Journeying into the liminal unknown: Making connections and finding spaces within the communitas of zines

Abstract

Zines represent acts of resistance and rebellion against mainstream structures, expectations and experiences. They provide an accessible form of alternative media-making, exposing the uncertain, emotional and physical experiences that initiate journeys into liminality. This study aimed to understand how zine-makers, through forms of writing that directly addressed the reader, such as forewords and editorials, described and shared their rites of passage and their reasons for making and distributing zines, by conducting a constructivist grounded theory analysis of 70 zines collected between 2004 and 2019. Adapting the anthropological framework of liminal communitas, the study demonstrated how zine-makers navigated their resistance to the structural bounds of their inhabited community, their uncertainty and their narratological approach to discover a home within the communitas of zines. The article argues that zine-makers and readers viewed liminality as a destination, rather than a way station to more ‘normal’ social structures, which counters the established behaviours of the liminal individual.

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