[research] Under construction: presentation on reading fanfic as part of 'open work'

[unjapanologist]

Originally published at Academic FFF. You can comment here or there.

Next month I'm going to Sweden for the symposium 'Textual Echoes: Fan Fiction and Sexualities' (program and abstracts), where I'll be making a case for 'The 'open work' as a framework for the interpretation of fan fiction'. For those who are interested in seeing a coherent argument emerge slowly from a morass of disconnected gibberish, I'm constructing the presentation here. Abstract:

Since the 1960s, semiotician Umberto Eco has written at length about 'open work', a largely theoretical kind of artwork characterized by open-endedness and a need for audience participation. By combining this concept with other semiotic methods of data extraction and analysis, it would seem possible to construct an alternative method of fan fiction interpretation that permits objectively verifiable data to be examined within the established theoretical framework of the 'open work' -a framework whose precepts make it uniquely suited to analysis of online amateur media such as fanfic.

    A preliminary test of this method seems to confirm its potential for opening new perspectives on fanfic narratives and using public debate about the findings as a part of the research itself, not something that occurs only after final publication of the results. I will illustrate the method's advantages and disadvantages by detailing its use in a broader study currently underway. This study contrasts English-language fanfics published online with Japanese amateur comics (dojinshi) based on the same source material (the 'Harry Potter' series). The data sets  examined contain a wide variety of narrative elements, including but not limited to characters, pairings, narrators, handling of canon elements, sexual activity, events, and locations.

Comments

[calicokat.livejournal.com]

Going from the bottom first, I think there was a problem specifically with Serial Experiments Lain where, if I'm remembering it right, because I haven't seen it since 1999-2000, but I remember it having a lot to do with how the intrusion of the internet is separating the individual from the traditional cultural institutions that promote a feeling of inclusion and affirm that the individual has a place and purpose in society.

What I don't think he realized, at least, as far as I remember as a 16 year old ha ha suck it Ueda, is that the internet is creating the same schisms in American culture and isolating American individuals in the same ways as Japanese individuals. (Also, I may hate when people tell me "You wouldn't understand." :x)

I think there was an essential misconception on Ueda-sensei's part, while purposefully making these things blatent within the narrative, that American viewers with their purported focus on individual freedom and independence lack similar institutions to promote group cohesion.

Because America is replete with these institutions and is experiencing the schism caused by the internet and other media and their ability to stream unfiltered memes into the individual, destroying shared values in immediate neighborhoods...well, in short, American culture is experiencing the exact same effects as Japanese culture from these intrusions.

The mechanism of attack is so novel in human history that it sort of reveals the similarities of seemingly disparate cultures.


.... apparently I'm having a lot of fun talking with you. Um, I'm going to respond to the other part in a seperate post because this turned into such a wall of text. XD