Wanted: A Quote

[starstealingirl]

Help me fannish friends.  You're my only hope!

I have to do a presentation in my class tonight about Henry Jenkins' Convergence Culture, and I wanted to talk a little about Jenkins' role as a fandom scholar, as a potentially divisive figure, how his work has evolved, etc.  And I am trying-- believe me when I say I have searched the Internets far and

Comments

[starstealingirl]

First of all: I'm glad you're picking this apart, because I need it. (Actually, I was hoping you'd say something: I was rereading your interview on HJ's blog when you commented!)

Here's what's going through my head at the moment. And bear in mind that: a) I'm not trying to make a clear argument here; only to do an in-class presentation that gives some context to Convergence Culture, and b) fandom studies is not my forte-- I've made a pretty conscious decision to not do fandom studies, because fandom is what I do when I don't want to study.

I've read excerpts from Textual Poachers, and also from Fans, Bloggers, and Gamers, and I'd say that you're right-- he does do a pretty fair job of including gender and sexuality issues, at least as involves ethnographic studies of fan cultures. (Though I certainly agree with you that race is all but absent in most of his work.) Granted, I'm only 100 pages into Convergence Culture at the moment, but I have to say I'm not impressed with the lack of gender, sexuality, race, etc. analysis in it. It seems to me that, while he can pay attention (in some very limited ways) to intersectionality when he's talking about fandom in isolation, or as a marginalized group, that same attention doesn't apply when he's making a new argument about the centrality of fans in convergence culture. Which fandoms are gaining the attention of media corporations; who is being courted and how, and how might more attention to these axes of identity complicate his thesis?

As far as Textual Poachers goes: I agree that it's unfair to apply his work there to present-day fandom, but I do want to compare it to Convergence Culture, insofar as a comparison between the two books highlights the very different media and scale upon which fandoms operate. I'm also interested, because I think that in some ways, Textual Poachers has circulated amongst fans in a way that some of Jenkins' later work hasn't. That the old quote about fan fiction as a way of reclaiming mythology continues to make its rounds all about the internets is, I think, telling. I'm not always entirely sure that fans see themselves as taking up that new central space that Jenkins argues they are in Convergence Culture. And there's probably a ton of reasons for that-- because not all fandoms do; because some fen find it more romantic to view themselves as a marginalized community trying to reclaim folkways from the corporations; for whatever other reasons. Clearly, I haven't totally thought this through yet. I just think that quote is important.

As far as Jenkins vis-a-vis other fandom scholars: certainly he's not the only one-- and I probably overstated the case when I said "synonymous." I just meant that he gets the big media attention (and that I scarcely see Bacon-Smith quotes on fan blogs). He has a lot of renown, and a lot of media credibility, and I don't mean to assume that he gets it solely on his own merits. I meant that statement to be a sort of jumping-off place for a critique of why a straight white man gets that level of credibility.

Anyway, that's where I am at the moment. Critiques totally welcome.