Reading notes: interesting tidbits on scholarly fans (part 1)

[unjapanologist]

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

Some disorganized thoughts on Fan Cultures (preface and introduction), Matt Hills.

pxi-xii: "In specific institutional context, such as academia, 'fan' status may be devalued and taken as a sign of 'inappropriate' learning and uncritical engagement with the media."

I don't want to write about fandom if that means I have to distance myself from it first. A grown woman with a few years of scholarly experience can be expected to write about her 'fannish' experiences in an academically sound way, I should say. (Besides, nobody accuses an economics scholar from liking economics too much to write about it objectively.)

pxiii: "...one of the main points of this book... is its 'suspensionist' position, a position which refuses to split fandom into the 'good' and the 'bad' and which embraces inescapable contradiction (the ugly?)."

On the same page, Hills remarks that academics often appear to be more attached to their 'discipline' than to their 'subject'. The 'discipline' of Japanese Studies/area studies being ill-defined and ill-supported by theory in general, I believe there's little chance of me neglecting the subject in favour of the discipline -on the contrary, the lack of a theoretical framework is a much more immediate concern. Pay special attention to judicious application of semiotic and open work theory.

p4: "Possessing their own cult heroes and cult theorists of the past, academics are -in terms of their embodied and actual subjectivities- out of alignment with the imagined subjectivity of 'good' rationality."

So true :) The japanologists who study 'serious' topics like poetry or economy study those topics because they like them, because they find those topics fascinating.

p6: "For Rowe, it is ironic that academics might want to think of themselves as fans."

I haven't read anything by Mr. Rowe, but giving how many scholars do seem to think of themselves as fans, this sounds like a very peculiar idea.

p6-7, quoting Cavicchi (1998) "(fans describe becoming a fan as) ...a lasting and profound transition from an 'old' viewpoint ... to a 'new' one, filled with energy and insight."

Sounds rather like finally 'getting' your particular research topic.

Comments

[ithiliana.livejournal.com]

I followed you back from cereta's journal because of your comment and will be friending you, because, wow! Cool posts!

And your doctoral project sounds fascinating (not even close to my areas, but I learn so much from reading other people's stuff).

I read Hills a few years ago and while I initially liked some of his stuff, it didn't hold up over time, and other than his useful distinction between aca-fan and fan scholar, little has stayed in my mind. My main sense after a couple of reads was that he was overgeneralizing "academics" (and a particularly masculine culture of academia as well), and that his own sense of himself as a "fan" (somebody who didn't really want to engage in a community, only hang out with a small group of seriously engaged friends) was entirely counter to my sense of myself as a fan, and my sense of fan cultures (and, again, he seemed to be overgeneralizing). I also didn't care much for his critique of Camille Bacon-Smith and Constance Penley (while being the first to find their work problematic in areas as well)--I could not put my finger on it, it just seemed weird.

Then he agreed to be on a panel discussion organized by a friend on fan issues, and stood us all up without even an email, so I sort of wrote him off my life.