When I first saw one of these zines, it was partially concealed behind a pile of lanyards on a folding table at a small media studies conference in Leeds. The cover of Foucault’s card had a moustache drawn on it. The photocopies were a bit too dark, the pages were crooked, and the margins were filled with handwritten notes that had been crossed out. To be honest, it appeared to have been prepared at two in the morning on a kitchen table. However, the five-page lead essay, which discussed Tracey Emin’s card and the politics of confessional art, was more insightful than anything I had read in the previous quarter’s issue of a journal I won’t name here.
The appeal is essentially that. The Theory Trading Cards zine, which began discreetly circulating around 2023, seems perfectly content to remain in the space between fandom and scholarship. Released card by card starting in 2000, Gauntlett’s initial project was always a bit of a wink, using the visual language of football stickers and Pokémon to promote the notion that Deleuze and Butler might be as collectible as Charizard. That wink has been transformed into something more bizarre by the zine, which is practically its own little literary genre.
| Category | Details |
|---|---|
| Project Name | Theory.org.uk Trading Cards Fan Zine |
| Original Creator (Cards) | David Gauntlett, Professor of Media and Communications |
| Origin of Cards | 2000–2001, released monthly |
| Zine Format | Quarterly, photocopied, stapled, A5 |
| First Featured Theorists | Anthony Giddens, Judith Butler, Michel Foucault |
| Zine Contributors | Postgraduates, lecturers, artists, anonymous fans |
| Educational Use | Used at Bournemouth University with first-year media students |
| Typical Issue Length | 28 to 40 pages |
| Notable Mention | Featured in a 2004 New York Times article |
| Fan-Made Card Additions | Karl Marx, Carl Jung, Simone de Beauvoir, Edward Said, Walter Benjamin |
| Tagline | “Creative knowledge you can put in your pocket” |
Seldom are the essays more than a thousand words. They are written by postgraduate students, the odd lecturer who didn’t think to include a byline, and people who just call themselves “card-curious.” A recent article I came across likened Walter Benjamin’s aura—the same one Brennan Brown has been discussing on Medium in relation to ownership and streaming—to the difference between holding a real trading card and scrolling through a digital scan. The writer wasn’t attempting to be witty. The argument just came to a head.
The form seems to fit the topic in some way. Trading cards are personal items that are easily misplaced, pocketable, and interchangeable. The quality of a zine is the same. You lend it to someone, read it on the bus, fold a corner, and then return it smudged. I believe that physicality is important in a way that is difficult to describe without coming across as sentimental. Even at its best, academic publishing has an air of sterility. The zine doesn’t.
Of course, this whole thing could burn out in a year or two. That’s what fan projects do. The post office becomes too costly, the photocopier breaks, and the contributors get jobs. For now, though, it’s like witnessing a tiny, strange ecosystem thrive in the gaps of a much larger, more inflexible institution. Compared to the majority of journal articles I’ve read this year, the essays are truly superior. I’m not sure if that speaks more about the journals or the zine.
