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Abstract
In the past two decades, an increasing number of young women have taken the tools of media production into their own hands; feminist zines have evolved into a medium for transnational dialogue, community building, and networking. In focusing on the Plotki Femzine (2006, 2007), a Central and Eastern European (CEE) feminist print and online zine project, we use the theoretical framework of “rhizomatic media” to problematize existing scholarship on feminist zines. Much of this scholarship sees zines as venues that construct a sense of “authenticity” through the use of the autobiographical voice and an outright rejection of mainstream media practices. Considering the rhizomatic processes of alternative knowledge production in Plotki publication, we draw on post-structuralist gossip theory to examine the Plotki Femzine as a site of feminist discourse. In particular, we show how the Plotki Femzine builds cross-border collaboration and “spreads rumours” of a feminist kind.
Acknowledgements
Work on this essay was supported by the grant “Feminist Media Production in Europe” (P21187-G20) from the Austrian Science Fund. Many thanks to Deborah Withers and Đurđa Knežević for feedback and critique on various stages of this manuscript and Isabella Willinger, Anna Voswinckel, and Nicole Dörr for their generous, and sustained, assistance in the research and development of this paper. We would like to thank the editors and anonymous reviewers for their many useful insights and suggestions.
Notes
1. Whilst the Femzine project was launched in 2005, Dörr considers its history stretching back to an editorial meeting in Romania in 2003 when discontent surfaced among female contributors about male dominance and a lack of gender awareness in the Plotki project (Dörr Citation2008).
2. All correspondences were conducted and received in English. All references to the Femzine articles mean the 2006 online issue, unless specifically noted.
3. For a discussion of the relevance of Third Wave debates to the CEE context see Graff (Citation2007).
4. Under the Soviet penal code every typewriter was registered, including the particularities of its keys, so that the source of unofficial manuscripts could be identified. This also extended to the regulation of photocopiers when they were introduced. See Downing (Citation2001, p. 384, n. 4).
5. For histories of women's involvement in Samizdat, see Marsh (Citation1996) on feminist and gender-traditional journals by women in Russia from 1979; Penn (Citation2005) on women's key involvement in the massively influential Polish Solidarność/Solidarity movement and its newspapers; and Siklova (Citation2008) on women's role in samizdat publication with a focus on Czechoslovakian history.
6. In contrast to Bates and McHugh's (2005) and Duncombe's (1997) characterization of zines as unregulated forums, the Femzine editors rejected a piece aimed at raising awareness of issues facing illegal immigrants because it utilized sexist imagery. Voswinckel comments: “We disregarded a contribution aimed at attacking race prejudice because of our feminist conscience. So [this is] the other way round as in former Plotki issues, where antiracism pushed aside antisexism” (Voswinckel Citation2008).
7. Discussions of alternative media have taken on a variety of terms and definitions, including “citizen's media,” “grassroots media,” “radical media” and such. Whilst it is beyond the scope of this paper to summarize these debates, Bailey, Cammaerts, and Carpentier (Citation2008, pp. 3–34) emphasize four, interrelated paths of understanding alternative media as: “alternative [to the mainstream] media,” “community media,” “civil society media,” and “rhizomatic media.”
8. A focus on rhizomatic media networks has particular relevance to the CEE context of Samizdat. As described by the radical media activist Antonín Liehm (1977), “The Stalinist pyramid does not know, does not admit, does not support, any form of horizontal organisation. Every direct contact between the various parts of the pyramid is immediately considered suspect and, dangerous, [sic] and thus is expressly forbidden” (Liehm cited in Downing 2001, p. 355).
9. Plotki publications revolve editorship through CEE countries—whilst the Plotki headquarters remain in Berlin—and have an open call for submission. We see the production of the Femzine as following a rhizomatic process, both in its break and alliance with the Plotki network (such as challenging patriarchal attitudes and hierarchization within the network, but using the network to produce a special issue), and in assembling heterogeneous texts across the three formats of photocopied zine, online publication, and professional printed edition.
10. The terms gossip and rumour are used interchangeably in Plotki, but they are differentiated in gossip theory. For example, Ralph L. Rosnow and Gary Alan Fine distinguish rumour as being extended over time, with results, whilst gossip vanishes (cited in Mellencamp Citation1992, p. 174).
11. “(1) [Western feminists'] arguments are emancipatory and utopian in tone and therefore foster mistrust; (2) concepts such as ‘women's equality’ and ‘women's emancipation’ recall the rhetoric of a discredited Communist regime; (3) their ‘call to action’ falls on deaf ears of women and men worn out from the socialist era; (4) representation of women as the sole victims does not resonate with societal experience; (5) motherhood and family have positive meanings and are not associated with confinement and repression; and (6) a stereotype of feminists as men-haters permeates East-Central Europe” (Heitlinger as summarised in Duffy Citation2000, p. 235).
