed in and run by the queer community itself, and as such
the managing collective are able to preserve zines without engaging with
formal institutional archives. This builds trust and enables empowerment in
a way that is harder to achieve within the context of a formal institution. As
Chris says,
who can we trust to archive our stories and our zines and our history?
[…] We’re entering the historical phase of queer zine legacy and we
have this amazing opportunity to be there as part of the preservation as
people who were part of the original movement, who were the original
creators of zines. That’s also something – I mean we take it for granted,
but when we see it reflected back to us, we understand that a lot of
historical movements are usually documented or preserved by folks who
have no connection to it […] it definitely puts us in a very different posi-
tion […] having been content creators and now preserving the material.
[…] that’s the trust that it engenders and what we really see as a role
for QZAP.
(Miller and Wilde 2013)
Trust is a concept discussed frequently in relationship to official and govern-
mental records, particularly in relation to ensuring the authenticity and trust-
worthiness of our archival holdings. As professionals, archivists invest in ‘the
twin pillars of the archivist as “trusted custodian” and archival institutions as
“trusted repositories” [and their capacity to] combine to ensure “trustworthy
records”’ (Flinn and Shepherd 2011: 171). However, less attention is paid to
the importance of trust in relationships between donors, users and archives
themselves – particularly in relationship to marginalized communities. Queer
history is, by its very nature, a traumatic research area, and those seeking the
records that exist in archival holdings (community-led or more traditional
institutions) may seek more private discovery experiences than more tradi-
tional users. In turn, those depositing materials may wish to specify differ-
ent access protocols from those expected of traditional archival records. As
a result, a ‘trusted’ custodian or repository in this context may well be differ-
ent to what archival theorists have traditionally believed. Trust can instead be
fostered through the capacity to care for it in a way in which centres the rele-
vant community, rather than postgraduate education and qualification. This
‘represents a tremendous challenge to the basic assumptions of archival fixity
and materiality’ (Burton 2005: 2) and indeed our very conception of what trust
is in relation to archival records.
The need for trust and ongoing suspicion around the use and manage-
ment of materials made by marginalized and subcultural communities is
further heightened when the materials in question are also personal, contro-
versial and potentially dangerous for the producers and the users of a collec-
tion. QZAP’s collection consists of intensely personal materials, and it is also,
through its commitment to online access, heavily driven to provide wider
access via digitization. The juxtaposition of intensely personal, sensitive and/
or controversial content and online access to materials means that issues
around consent have an extra dimension for them. In Miller’s own words,
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www.intellectbooks.com 237
‘we recognise that the material in our collection is potentially dangerous,
and it threatens the status quo and it talks about things that you might not
want your mum to know that you’re reading about or whatever’ (Miller and
Wilde 2013).
With both a physical and an online dimension to QZAP, different levels
of consent are required depending on the mode of access that a user chooses.
Some donations are kept restricted and unavailable for online access –
‘certainly we have stuff in the archive that people have sent to us and they’ve
asked us to preserve it and hold onto it but they’ve also asked that it not be
made available online’ (Miller and Wilde 2013). The archive ensured that trust
was retained through the acquisition process – first, donors signed consent
forms clarifying terms of access (online/physical/closure for a period of time)
upon deposit, and second, where collectors had donated copies of other
peoples’ zines, effort was made to contact the original creators and obtain
permission. As Milo says,
There definitely is a consent issue around putting things online, and
we try our best to do due diligence, meaning that if there’s any sort of
contact information or if we know somebody who knows somebody
who might know that person, we try to ask permission before putting
things online […] we tend to err on the side of it’s okay unless some-
body tells us otherwise, but that’s only if we cannot get a hold of people,
and usually, um, y’know in some instances the creators are deceased
or their friends that would know them say yes it’s fine that you could
do this, um, we very rarely, a couple of times, but not often, had people
request that we either change information related to the digital zine or
that we take things down but we try very, very hard to ask first.
(Miller and Wilde 2013)
The archive’s procedures around consent have evolved over the decade that
it has been in operation. As Chris says, ‘for the longest time we just sort of
collected, and thought, and sort of felt oh we’ll get to it in a few months and
then we’ll ask, and now I think we’re having those conversations right away’
(Miller and Wilde 2013). The practice of immediately asking ‘when people
donate things to us if we have their permission to put things online’ (Miller
and Wilde 2013) means that the archive is now able to negotiate the terms of
deposit directly with donors at the point of donation. This is not always possi-
ble – particularly with collections donated by collectors or containing histori-
cal materials made by creators who are now uncontactable; however, in these
cases, clear communication about the capacity to remove zines or alter cata-
logue on the website enables the archive to remain access focused without
infringing upon the privacy of those who are uncontactable. This arrangement
was not ideal; however, it represented the best balance between the need for
access by the community and the right to privacy for creators.
Trust factors into both the donor-archive relationship and the user-archive
relationship. As an online archive, QZAP are in the position of being able to
choose whether to monitor their online user visits. However, as Milo says,
‘for a number of reasons we have never kept track of who visits the website,
and so we don’t totally know what our reach is in the digital world’ (Miller
and Wilde 2013). Chris elaborates, saying that ‘we also strongly believe in the
freedom to seek information, so we don’t necessarily want to know what it is
that people are looking for in general […] it’s sort of a principle of open stacks’
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Kirsty Fife
238 Punk & Post-Punk
(Miller and Wilde 2013). This policy is a logical extension of the archive’s
awareness of the intensely personal and sometimes controversial nature of
queer zines. In choosing not to monitor their online users, QZAP enable users
to have an entirely private discovery experience, something that is not possi-
ble with physical access. This focus on private discovery through browsing
enables the user to engage with the archive as ‘“an archive of feelings”, an
exploration of cultural texts as repositories of feelings and emotions, which
are encoded not only in the content of the texts themselves but in the prac-
tices that surround their production and reception’ (Cvetkovich 2003: 3). The
importance of privacy is also discussed by Keenan and Darms in relation to
the archival traces of riot grrrl culture (which include a substantial amount of
zines). In relation to this they write
The relationship of these two ‘publics’ – the public from whom these
personal papers are drawn and the public who uses the collection –
raises questions about access, privacy, and privilege, as well as the
protected but complex nature of the safe space that Riot Grrrl sought to
establish and that the archive mirrors.
(Keenan and Darms 2013: 57)
The right to privacy is, in many cases, the right to a safe(r) space/safety in
queer and feminist cultures. When the documentary materials of these
cultures become archives and primary sources for research, it is again impera-
tive to think about how this need for privacy and safety intersects with the
desire for access to and publication or digitization of materials.
In its very conception, as a predominantly online project handling mate-
rials of a highly sensitive nature both to creators and readers alike, QZAP’s
collection contains objects to which it is challenging to facilitate access. As
a community-led project born out of the queer zine community itself, the
archive is able to preserve and facilitate access to zines in a way that, to some
extent, keeps them within their original creating context. However, the facili-
tation of international online access means that, whilst the zines themselves
are kept within the creating community, the reach of the documents is vastly
larger than the creators often intend. This juxtaposition of personal, sensitive
materials, online access and long-term preservation means that good consent
and ethics have to form a central part of all parts of the archival process.
This is particularly important in the context of an archive of queer zines by
marginalized makers, which is in many ways reliant on creators sharing inti-
mate and personal records with a wide and unknown user base. As Keenan
and Darms write, this collaborative and community-led practice is reliant on
‘the willingness of these donors to make themselves vulnerable – to make
their private lives public – [to allow] this evolving history to be preserved’
(2013: 74).
CONCLUSION
This article has sought to consider the ethical implications of and methods for
archiving zines. By seeking to collect and preserve zines, we are documenting
history in the voices of those who are otherwise not present in mainstream
media, knowledge production or culture. As records, they fill in the gaps
between history as recorded by institutions and as experienced by individuals.
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www.intellectbooks.com 239
Zines sit awkwardly between public documents (such as pamphlets or
newsletters) and private documents (such as letters or diaries). This nego-
tiation ‘of the specific and the generalisable – their sometimes messy
careening between the local and the global, the personal and the political’
(Piepmeier 2009: 10), typifies them as a genre, and is part of what makes
them interesting and radical as documents. It also means that they do not
easily fit within categories of records. As a result, it is important that the
archivists collecting and preserving them maintain an understanding of this
somewhat precarious, messy positioning and how it relates to traditional
archival protocols.
The right to claim control over one’s voice and the ways in which it is
circulated and understood is at the very centre of zine-making culture. Zine
creators often produce their zines in response to feelings of alienation and
marginalization by mainstream, hierarchical models of cultural and knowl-
edge production. This ‘desire for self-determination indicates a desire to act
politically and to assign significance to one’s own life and the lives within
one’s community’ (DiVeglia 2012: 78). In seeking to archive these materials,
it is thus imperative that there is (as a minimum) some community involve-
ment, dialogue and participation in archival workflows, extending the politics
of self-determination beyond the documents themselves to their preservation
within archives. This need for communication, participation and collabora-
tion has clear parallels with sector-wide calls for a more ethically engaged
approach to collecting activities in marginalized communities (Dunbar 2006;
Keenan and Darms 2013; Hopkins 2008; Caswell et al. 2017; Flinn 2011). The
dialogue around consent, communication use, access and circulation also
should not stop once materials are deposited – it is an ongoing process that
should continually inform the preservation and future use of these materials
for learning and teaching, history writing, research and all forms of knowl-
edge production.
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Fife, K. (2019), ‘Not for you? Ethical implications of archiving zines’, Punk &
Post-Punk, 8:2, pp. 227–42, doi: 10.1386/punk.8.2.227_1
CONTRIBUTOR DETAILS
Kirsty Fife is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Information Studies at
UCL. Her Ph.D. research is about methods for documenting and archiv-
ing current UK-based DIY music spaces. Prior to commencing her research,
she worked as an archivist for organizations including the UK Parliamentary
Archives and the National and Science and Media Museum. Outside of her
academic and professional roles, she is also an active DIY cultural organizer,
musician and zine-maker.
05_PUNK_8.2_Fife_227-242.indd 241 7/4/19 11:26 AM
Kirsty Fife
242 Punk & Post-Punk
Contact: Department of Information Studies, UCL, Gower Street, WC1E 6BT,
London, UK.
E-mail: k.fife.12@ucl.ac.uk
Kirsty Fife has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents
Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work in the format that was
submitted to Intellect Ltd.
05_PUNK_8.2_Fife_227-242.indd 242 7/4/19 11:26 AM
... Research about DIY music explores communities based in the United Kingdom (Gordon, 2005;Spencer, 2008;Dale, 2012;Griffin, 2013Chrysagis, 2014Chrysagis, , 2019Richards, My project is situated in a geographic location in which there is an existing concentration of research (the United Kingdom) but a disciplinary context in which there is very limited research about DIY music (Information Studies). Existing research about DIY culture in Information Studies focuses on zines, placing emphasis on the management, description and historical value of these sources (Chidgey, 2006;Bly and Wooten, 2012;Chidgey, 2013;Eichhorn, 2013;Woodbrook and Lazzaro, 2013;Eichhorn, 2014;Lymn, 2014;Fife, 2019c). As a result, this study spends limited time arguing the value of traces of DIY music but instead shifts focus to the dynamics which underpin their creation, collection and interpretation. ...
... Authors have also acknowledged the ways in which the selective nature of digitisation enables the reproduction of the Western canon in a digital format rather than its dissolution (Hitchcock, 2013). The persistent representation of digitisation as positive and neutral is also queried by theorists exploring queer and colonial archives, who highlight the potential for digitised materials to cause harm to communities (Caswell and Cifor, 2019;Fife, 2019c;Odumosu, 2020). Thus, while I acknowledge the potential for digitisation to enable the proliferation of individual cultural canons, it is also important to acknowledge the limitations to making content open access to individuals and the inequalities that manifest within these processes. ...
... (Keenan and Darms, 2013, p. 57) The change in context from the intimate information sharing within UK DIY music communities to unknown but potential archival users, researchers and/or historians is significant. I have previously identified safety and trust as similarly key in archiving of queer zine histories (Fife, 2019c), and other researchers have discussion this in relation to activist archives (Allard and Ferris, 2014;WIlliams and Drake, 2017). ...
Thesis
Full-text available
This qualitative study examines the production of cultural memory within current or recently active UK-based DIY music spaces. Utilising a critical archival theoretical framework, the thesis builds upon previous work which deconstructs subcultural historiography and archiving, identifying the reproduction of whiteness, masculinity, and affluence in heritage projects. By focusing on current or recently active communities, the study engages with archives and histories before they are deposited and/or formed, acknowledging the role of labour in and the construction of narratives through archival work. My analysis therefore moves discussions about subcultural archives beyond examination of sources and into a discipline which explores archiving as practice and labour, archives as organisations, as well as the archive as concept. The resulting analysis complicates the positioning of punk and DIY music communities as ahistorical. I surface underpinning information infrastructures and informal archival actions which enable community building and connection across generations through preservation and circulation of memory. Exploration of the intersection of socioeconomic circumstances and archival traces identifies how ongoing experiences of austerity, precarity and lack of resource negatively affect the capacity to create and maintain archival projects or sources. The contemporary temporal focus of the study enables an extended consideration of the born digital traces and web heritage of DIY music communities, which is particularly timely given the loss of data stored on widely-used digital platforms such as Myspace Music and the deletion of information produced by queer communities caused by corporate moderation processes and algorithms.
... In some cases, links were drawn between identified scholarship and areas familiar from previous research projects, particularly one of the authors' current and previous research into DIY cultures (Fife 2019;. The scholarship identified during this process is being published in a variety of fields including archive studies; history; media studies; social movement studies; digital humanities; geography; computing; library studies; women's/gender/feminist studies; heritage studies; politics/radical politics; autobiography studies. ...
... These reflections connect to concerns raised by scholars exploring the archiving of queer or feminist cultures (Keenan and Darms 2013;Fife 2019;DiVeglia 2012), who similarly call for models of access which respect the right to privacy or complete anonymity, variety in access conditions, and to request data removal if needed. In the context of the archiving, potential digitisation and publishing of materials relating to queer feminist music subcultures, Elizabeth Keenan and Lisa Darms refer to "the willingness of these donors to make themselves vulnerable-to make their private lives public" (Keenan and Darms 2013, p 74). Whilst Keenan and Darms refer to personal materials rather than traumatic records created from violence, the experience of marginalisation and vulnerability is shared across both queer and feminist collections and survivors of violence (and indeed, in some cases the experience of surviving violence and/or abuse). ...
Article
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In recent years, grassroots movements have gained traction and significant numbers globally. Against longer histories of resistance and protest movements' mobilisation of documentation, mechanisation and digital technologies, this scoping literature review seeks to understand how resistance and social movements have drawn upon the participatory and easily accessible nature of social media and digital platforms to mobilise new generations of activists, create new archives, document activities and abuses, call for accountability and overwrite or challenge the narratives put forward by mainstream media outlets and state archives. We identify relevant projects, explore the activist potential and threats of the combination of digital technologies, social movements, and documentary or archival practice, before concluding by identifying open research questions in relation to digital technologies, social movements and archival practice.
... The term FanZine is an acronym for Fan Magazine -this is disputed as a magazine is a commercial product, which is contrary to the philosophy behind these publications Larry-bob as cited [4] -, and are traditionally non-commercial printed periodicals, produced with few economic resources, with limited print runs and distribution, self-managed by the creators themselves, which is related to prosumer and Do-it-Yourself [5], [6], with a great variety of narrative and plastic resources [7] aimed at a very specialized and specific audience [4], [8], [9]. ...
... As we can see, the artistic potential of FanZines was appreciated by numerous artistic movements. As these publications were not commercial in nature, they allowed experimentation and development of techniques and disciplines such as collage, photocomposition, illustration, comics, détorument, typography, appropriations, and image manipulation [7], [8], which favors freedom in creation and creativity, which are contents and competences to be developed in arts education. ...
... Scholars tend to locate the emergence of the contemporary form in the newsletter postal networks established among sci-fi fans and among popular music fans during the mid-twentieth century (Busse 2009;Chambers 1985). As an alternative to and grassroots version of special interest magazines, fanzines became a medium and vehicle for DIY engagements with pop culture, fan communities and independent publishing (Duncombe 2014;Fife 2019;Triggs 2010). Zines took off amongst punk music fans in the 1970s and riot grrrl feminists in the 1990s, and were pivotal in their local establishment and global growth as style-based communities with strong and distinctive socio-political agendas (Radway 2011;Haenfler 2014;Rosenberg and Garofalo 1998). ...
... Zines circulate via zine fairs, postal networks, online platforms, alternative independent bookstores and library or archival collections. Their value for those who make and read them lies in how zines oppose the mainstream, the repressive, the exclusionary and the technocratic (Fife 2019). Zines move 'on the margins' (Chidgey 2006, p. 1), offer societal critique and speak to social issues in ways that privilege community dialogue (Freedman 2009); they are 'a DIY space for public discussion and the development of public values' (Congdon and Blandy 2003, p. 45). ...
Chapter
This chapter focuses on the lively, alternative publishing landscape of zine culture. Zines are small independent publications of writing, visual art and/or other creative work that resist and play with mainstream publishing. Zines celebrate a DIY ethos and circulate via fairs, postal networks, online platforms, alternative bookstores and library or archival collections. Here, we move beyond well-discussed aspects of zine production and dissemination to consider the place of reading in the zine’s cultural significance. How and why is reading zines materially meaningful? We offer a thematic analysis of a zine collection and interviews with zine readers on why zines matter to them.KeywordsZinesReadingMaterialityDIYIntimacy
Article
LGBTQ+ activism has played a significant role in effecting legislative and social change in New Zealand and overseas, promulgating public attitudinal shifts towards tolerance and inclusion. These societal changes do not however appear to have resulted in the visible representation of LGBTQ+ communities in New Zealand's GLAMU institutions. Using a survey, this study investigated what has been occurring in GLAMU institutions with respect to LGBTQ+ collecting and donating through a queer theory lens. The findings indicated that broad, inclusive collection policies do not equate to representation when coupled with passive collecting and little connectivity not only with LGBTQ+ communities but between GLAMU institutions. The evident need revealed by the research findings, particularly the facilitation of GLAMU interconnectivity, offered the chance to alter the existing state of affairs. This paper shows how ongoing research can be applied as the opportunity arises to inform current practices and initiate change.
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Open Access to cultural heritage, also known as ‘Open Galleries, Libraries, Archives, and Museums’ (Open GLAM), refers to a concept that asks heritage organisations to make, whenever legally possible, their digitised collections available online as open and interoperable data sets. So far, the discourse on Open Access to cultural heritage has primarily focussed on major art galleries. This thesis enriches the research and the discourse on Open Access to cultural heritage by focussing on the perspectives of organisations which understand archiving as a form of activism: Social Movement Archives. I ask: What does and what could Open Access to cultural heritage mean in the context of Social Movement Archives? Through Participatory Action Research (PAR) with the Marx Memorial Library London (MML), seven interviews with Social Movement Archives practitioners and a critical reading of the academic- and grey literature on Open GLAM, I investigate the digitisation and Open Access politics of Social Movement Archives, as crystallised in their missions, digitisation projects and ethical and legal practices. Crucially, I highlight the relevance of Social Movement Archives as sites for questioning and reflecting on institutionalised archival theory and praxis. This thesis offers a critical intervention in Open GLAM through the microcosm of Social Movement Archives. Throughout this thesis I demonstrate a certain, while not complete, incompatibility of Open GLAM with the political mandate of Social Movement Archives and the practical realities they operate in. I argue to move towards a social justice framework for Open Access to cultural heritage. The basis for the framework is an enhanced understanding of the archival principle of provenance, grounded in affective responsibilities towards collections’ stakeholders. Due to the recognition of digital archival collections as means for political action a social justice framework also assesses the positive and negative impact of Open Access in relation to social justice.
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Senses of place are strongly intertwined with senses of heritage and cultural identity. Heritage places are distinctive not only for their tangible dimensions, but also the intangible qualities which give them meaning. The conservation of heritage places, however, has often emphasised the materiality of place rather than its symbolic significance. This article explores issues surrounding sense of place and heritage management through a focus on the former site of the Paradise Hotel in Norfolk Island’s Kingston and Arthur’s Vale Historic Area. Drawing on interviews and a zine co-created with Norfolk Island residents, the article unpacks various ways participants articulate connections to the Paradise via their memories and recollections of the past as well as their present interpretation of and engagement with the site. Through a localised case study, the article provides insight into transnational challenges for the relationship between sense of place, heritage value and heritage management and interpretation.
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Zines are self-published, do-it-yourself booklets that have a long history as tools for activism in social movements. While archival studies has already explored the collection and preservation of zines as cultural artefacts, this article explores the capacity for zines to act as a form of community archive. The article examines See You at the Paradise , a zine co-created with Norfolk Island community members for a research project focused on Kingston and Arthur’s Vale Historic Area. Drawing on Michelle Caswell’s six principles of community archive discourse—participation, shared stewardship, multiplicity, activism, reflexivity, valuing affect—we analyse the extent to which zines and zine-making, as product and process, can be understood as community archive. In doing so, we propose collaborative reminiscence as a seventh principle. The article finds that zines, as community archive, work to strengthen the presence of marginalised voices in dominant historical narratives while also offering an important resource for community-building and political resistance.
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During the 1990s and early 2000s, the Montreal hardcore scene was a vibrant, thriving and dynamic subculture with a strong sense of community. The generational and cyclical nature of such scenes has led, over the past two decades, to a significant crowd turnover with older people leaving and newcomers taking over. However, through the emergence of an Instagram account created by a man named Andy Chico Mak, its past memories are resurfacing. The recent dissemination of the Bone in the Throat series on social media, along with other archives including flyers, interviews and never-seen-before footage from the era, sparks a series of questions regarding the role and impact of archiving subcultures. Since the archival turn in social sciences, archives are considered as a reflexive and constitutive process of identity building and collective memory creating. In the case of subcultures, often overlooked by official heritage institutions, the importance of understanding archives as a site of cultural production is paramount. The collection and preservation of self-produced documents is key to scholars in order to understand the social and political dynamics at the heart of those communities. This article analyses the impact of years of video archives, gathered and organized through the work of Andy Chico Mak, in the process allowing the creation of collective memory and the development of ‘scene identity’. By relating to contemporary conversations about archiving subcultures, it also provides insight into the impact of new technologies and the creation of ‘subcultural collective memory’.
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Purpose The authors explore the coproduction of a digital archive with 50 2SLGBTQ+ youth across Atlantic Canada during the COVID-19 pandemic in order to catalyze broader public participation in understanding 2SLGBTQ+ youth-led activism in this place and time through art production. Design/methodology/approach Through a mail-based participatory visual research project and an examination of collage, zines and DIY facemasks, the authors highlight how the production, sharing and archiving of youth-produced art adds to methodological discussions of exhibiting and digital archiving with 2SLGBTQ+ youth as a form of activist intervention. Findings In reflexively examining the cocuration of art through social media and project website, the authors argue that coproducing digital archives is an important part of knowledge mobilization. Also, the authors consider how the work has been interacted with by a broader public, so far in an exclusively celebratory manner and note the benefits and challenges of this type of engagement to the youth and to the understandings of 2SLGBTQ+ youth archives. Originality/value The authors suggest that these modes of engaging in participatory visual research at a distance offer original contributions in relation to how participation can be understood in a digital and mail-based project. The authors see participant control of how to share works within digital archives as a contribution to the understanding of people's capacity to negotiate and take ownership of these spaces. These strategies are participant-centered and suggest ways that archiving can be made more accessible, especially when working with communities who are socially marginalized or otherwise excluded from the archival process.
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The purpose of this paper is to set out a critical and analytical framework with which to explore the ways in which popular music heritage in the UK (or in England more specifically) is variously understood, discussed, critiqued, practised or performed. Developed as part of a large-scale European project examining popular music, cultural heritage and cultural memory, our analysis is based on qualitative studies of popular music heritage discourses that reflect a broad cross section of sectors, institutions and industries. Adapting Smith’s concept of authorised heritage discourse, we propose a three-way analytical framework that theoretically and methodologically foregrounds those practices and processes of authorisation that variously ascribe music heritage discourses with value, legitimacy and social and cultural capital. Focusing our discussion on the example of music heritage plaques, we identify three categories of heritage discourse: (1) official authorised popular music heritage, (2) self-authorised popular music heritage and (3) unauthorised popular music heritage. The arguments developed in the final section of the paper in relation to unauthorised music heritage are presented as a critical point of orientation – heritage-as-praxis – that works in dialectical opposition to authorised heritage, or what we have more loosely termed ‘big H’ heritage.
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This paper outlines the prodigious field of public history preservation practice prompted by popular music culture, exploring the relationship of affect, history and the archive. Framing this exploration with a concept of cultural justice, it considers the still uncertain place of popular music as a subject of heritage and preservation, assessing the parameters of what counts as an archive and issues of democratization. It offers a discussion of the archival and affective turns in the humanities as a means of framing the politics of practice focused on popular music culture. The paper offers empirical evidence of the relational qualities of the popular music archive considered in affective terms. Discussion draws first on evidence from the vernacular practices of communities in what Baker and Collins describe as ‘do-it-yourself’ archives and secondly from ‘authorized’ collections in established archival institutions (Baker and Collins, “Sustaining Popular Music’s Material Culture,” 3). The paper explores the motivations of popular music archivists and how they articulate the affective dimensions of their work, and how their work qualifies personal and collective commitments and expressions of value and indeed, relations with users. In conclusion, affect is identified as pertinent to wider issues in the relations of archive, archivist and user and the possibilities of historical practice.
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This article introduces the application of Critical Race Theory (CRT) to archival discourse in order to demonstrate how such a critical and analytical approach can help identify and raise social and professional consciousness of implicit racial bias. To demonstrate the potential of CRT, the paper discusses how the terminology and methodological structures of CRT might be applied to some aspects of archival theory and practice. The paper concludes that CRT can contribute to a diversified archival epistemology that can influence the creation of collective and institutional memories that impact underrepresented and disenfranchised populations and the development of their identities.
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In this article, the author argues that gay male erotica and pornography is a critically important part of the gay male documentary heritage. He suggests that in the absence of other queer records - which were either suppressed or destroyed - in some ways, these documents have gained an even greater value as the "surrogate records" of the twentieth-century gay male experience in North America. The author states that gay male erotica and pornography meets Schellenberg's definition of an archival record, and throughout the article, he demonstrates how these materials do have an enduring value, which is at once evidential, informational, and research-based. He begins by presenting the historical context that led to the creation of queer archives in Canada, like the Canadian Lesbian and Gay Archives (CLGA) in Toronto, which have a mandate to preserve gay male erotica and pornography. Then, in his discussion of the evolution of the records themselves from the earliest American beefcake magazines to recent Web resources, he reveals examples of their evidential and informational nature. In the last part of the article, which deals with North American efforts to censor these materials, he argues that the attempts to censor, mask, and otherwise alter the originals have added another level of informational and evidential value to the records, and he provides examples of the types of information embedded therein.
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Archival theory has a long history of utilizing principles designed to preserve contextual value in records. We believe that traditional practices of appraisal, arrangement, and description can be rearticulated as participatory, community-oriented processes. This can enable context to be represented meaningfully in archives of traditionally marginalized communities. We believe this process can help build cultur ally relevant records repositories while enabling marginalized communities to share their experiences with a wider public. By broadening their traditional tools to actively engage marginalized communities in the preservation process, archivists can preserve local knowledge and create representative, empowered archives.
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Riot Grrrl, an early-1990s teen feminist movement, adopted punk's DIY modes of expression to encourage girls to address their shared oppression. The Riot Grrrl Collection, held at New York University's Fales Library & Special Collections, documents the movement through the personal papers of those who were active in its formative years. This article uses the lens of feminist "safe space" to look at the collection from two perspectives: that of its founder, Lisa Darms, who is senior archivist at Fales, and that of ethnomusicologist Elizabeth Keenan, a scholar who has worked extensively with the collection. The concept of safe space was crucial to the all-girl meetings, dance parties, and bands that formed the foundation of Riot Grrrl. The authors argue that the safe space of Riot Grrrl created an intimate counterpublic - that is, a space where girls established a feminist community through shared texts - but one that sometimes worked against its own intentions: boundaries erected for safety sometimes led to exclusion along lines of race, class, or gender identity. The authors extend the idea of safe space to issues of collection building from and within activist communities; to ideas of intimacy and privacy as they play out for donors, for researchers, and in the special collections reading room; and to the tension between the desire for access to activist history versus the requirements of archival preservation. The article examines how iterations of safe space are enacted across the personal papers in the Riot Grrrl archive, through both the materials themselves and their place in the archive.
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Jessie Lymn is a PhD Candidate at University of Technology Sydney (UTS) and a casual academic in the Information Studies programs at both UTS and Charles Sturt University. Her doctoral research focuses on the archival practices of subcultural communities and how this furthers temporal and spatial understandings of archives. Building on Eichhorn’s concept of ‘archival genres’, this article considers the recent spate of zine anthologies published in Australia and the United States as examples of these genres. It proposes that the anthologies are archives of content, form and practice, given that they commonly reproduce entire zines as visual material, not just text, and are produced by members of zine communities. This article argues that the anthologies’ narratives, presentation and distribution preserve ideologies of zine culture and that archival genres create spaces for the preservation of practices.