Conceptual Analyses of Fanfiction, and Why They Don't Work

[alixtii]

So many of you, the ones who follow metafandom at least, will be familiar with the rough outline of the discussion: kradical--Keith R.A. DeCandido, the author of, among other things, the Serenity novelization (which I own but have yet to read)---made a post discussing the difference between fanfic and professional media tie-in fic in which he had the bad sense to

Comments

[cathexys]

Well, I'll stand by my community distinction (by which none of the professional texts Livia collected are fanfic) that I'm putting forth in the paper to be given later this month, but I should acknowledge your scifi community issues. [Then again, I'm not trying to establish categories of inclusion/exclusion and rather attempt to look at aspects that seem more pronounced in fanfic maybe?]

And yes, slash aesthetic is a bust unless I exclude a decent percentage of stuff written after 2001...

[alixtii]

Well, I'll stand by my community distinction (by which none of the professional texts Livia collected are fanfic)

That's where I put my emphasis as well, of course. It's the best way to make a conceptual analysis, insofar as that includes pretty much all of the clear cases and excludes most of the problematic ones.

And of course the way the analytic philosophers in my premise respond to objections is by adding caveats (my prof called them "epicycles," I think) and then caveats to the caveats....

but I should acknowledge your scifi community issues

They're really not my issues; they came up in the conversations themselves. I see from the tracked comments in my inbox you've already found the comments made in liviapenn's journal re: the community aspect of the litfic establishment, and kradical and dduane were arguing against the claim that community could be seen as a final distinction between writing Star Trek fanfic and writing tie-ins

[alixtii]

I don't know if it used to be not true that most fanfic was written in a community. I of course wasn't around one way or another, but I don't know--nor do I know how anyone could know--how much fic was written completely ferally, without any connection to the fandom. I mean I understand the impulses that could encourage someone to write a Kirk/Spock (or Blake/Avon or whatever) WIP having never previously heard of fanfiction and then never show it to anyone, but is there any reason to assume that it was really going on? Fanfiction--not just having the ideas in one's head, but writing them down--isn't all that intuitive a concept

[cathexys]

And just as many do describe sharing it with their friend(s).

Not going to cons or zine/APA community level, but not fully drawerfic either!

[cathexys]

I agree with you actually. On a purely descriptive level, I'd resist alixtii's potentially sold fanfics and go with an amateur/professional model

[alixtii]

*procrastinates with you*

[alixtii]

Hmm, I think my approach here is somehow connected to my approach to identity politics--that there be a self-understanding (on the part of the writer or the audience or the community as a whole, I don't know) of one's process being fanfiction is crucial, even if only in retrospect! Anything else seems to be too essentialist for my tastes, assuming that a work is fanfiction because of its characteristics rather than for its position within the symbol-system.

But ultimately it comes down to needing more than one axis.

[alixtii]

But nobody questions whether there were people in antiquity who do the sorts of things that gays do today--the question is whether it's appropriate to apply the term to them, when the framework into which those acts were placed was radically different. In the same way, no one is questioning whether there are fanfic-like documents in existence--the question is if they exist within a framework sufficiently similar to that in which the unproblematic fanfic cases exist to be able to be called "fanfic." For me, that framework is the fanfiction community.

Works written by people who later become fans retroactively find a place in that framework.

[cathexys]

I'm still not certain what is gained by trying to define these clearly flexible boundaries.

It's a little bit like the period debates, i.e., Is Wuthering Heights romantic or victorian; is Heart of Darkness modernist, Beckett postmodern?

Can't we just do a definition where we're describing characteristics and are happy that most elements within the set possess most of these and many outside don't? I guess that why your side of the quad tends to not take mine all that seriously :)

[alixtii]

Of course, I agree with everything you say here--that was the entire point of the original post, that we can't define the clearly flexible boundaries. So I'm not sure what it is you're objecting to, exactly.

I would disagree that the period debates are pointless, though--hashing them out can involve a lot of good thought and conversation and dialectic as ideas about the periods and texts involved get worked out. As long as no one thinks they're saying the last word on the matter, or that one is working towards a "correct definition" instead of a particular lens, such discussions can be very fruitful.

[trobadora]

Can't we do away with trying to define fanfic at large and just concentrate on describing fanfic as produced in fandom? ;-)

[alixtii]

I'm still not sure that I see a difference between the two, but I'll be the first to agree that a could just be an idiosyncratic definition not lining up with other's intuitions.