This week, Kristina Busse discusses what it means to be an aca-fan, addressing the unique subjectivity sometimes required to walk in both worlds.
Online Salons: Fannish Meta Conversations as Ephemeral Traces
Defining Acafans
One of the inherent characteristics of both academics and fans is their tendency to collect and organize—things and, more importantly, information. And yet, as Matt Hills reminds us in his introduction to Fan Cultures (2002), we shouldn’t hastily equate fan and academic cultures or use similar behavior to conclude that they are generated by the same motivations and for the same reasons. Hills argues that representing fans as miniaturised academics is only “a compliment within a value system that particularly or most reliably pertains to intellectuals who have internalized these ideals” (10-11). In other words, being a good academic may be important to other academics but not necessarily to other fans.
One of the greatest challenges for acafans, then, is to represent and analyze fannish communities and their creative products while neither completely othering them nor molding them into familiar academic forms. Fannish interaction must not be subsumed into academic engagement even as it is shaped by and responds to academic discussions: many fans are academically trained in the particular disciplines acafans employ and even more fans read widely around these issues, including acafan works themselves. We thus face a dilemma: how can we respect and encourage the academic aspects of fan writing while still maintain fan meta as a distinct and separate discourse.[1]
It is impossible, of course, to create clear dividing lines between fans and academics. The intersection is huge, and the ethnographic stance of the outside observer has more often than not been replaced by that of the knowledgeable insider. The entire category of acafan is constituted by those of us who define ourselves as always already both/and rather than either/or. Karen Hellekson and I describe this tentative, unstable position when we write in our “Introduction” to Fan Fiction and Communities in the Age of the Internet (2006) how we “continue to exist on the intersection of the two, trying not to aca-colonize fandom or lose our academic allegiance through our fannish one” (25) In its stead, authors uses their position of being fan and academic to engage both sets of critical tools: many acafans write with a clear awareness of both audiences (as well as their intersections) and allow fellow fans to comment on all drafts.
Meta History
While we may profit from skill sets acquired in academia and fandom and while we may bring both to bear in both arenas, it is important to acknowledge that the two are not wholly alike, that not all fans are academics.[2] One area where this seeming similarity of academic and fannish practices seems particularly obvious is fannish meta. This theoretical self reflection has always been a part of fan communities but has increased immensely in volume when media fandom moved onto social journaling software such as LiveJournal.com (LJ). Meta commentary has been a vital aspect of fannish discussion from the very beginning, first in zine commentaries and LOCs, later on mailing lists like virgule (1992-2003) and FCA-L (1998-present) and the Symposium web site (1999).
When online media fandom moved away from using mailing lists as its primary medium, LJ soon became a central fannish infrastructure. Whereas mailing lists were focused on a fandom, topic, or pairing, and thus kept communication on target, LJs were individual, mixing private and political and fannish conversations. Moreover, to follow a given fandom or interest, a fan might have to subscribe to large numbers of journals and wouldn’t be able to filter out the fannish ones only. In response to this non-centrality, fans quickly founded communities to collect and link to meta conversations held in various journals: metablog (July 2002) was founded early on and “designed as a resource for linking to blogs and LJs that discuss issues of importance to fandom” and metafandom (January 2005) was modeled on fannish newsletters “for linking to interesting discussions in fandom.”
Meanwhile, communities specifically created for meta discussions included slashphilosophy (March 2003), virgule (April 2003), and fanthropology (January 2005). Fan definitions for meta are as flexible and contested as most terminology but encompass analysis of the shows as well as the fan communities themselves. While non-LJ meta conversations often tended to restrict themselves more to particular fandoms and fan texts (often occurring on their specific mailing lists or fandom specific bulletin board), LJ culture has promoted fannish meta that turns the gaze on the community itself, often connecting fannish concerns to social ones (such as gender and race). [3]
Ethical Ethnography
For acafen, these focused and intersecting meta conversations lend themselves particularly well to theoretical observation. After all, there’s a certain authority and authenticity to citing the fans themselves as they argue over a wide range of topics. Speaking for fans and explaining their actions and attitudes can easily become condescending and paternalistic. Consequently, there seems to be a certain ethical ethnographic mandate to not speak for members of a subcultural community when those members more than eloquently speak for themselves.[4] Especially within a culture where media fans still are ridiculed if not pathologized, the desire—of many fans and acafans—to showcase their creative innovations, their artistic sensibilities, their academic insights is particularly strong.
And yet, academics who are or who cite members of fandom may be in danger of painting too positive a picture of the community and not being sufficiently critical. The fact the audiences tend to be academics yet again raises Hills’ issues of the dangers of mistaking fans for academics and vice versa. The temptation is clearly to select fans trained in academic discourses, in order to offer the most accessible representation of fan communities. The dangers of simply collecting and sharing community members’ voices are manifold. On the simplest level, no transcript’s unedited, and there’s clear temptation to give voice to the most eloquent speakers. Moreover, by simply recording and sharing community members’ self-descriptions the acafan easily fails to interrogate and question these statements (which may be consciously or unconsciously misleading). Not only do fans have a vested interest to make their community appear less controversial, the very fans that speak for that community may indeed already constitute a self-selected bias. [5] Any engagement with fans, then, whether using existing conversations or interviews, must always consider the positionality and investment of those choosing to participate.
Meta as Performance
One of the reasons fan debates are dissimilar to academic engagements is that their ultimate purpose and intent differ: academic conversation tends to emphasize research and strives to establish new ideas that expand upon or challenge those that have come before. Whether we kill our forefathers and foremothers or simply further their projects, the emphasis remains on a strong sense of continuity and bibliographies and footnotes are what we teach our comp students to look for as a fast and loose test for academic writing. Fan meta, on the other hand, can and should not be treated like academic research or even, necessarily, as part of a larger collective project. Instead, it’s a much more social and performative phenomenon, and any academic using fan meta to support their argument via testimonial evidence must be aware of that facet.
We should understand meta conversation as more of a performative fannish event than a cumulative knowledge-gathering and consensus-creating academic one. As such, the meta essays needs to be considered as part of a conversation in which participants may simply enjoy quibbling over terminology or thinking out loud about various ways to approach an issue. Or it may be an argument for argument’s sake, as fans are less concerned with finding right answers and more with the pleasure of talking to one another and disagreeing. A meta post may indeed be an often rehashed argument that plays out in a new context. However, its participants are aware of everyone’s disagreeing position, and are thus enacting their roles yet again. But it would be wrong to only look at the result of the debate, to search for a definitive solution. Instead, the conversation itself as it is playing out is of central importance; the actual enjoyment for many is to watch and engage in the creation (i.e., the conversation itself) rather than focusing only on a potential result.
Ephemeral Traces
Thus, while every new instantiation of a particular meta topic may have a different spawning event and may engender new ideas, the posts linked in metafandom are often similar enough that an outside observer may indeed be puzzled. Moreover, new fans coming into meta discussions often find their meta feet, so to speak, by inquiring about issues that have long been debated ad infinitum—or so it seems to older fans. As a result, I think we need to view meta posts and discussions as part of an ephemeral conversation rather than written texts created for longevity. Looking over metafandom, for example, it becomes clear that particular topics not only generate myriad posts in a very short time but recur frequently. This suggests that rather than looking at meta discourse as a collective increasing body of knowledge, it is more a collection of sometimes intersecting opinions that are often unaware of the history of the topic—or, frankly, do not care and strongly feel that they need to articulate their own opinion.
Queer theorist and critical race scholar José Esteban Muñoz creates the concept of the “ephemeral trace” to define the traces left behind, traces that both hint at and hide their originating performative event.[6] I’ve used this notion of the ephemeral trace to talk about fan fiction in order to remind us that much of these stories’ meanings are tied to a specific place, time, and community in ways that make it difficult to read (let alone judge) these artifacts ( Intense Intertextuality: Derivative Works in Context.) Much of online interaction is conversational and, as such, tied to its specific context. Even though later readers can look at the textual traces of a meta blog post or an LJ debate, they are missing the ephemeral aspects of the encounters, the nuances, personal interactions, even allusions to current social and political events.
Meta Salons
Ultimately, LJs and LJ posts are intensely personal spaces, and even when a post actively invites others to comment and discuss the issue, it remains a limited space where the host retains control—to the point of screening comments, banning users, or deleting the entire conversation.[7] And yet, there’s an interesting public conversation that is hosted by many meta fans, a far descendent of the salons of the 19th century, those cultural and literary meeting places where artists and critics would gather and debate. Everyone’s LJ is their own little salon where their friends (and sometimes random strangers) stop by to spend some time chatting about fandom and its vicissitudes. And yes, there may be occasions where fans convince others of their positions or several sides create a consensus that everyone can agree upon. But more often than not, it is the verbal sparring itself, the ability to collect one’s own ideas as one is writing a post and responding to objections, that is the pleasure of meta conversations.
For acafans who want to acknowledge the depth and complexity of fannish meta engagement, it is important to remember that many of the conversations do not follow academic rules—there is little cross reference to earlier material (though often within a given metadebate people may reference the immediate posts that spawned their contribution) and no real desire to create a shared agreement and overview for others. Instead, fan meta often manifests in a conversation that may be aware of its precedents but tends to be in the moment. Such a conversation can be revisited and cited via its textual traces but it resembles more a conversation held at a party than a written debate in an academic journal. It also often relies on its audience being aware of other conversations occurring elsewhere—something that can be difficult to retrace after months or years and spanning multiple journals and discussions.
This ephemerality does not mean that meta conversations shouldn’t be cited or studied. It does mean, however, that we as academics need to remember certain things when engaging in fannish spaces. We must remember that these are primarily fannish and not academic conversations: we should respect the fannish spaces we are citing; we shouldn’t expect others to follow our referencing rules; and we should remember that for every layer of subtext we can decipher, there may be many others we can never analyze—and probably shouldn’t.
[1] A similar dilemma is created by fan pseudonyms: researchers must beware fans’ fears of public exposure yet acknowledge their creative energies and authorial identity. See my brief essay on “Attention Economy, Layered Publics, and Research Ethics” (Flow 9.14 [2009]).
[2] One could, of course, argue that most academics are some form of fan, albeit of more acceptable fannish topics. And yet most academics are quite invested in distinctions of high brow and low brow cultures—even or especially in subdisciplines that one might expect to be more open to erasures of canonical distinctions. See Joli Jensen, “Fandom as Pathology: The Consequence of Characterization” Ed. Lisa A. Lewis. The Adoring Audience. New York: Routledge, 1992. 9–29, and Roberta Pearson, “Bachies, Bardies, Trekkies, and Sherlockians.” Eds. Jonathan Gray, Cornel Sandvoss, and C. Lee Harrington, Fandom. New York: New York University Press, 2007. 98-109
[3] See Rebecca Lucy Busker’s essay on Symposium and the changing status of meta conversations since LJ, “On symposia: LiveJournal and the shape of fannish discourse” (Transformative Works and Cultures 1 [2008]).
[4] Several essays in fact have employed a method where the academic authors merely provide a theoretical framework and let fans themselves make their arguments in all its ambiguity and contentiousness. See Shoshanna Green, Cynthia Jenkins, and Henry Jenkins, “‘Normal female interest in men bonking’: Selections from the Terra Nostra Underground and Strange Bedfellows.” Ed. Cheryl Harris and Alison Alexander. Theorizing Fandom: Fans, Subculture, and Identity. Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press, 1998. 9–38; and Alexis Lothian, Kristina Busse, and Robin Anne Reid. “Yearning void and infinite potential: Online slash fandom as queer female space.” ELN 45 (2007):103–11.
[5] Jonathan Gray, “New Audiences, New Textualities: Anti-fans and Non-fans.” International Journal of Cultural Studies 6 (2003):64–81, for example, studies anti-fans, who may be just as emotionally invested in a text but tend to be less invested in sharing their investment and activities.
[6] José Esteban Muñoz, “Ephemera as Evidence: Introductory Notes to Queer Acts.” Queer Acts: Women and Performance, A Journal of Feminist Theory 8:2 (1996): 5-18.
[7] This control, of course, can easily be challenged in the commenters’ own LJs: a deleted comment can be replicated elsewhere; deleted posts and threads get screencapped and posted; and any banned users continues to have their own LJ salon, after all, to share their ideas.
