Making a Loss: The Unsustainable, Unprofitable, and Unruly Creativity of Do-It-Yourself

This article considers zine making as a form of independent literary production that can offer new insights into the understanding of creativity in literary studies and the humanities more broadly. It situates zines as a form of literary writing, reading, and distribution that cannot be incorporated into dominant accounts of literature or creativity because of their ephemerality. The article examines case studies by Kathy Acker, David Wojnarowicz, and the poet Hakim to demonstrate the unique forms of creativity zine making enacts. The author argues that the study of independent media requires the development of new, creative methodologies in cultural scholarship that can expand our understanding of the uses of creativity beyond understanding it as a practice that generates forms of value that can be transferred to other areas of civic life.