Foreign Languages & Literatures ETDs

Publication Date

Spring 5-1-2022

Abstract

This thesis examines the contemporary literary value posed by independently produced French fanzines. French fanzines represent a convergence of textual and graphic narratives, echoing la bande dessinée in many senses. I argue that the liberty of form and expression utilized by the fanzine creator permits a more nuanced iteration of life-writing. The circulation of texts amongst informal economies based in social networks suggests that creators are able to explore narratives of self-hood that do not conform to neoliberal market-oriented categories of identity. Furthermore, the influx of digitally stored and distributed French fanzines confounds their traditional categorization as ephemeral text-objects; as a result, their utilization as informal archives suggest an anachronistic interrelatedness across generations of fanzine creators. In situating how fanzines creators have engaged the form itself in a continual process of movement and metamorphosis, I identify the need for an equally flexible academic approach to a form that remains (and will continue to remain) ever-elusive.

Keywords

zine, France, authorship, queer, alternative media

Document Type

Thesis

Language

English

Degree Name

French

Level of Degree

Masters

Department Name

Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures

First Committee Member (Chair)

Rajeshwari Vallury

Second Committee Member

Stephen Bishop

Third Committee Member

Pim Higginson

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