since we do not reap external benefits from our work.
I... don't understand this. You're building a reputation as a scholar and public commentator on fandom. That's not incidental to your fannishness, is it?
But beyond that, and as a side effect if not a deliberately sought-after result of your professional interest in fandom, you affect the terms of debate about fandom on a scale unimaginable and unreachable to most fans. (Does the transmission history of "feral fan" maybe go some way toward illustrating this? Honest question, it's just occurred to me.)
Oddly enough rarely are these people "in" fandom!
From my point of view, though, they often are. And the terms of the debates I've observed in some important respects either exclude me as a fan or denigrate my fannish position, whether implicitly or explicitly. I don't care if a non-fan scholar does that: what do they know? But when a fan with the cultural imprimatur of (for example) a publishing company, a university, a television network, or a law firm does it, and that whole network of cultural transponders comes into play on behalf of a set of values that originates within fandom but still defines me as an outsider, that matters.
no subject
I... don't understand this. You're building a reputation as a scholar and public commentator on fandom. That's not incidental to your fannishness, is it?
But beyond that, and as a side effect if not a deliberately sought-after result of your professional interest in fandom, you affect the terms of debate about fandom on a scale unimaginable and unreachable to most fans. (Does the transmission history of "feral fan" maybe go some way toward illustrating this? Honest question, it's just occurred to me.)
Oddly enough rarely are these people "in" fandom!
From my point of view, though, they often are. And the terms of the debates I've observed in some important respects either exclude me as a fan or denigrate my fannish position, whether implicitly or explicitly. I don't care if a non-fan scholar does that: what do they know? But when a fan with the cultural imprimatur of (for example) a publishing company, a university, a television network, or a law firm does it, and that whole network of cultural transponders comes into play on behalf of a set of values that originates within fandom but still defines me as an outsider, that matters.
If, I suppose, only to me.