Making zines: In search of mad/survivor symbology and visual language
Alright here it goes again because mods called my post low effort.
Essentially I study graphic design and I am currently writing my thesis on Antipsychiatry, Mad Liberation and Consumer/Survivor/Ex-Patient movements. Now you might wonder why I am writing a thesis on this within the field of graphic design?
It’s because I think it’s very important and close to my heart and I’m very tired of the dispersed movements and non-understanding of our struggles in a broader context, so I am theorising that it’s a communication issue and unfortunately that we have fragmented our own movements that overlap in many ways.
Essentially I am talking about these movements in terms of a broader context of hermeneutical injustice, where the language or the collective understanding might be fragmented and therefore does not bring epistemic justice to the collective that have experienced horrific things, but also in terms of testimonial injustice where the subject is rendered irrelevant as a knower due to judgement on their identity as a subject. Further into communication theory, Habermas made a theory comprising of the ”public sphere”, which by Habermas was understood as a way to shape society by having a group of people assembling and forming ”common sense” or consensus. But other communication theorists have argued that there are people that historically and contemporaneously have been excluded from the public sphere and therefore formulated the theory on ”counterpublics” which constitute smaller collectives outside of the conception of the public sphere which can establish their own ways of communication and recognition of one another, such an example would be that at some point the notion of ”sexual harassment” did not exist, and this was formed by counterpublics within women’s circles until it spread into the public sphere.
Now I am applying this theory onto psychiatric survivors, mad people, consumers, ex-patients and so on to bring more accessible counterpublics and hopefully establish a wider recognition to these struggles.
In this search I now have to find a more general symbolic and visual language that can be used to express these zines that I’m planning to make as the actual graphic design part of the thesis, so where can I find this? Are there any symbols associated with us? Any images? Videos? Pop culture? Games?
This is my most urgent question, the second question is, how can I do this fairly and do you have any ideas or want to contribute somehow? My idea is to make some resources on psychiatric drugs, institutionalization, poems, history, stories, radical psychiatry, movement explanations and differences.
TLDR; I am writing a thesis in graphic on antipsychiatry, mad liberation, consumer/survivor/ex-patient movements, I need help finding visual resources and symbols for my zines that will be the visual product. Any other recommendations or ways to go about this and what I could contribute with in these zines?