The Taboo Reading List
In support of our current exhibition, The Art of the Provocative Taboo, we present a reading list selected by curator Lucy White, which includes both resources and suggestions on utilizing taboo as an act of resistance.
The list of books, zines, and texts has been challenged by dominant culture on subjects such as sex, gender, race, the body, and power. This is not to imply that the subject matter within these publications is inherently taboo per se, but rather that they have been suppressed and censored, banned, or deemed as “too much.”
Shotgun Seamstress
Shotgun Seamstress was a zine created in 2006 by Osa Atoe that ran for 8 issues. Atoe created the zine after her experience of being the only black kid at a punk show. The zine was a celebration of black punk identity, outsider culture, and DIY ethics.
Each issue featured essays, interviews, reviews, and worked to amplify the voices of black folks that were often excluded from larger punk narratives. Not only is Shotgun Seamstress an extremely rich and interesting look into the local punk scene of the 2000s, but it is also a vital text on black radical politics, anti-capitalism, and a site of resistance.
Atoe went on to turn the collection of zines into a book which is available for purchase.
Queer Zine Archive Project
Launched in 2003, the Queer Zine Archive Project (QZAP) is a free online database archive of queer zines in order to preserve and make them available and accessible. Taken from their website QZAP states, “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.’”
Their most recent post discusses Will St. Leger and the creation of his zine, Butcher Queers.
BUTT Magazine
Founded in Amsterdam in 2001, BUTT magazine features essays, candid interviews, and raw expressive photography that focuses on alternative spaces and queer culture as it examines the lives queer folks, their ideas, work, and sex lives. Within their issues are queer artists, writers, and everyday people creating a space for those who have historically been suppressed and censored.
BUTT magazine feels radical through raw, unabashed depictions of intimacy and sex. Printed on pink pages and smaller than your average magazine, it is reminiscent of zine that is not afraid to talk about bodies, kinks, fetishes, heartbreak and breakups, messy hookups, sex and joy. BUTT magazine becomes a living archive of queer sexuality and alternative culture as resistance to erasure. It’s real, raw, and beautiful.
Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power by Audre Lorde
The Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power is an essay by Audre Lorde, originally delivered as a speech in 1978. Within her text, Lorde reclaims the erotic as a site of knowledge, power, and resistance.
Lorde argues the erotic is not simply about sex, but rather emotional honesty and the whole experience of one's desires. Opposed to the major traditional pornography that objectifies, eroticism is rooted in presence and connection. Through eroticism, it becomes a space of power to women, queer folks, and others who have been told that their pleasure and desires are shameful, excessive, or dangerous.
Neighborhood Anarchist Collective
Based in Oregon, the Neighborhood Anarchist Collective (NAC) is a group focusing on “help[ing] build a society where neighbors support each other to meet basic needs, individuals are free to follow their passions, and empowered communities collectively shape the future.”
NAC educates people about anarchy, its mission, and common misconceptions about anarchists; organizes locally in the cities of Eugene, OR, and Springfield, OR; and provides numerous resources, including zines.
The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx and Capitalist Realism by Mark Fisher
The Big "Not so Beautiful" Bill was just passed into law, estimating that more than 8 million Americans could lose medicaid coverage, cutting food stamps by $230 million over 10 years, it extends Trump's 2017 tax cuts for the ultra-rich, implements a new student loan program repayment plan that will make monthly payments more expensive, increases the nations deficit, and so much more all so the rich can continue getting richer and the poor will continue to get more and more impoverished.
Marx's famous and seminal work, The Communist Manifesto, co-written with Friedrich Engels and published in 1848, envisions a society free of class divisions, private property, and the state. It examines workers' rights and dismantling capitalist systems to achieve a society based on collective ownership and solidarity.
Published in 2009, Mark Fisher's Capitalist Realism examines how capitalism has colonized our economies, making it impossible to imagine a future society outside of capitalism due to our entrapment. As he states, "it is easier to imagine an end of the world than an end of capitalism."
Together, these texts help provide a way to understand our present, as Marx shows how these systems are unjust and can be dismantled. At the same time, Fisher examines how we arrived at our current state and why imagining something different is both highly challenging and yet necessary.
*And please, if you do seek out your own personal copy of The Communist Manifesto, go down to your local bookstore, do not make Marx roll over in his grave by ordering it from Amazon. Capital certainly doesn't need any more help.