FAQ series: first set

[femmequixotic]

Last week, ciderpress wrote:

There has been a great deal of discussion during and after our "Why OTW?" week, not only about OTW, but also about what it is to identify as a fan, what fandom means to different people and how individual fans and groups shape their own fannish experiences.

It's evident from what we've read that there have been some misconceptions about what our org is and what we hope to do. We apologise if we have been unclear about some of the concepts and policies, and we hope you will understand that we are still in the process of setting up policies and honing language. We don't have all the final, polished answers yet and we need time, hard work and your help to do that. In fact, our content policy will be up for discussion and feedback in a fandom-wide setting before we set our policies in stone.

In the hopes of not overwhelming you, we've decided to post the FAQ in bundles of five or six questions and answers, one bundle every other day or so. Ultimately, they'll all be added to the OTW website's FAQ.

What you'll read here in otw_news is a bit more informal than what will appear on the website; that's because the website is for fans and non-fans alike. But here, in otw_news, we're fans talking to fans. SRSLY.

Keep a look out for more bundles of FAQs as well as interviews with a few of the OTW's board members in the next few weeks!

1. Fandom got along just fine without OTW for forty years.

This is true and we hope will continue to be true for another 40 and 400 years--fandom will definitely continue to do fine without us and after us and forever and ever amen. But, on the other hand, fandom has not had the internet for 40 years. With the advent of the internet, and especially Web 2.0, fandom's connection with the so-called Real World has increased, and its relationship with copyright holders has increasingly come under focus. OTW is attempting to add a voice to the conversation about copyright, one that is articulate, informed, organized, and on the side of fandom.

2. Why do you care about Fanlib? Fanlib isn't forcing anyone to archive there, just ignore them!

FanLib set a dangerous precedent that fandom is available for the profitable plucking and exploitation by people who are not part of the culture of fandom; OTW does not, never has, and never will, profit from fandom, and objects on principle to FanLib's attempt to do so.

OTW's concern is that for-profit companies like Fanlib might become the public face of fanfiction, especially since fanfiction writers have a history of lying low. With more companies than ever keenly interested in how they can profit from "user-generated content", OTW doesn't want fannish newbies and other interested parties thinking this for-profit ideology represents fandom or for fans to be taken advantage of by such companies.

3. OTW's corporate structure is suspect. Fandom should be subversive.

OTW believes that its mission is best served by an organization that is transparent and accountable.

4. Why does OTW want to make fanworks legitimate? We don't need society's legitimization!

The kind of legitimization the OTW is focused on is that of fans being able to post their stories and art and vids without worrying they will be hit with a lawsuit. That's all. Sadly, we're pretty sure society as a whole will never quite understand the \o/ of something like, say, a really good wingfic. Which is a shame.

5. Edited at 9:59 a.m. 2/1/08 to remove this question. The specific concerns will be addressed in later FAQs. Our sincere apologies for this misstep; no dismissiveness of the concerns raised within it was intended in any form. We very much appreciate the discussion regarding the way it was perceived.

Edited at 9:50 p.m. 2/1/08. When we realized that our flip answer to question 5 was inappropriate for this forum, we deleted it. However, for archival purposes and in the hope of achieving some measure of transparency, here it is again:

5. The OTW is trying to take over all of fandom, and they didn't talk to me first, and they started in LJ, and they're going to cause all of fandom to be destroyed, and the worst of all is that they're a bunch of academics! They're trying to reinvent fandom when we have all the archives we already need thank you very much, and we don't need another one, and they're going to (1) legitimitise or (2) commercialize fandom and ruin it for all by dragging some terribly bad case of fanfiction into court. They use big words, and they're taking too long to set things up and they're not answering emails fast enough. (A tongue-in-cheek crticism from ithiliana's post: http://ithiliana.livejournal.com/804036.html)

Yes, there are some academics involved with the org. There are also some students, some lawyers, some unemployed folks, some young people, some old people, some fannish newbies, some folks who've been in fandom for decades, some blondes, some brunettes, and some redheads. :-)

And we're really not trying to reinvent fandom. We're building a fabulous, scaleable pan-fandom archive chock-full of interesting features which we hope fans will choose to use, but even if you'd rather not use it, you can still take advantage of the archive code and use it to build something else.

Commercializing fandom is exactly what we don't plan to do. We're here to try to prevent that from happening. Folks like FanLib and even copyright holders and user-generated content sites that make money from ad-revenues want to commercialize and monetize fandom, to make money off of the things we produce out of sheer love; we're here to offer an alternative to for-profit fansites, with the intent of preserving and protecting the fannish world we know and love.





-- femmequixotic, bethbethbeth, ciderpress, mirabile_dictu, shrift, svmadelyn.
Community Relations Committee

Edited 7:39 p.m. 1/31/08 to remove phrase regarding hair colors per comments below.
Edited at 9:59 a.m. 2/1/08 to remove question 5 per comments below.
Edited at 9:50 p.m. 2/1/08 to re-add question 5, struckthrough, for archival and transparency purposes.

Comments

[bethbethbeth.livejournal.com]

I just got home from work, but I sent a quick note to ComRel's mailing list before I caught the bus, and the line's already been deleted (with a note at the bottom of the entry saying the post's been edited and why). We might make further changes still, but I just thought you'd like to know this one has already been made.

[slashpine.livejournal.com]

Y'all are so cool! and quick. This and esp., understanding where others might be coming from is *exactly* why no one can represent fans but fans.

The hostility to academics that I saw was more than knee-jerk anti-intellectualism or a pet peeve. (Revenge for that low grade last semester, lol.) I was surprised to see people even calling meta "not fandom", along with the debate about how aca-fans should relate to non-acafans.

Some of this is coming from lack of recognition of what the broad continuum of fanwork includes. Efforts to narrow fandom to "just fanfic" or by % of posts, or location, are doomed to failure, because they leave out more than they take in. Fans may switch from fic to modding fests and vice versa, and are still fans. Someone who lurks, recs, betas, comments but doesn't post fic, is still a fan.

A lot of fanwork is not fics: metas, icons and vids, compiling long rec lists and tables of info, making polls and talking about the trends. That's not just "not fic", it's "non-fic." Aca-fans are made of non-fic. As I see it, they may write farther away from the source material, and post in more distant "comms"; but they're still responding to the source material. Fandom's existence is still their work.

Ah, but they get paid! Oh, and they "use" fans' work!

I see three issues in the anti-academic rants. First, the definition of fan activity in terms of type of source material, format for work, or forum for sharing is an issue OTW's already been grappling with. Why not facilitate some discussions? How about posting some rough draft "maps" or definitions to kick that off -- or better yet, find some unpublished, or re-usable work (Henry J?) that could be posted online, for fandom to discuss?

Second is the issue of recompense. Does pay for anything related to fandom disqualify one as a fan? What is an academic "earning" by studying fandom? LOL, not much usually; but still -- the question merits an answer. There's more than money involved. Distrust of aca-fans is similar to discourse about BNFs. At issue, then, is voluntarism vs. reward, anonymity vs. recognition.

Some skeevy myths lurk here too -- the myth that unpaid art is better; that women are above being paid (!); that "community" and recompense are incompatible (also !); and the folk law corollary that if you don't make money off it ("borrowing"?) it isn't illegal. Reduced to bare logic, none of these compute.

OTW will have to be able to articulate these issues for non-fandom audiences. But they're debates that are part of fandom's world, too, as well as fundamental to its definition, which is why they keep coming up in comments. I would urge trying to find the time and fen to host the discussion within fandom. The results would be useful at all levels.

The last issue is the problem of "authorship," which within fandom includes both plagiarism and re-use issues, and for aca-fans broadens out to how they represent fandom material to non-fandom viewers (and on the flip side, how they gained permission from their fandom sources). The "netiquette" of quotation, linking, remixing, commenting, etc., are all related strongly to both the ways that fandom gets its own original material (poaching?) and how it wants aca-fans or pro-fans to treat fandom (not poaching!). Again a core issue, worthy of formal discussion.

How do the ethics of fans vis-a-vis source material, fans v other fans' material, and aca-fans v fandom materials, compare and contrast? Are there uniform principles that do, or should, apply all along the spectrum? Or are there qualitative differences? What specific "netiquette" and guidelines have been developed, how do they vary (by fandom, for instance), and would it help fandom internally, or OTW in its work with the public, authors, academia, or fandom critics, to have this in writing?

All three issues -- fandom's activities, recompense, and control over material -- come into play in OTW's main mission and associated interests, as well as coming up in criticisms of OTW's members. I think OTW should take them seriously, address them as fully as any given stage of thought allows, and help fans think about them publicly so that we all see the different values better.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_swallow/]

(Zero-calorie reply: thank you, I really like this comment.)

[slashpine.livejournal.com]

i really like this reply :-)

*ganks*

[rez-lo.livejournal.com]

This and your comments below are really, really useful, imo; they're at once clear-sighted about the size and importance of the principles at work here (whether we know it or not) and respectful of the effort and intentions behind it. Thanks very much.

[khellekson.livejournal.com]

Wonderful post!

and for aca-fans broadens out to how they represent fandom material to non-fandom viewers (and on the flip side, how they gained permission from their fandom sources). The "netiquette" of quotation, linking, remixing, commenting, etc., are all related strongly to both the ways that fandom gets its own original material (poaching?) and how it wants aca-fans or pro-fans to treat fandom (not poaching!).

I have noticed that this is a fandom-specific concern. I have seen published studies where the writer did not obtain permission to quote from blogs, stories, or open posts. In my little fandom corner of the world, this is considered impolite, even unethical. And yet it's absolutely reasonable to many, who consider an open post...well...open. This kind of thing lacks consensus within the fan community, and the strategies you list may not be consistently meaningful.

My personal take on academics writing in fandom, be they acafans or just academics who happened to stumble across something fannish and interesting and engaged as an outsider (like an interesting study I read about Television Without Pity by a nonfan), is that all academic work, of every kind, is a kind of nonfiction fanfic, and fanfic itself is a kind fictive criticism. Don't all these forms of creation require basically the same strategies? Deep understanding of the source text; engagement with a community with certain standards that surrounds the text and provides a framework whereby it is judged; remix for effect or parody; application of an outside theory on an artwork (deconstruction! stream of consciousness! pointillism!).

Academics are intensely, fannishly interested in a particular subject, and they engage according to a set of rules governed by a community, which rewards them if they do well with things like tenure. Fans are intensely, academically interested in a particular subject, and they engage according to a set of rules governed by a community, which rewards them if they do well with things like feedback or status. It's true that if you get tenure, you presumably get money to go along with the job that they now can't arbitrarily fire you from, whereas with fanfic, you get adulation and little else, which brings us to...

There's more than money involved. Distrust of aca-fans is similar to discourse about BNFs. At issue, then, is voluntarism vs. reward, anonymity vs. recognition.

I'm unaffiliated, but I do see some troubling trends that may limit the ability of acafans to continue their work. One big one is ethnographic research, which is increasingly becoming limited to publication from people or groups who have been certified by an institutional review board to do work with human subjects, even if that means that you just administered a questionnaire online. Ticky boxes = human subjects! And it's also true that academics who work with things considered weird by nonfans, such as, oh, let's say SLASH, may not do work in that field, because it would do to have their RL name linked with such a topic.

So even within the academic world, "voluntarism vs. reward, anonymity vs. recognition" is fraught. It's just not that simple. You probably can't get a job or tenure if you're doing nothing but fan studies, but you can if you leaven it with something respectable, like media or film studies, or audience analysis. And sometimes you can't publish on what you're interested in because you don't want to out yourself or force your school to fire you because you are interested in Harry Potter slash and they're all underage ohno!

I agree that all these topics need to be discussed; and I really didn't know, one way or the other, what fen think of acafans, mostly because I know quite a few acafans and they seem pretty much like fen to me. It seems odd to be so mistrustful of people who have so very, very much to lose, merely by dint of having a RL name attached.

[ithiliana.livejournal.com]

I have noticed that this is a fandom-specific concern. I have seen published studies where the writer did not obtain permission to quote from blogs, stories, or open posts

I was told recently (by someone I'd never spoken to before) that lurkers culd quote just fine w/out permission, but since I am in fandom, I have to meet a higher standard; while I agree, in principle, with that (i.e. as a member of the community, I have a higher responsibility to the community than someone outside), I was then told that I should realize that my even asking for permission to talk about a story was an incredibly hostile "academizing" act that was probably traumatic to the person (turned out not to be true, when I finally managed to connect to the person who'd been busy in RL and not checking email). But at that point, I disengaged because I figured no matter what I did, I was damned (and that person is also an academic).

So there is NO agreement on any of these issues.

The IRB issue is more complex than you present it here: a *lot* depends on the makeup of the specific IRB and the specific campus. I hope more and more the Boards realize that different disciplinary standards apply, and that one cannot apply a cookie-cutter approach. Outside of working with certain populations (prisoners, pregnant women, minors) as the "study group," and outside of certain types of studies (clearly medical and psychological are the most relevant), the submission to IRB is not that onerous (everywhere). My own campus IRB is very good at being aware of diffrent standars for, say, oral history and journalistic types of research, and while I have some some questionnaires, that research never came until full IRB review.

Of course, academic committees are academic committees, and there can be power mad idiots anywhere (even in fandom). The old IRB chair here did not used to allow ANY ethnographic research at all, only quantitative, even in social sciences. People cheered when he left campus.

It seems odd to be so mistrustful of people who have so very, very much to lose, merely by dint of having a RL name attached.

Academics as a class/group do have a lot of social status and privilege, and I understand it's hard to people outside that culture to see the hierarchies within. But you're right here--and it's unfortunate that at least one critic of OTW is determined on linking one of the OTW members to her real life academic persona, something I'd always thought was frowned upon in this wonderful fandom culture we are all a part of (except for us academics, apparently).

A wonderful post--you know a lot about academia without being heavily invested in the scholarship/publish or perish parts of it all.

[khellekson.livejournal.com]

My own campus IRB is very good at being aware of diffrent standars for, say, oral history and journalistic types of research, and while I have some some questionnaires, that research never came until full IRB review.

Sure, I get that the research will often be rubber-stamped, or they'll look at your project and say, "We don't need to approve this. Go forth!" Like, you usually don't need IRB approval for a retrospective analysis of a published data set.

But in the back of my head when I was writing all this was the sad fact that I'm unaffiliated, and if I want to do human-studies research, I probably would never be able to get it published, because...I'm unaffiliated, and no IRB approval will be forthcoming. So nobody will publish my research.

I perceive this as a huge, huge problem. If research becomes so academic-ized that people cannot participate, it's a sad day for research. I get how in the sciences this is far more of an issue—people working out of homemade labs in their garages are unlikely to have the infrastructure and equipment to get that vaccine to human trials! And vaccines to human trials are just the things that IRBs were invented to oversee, not fans creating ticky-box questionnaires on LJ, you know?

So my concern is really more that the academy is insinuating itself everywhere and insisting on a level of oversight that is in fact inappropriate, mostly to cover their asses, but this is resulting in a quashing of valid, relevant research.

[slashpine.livejournal.com]

This is all so beautifully said. *blinks fast*

Really. I particularly happy-smiled at this:

"Academics are intensely, fannishly interested in a particular subject... Fans are intensely, academically interested in a particular subject...."

Haha, the all-purpose defense for both my geekly lifestyles at once!

Although the ring of the second phrase is a bit more jangly than the first, and I fear that's because while it simply sounds *intense* for academics to be "intensely, fannishly interested" in their pursuit, for fans or anyone to be "intensely, academically interested" sounds a bit of a contradiction in terms. "Academic" is too often used to mean a person is distanced, even indifferent. *mourns* Fans are, of course, by definition anything but!

I wish all academics *were* "fannish" in their intensity of interest.

On your other point, the rules and constraints troubling acafan work (and all academic work in general; I've been helping interview for a VP of Research and ooh-la-la, the regulatory compliance is hated by all, ag research as much as anthropology)... I hope to see, under OTW's aegis or not, some work within fandom on developing sensitive but workable rule sets that apply to the varied contexts and communities, such that rules can be proposed by researchers and the community to reviewers, rather than having rules imposed on them by IRBs.

The best check of ethical treatment in research is review by the community it concerns. Third=party assessment against generic rules in a handbook is a proxy substitute, which ignores the real community, its context, and particular concerns. There have been so many changes in this area... I've been reading the latest stories about repatriation of classical artworks; I'm sure there are more changes to come. "Participatory" ethnography exists; there might need to be more participatory fandom scholarship done, too. It's a shift, but of course you and Kristina show that the results can be very satisfactory for research and the community.

[khellekson.livejournal.com]

I wish all academics *were* "fannish" in their intensity of interest.

The thing is, I think they are, but the notion of a veneer of disinterest over the top of it is still perceived as being present. In the humanities, we are in the middle of the task of stripping away that veneer. In fan studies, strangely, explaining your engagement is a must; hardly any essay begins without a paragraph or two of subject positioning. Sometimes it's relevant; sometimes (as in a close reading of a single text) it's not. One fun thing that Kristina and I did in our book was tell writers to not worry about it. We covered the subject positioning in the intro, so the writers could save words for actual relevant content.

I had this in the back of my head when I wrote the response to you. You can tell from the title why I was thinking of it:

Jenson, Joli. 1992. Fandom as pathology: The consequence of characterization. In The adoring audience, ed. Lisa A. Lewis, 9–29. London: Routledge.

I hope to see, under OTW's aegis or not, some work within fandom on developing sensitive but workable rule sets that apply to the varied contexts and communities, such that rules can be proposed by researchers and the community to reviewers, rather than having rules imposed on them by IRBs.

I agree. I also think that in this matter, OTW and TWC may have different standards, because of the different nature of the projects and certain concerns about outside (grant) funding. I doubt OTW would find itself confronted with IRB concerns, but really, you never know.

TWC (the journal) has decided that, for research purposes, we'll follow the tenets of online research laid out in the Association of Internet Research's Guide on Ethical Online Research (http://www.aoir.org/?q=node/30). This is an outside body concerned with online research, and they totally focus on this topic and do it better than we ever could. We support their mission. Check them out and let me know what you think.

It's true that Kristina and I are both from a particular fannish background, and some of our editorial team are from another, but we'll be receiving essays from, we hope, a broad spectrum, and there will be little "community" consensus about acceptability of research methods.

We therefore need to be as broad and open as possible, which means that the policy we have on, for example, quotation of online sources, is not restrictive:

TWC, like its parent organization, the Organization for Transformative Works (OTW), is committed to the free expression of ideas, particularly in the context of scholarly activity about derivative fan artworks. Therefore, we do not require the consent, explicit or implicit, of the original author of a transformative work under discussion, such as a piece of fan fiction or a vid. All citation URLs to such texts need only be open to the public. (TWC's submission guidelines (http://journal.transformativeworks.org/index.php/twc/about/submissions#onlineSubmissions))

So the fannish part of me that firmly feels it's wrong to not obtain permission for that fanfic you're analyzing has to get over it; if it's an open post, it's fair game. Were I to write an essay for TWC, I would personally obtain permission because that's part of my community standards. But as an editor, I must accept the research methods selected by the researcher and trust that she is working within her own community's standards.

[slashpine.livejournal.com]

..."the notion of a veneer of disinterest over the top of it is still perceived as being present. In the humanities, we are in the middle of the task of stripping away that veneer."

Ah, if only this obtained across *all* the disciplines I work in! Next week I'll be at the Pop Culture/Amer.Culture conference (SW/TX regional) and I know that my utter enthusiasm for my subject, my first-person engagement with the material and the students I care about (presenting on an "environmental worldviews in music" teaching approach - mediated philosophy, lol) will be welcome. In fact, its absence might seem odd.

But most of my work is reviewed by your classic stodgy-male (and male-like female, ack) faculty who have a knee-jerk habit of expecting elaborate statistical measures of "objectivity" and rejecting enthusiastic work - or reception - as "popular". LOL. Freudian case study, that. I have more than one faculty who quite srsly believes "analysis" = "quantitative measures," preferably in a chemistry lab. I love that humanities has started to melt the ice of the obsessive emulation of "Science." However, even where humanities are represented on committees at my university (rarely, alas) or acknowledged in many my professional societies, it's as the lesser Other approach, the shabby relative of Real (heavily funded) Science.

But hey, the hell with them :-) Times, and the ethos, are changing. TWC's startup offers all the concrete "proof" one could demand.

I have Lewis on my shelf, but largely unread, like most of my media and fandom items. I'll eagerly check out the research ethics link - Thanks!

I appreciate your careful and explicit stance wrt OTW's, TWC's, and your own personal framings of fanwork research ethics. Simply seeing that the nuances and inevitable dilemmas are acknowledged may often be (and at least in my anthropology experience, has been) good enough warrant for a community to extend their trust.

Thanks for all your thoughtful replies, and sharing these observations! I very much look forward to seeing TWC's work.

[kbusse.livejournal.com]

Speaking as someone who'll be responsible for overseeing at least a fair amount of academic research as TWC is under the umbrella of, though not the mouthpiece for, OTW (being as how we have to have scholarly independence to function), I'll try to answer this, though of course there are no easy answers:.

(1) I'm not sure this is what you mean, but fandom has a tradition of meta that ranges from the most offhand LJ comment to the most formal article, and we've always had that spectrum. What's nice is that for the first time, we have it in our own space--we don't have to explain why fan meta or scholarship is worthy or important.

(2) The second point is the one I'm most concerned with and have been battling for as long as I've been a fan doing scholarship on fan texts and fan culture. Recognition and reward are always important, but when they lead to actual external benefits they become more complicated. Of course, I could take the easy out and explain that neither I nor Karen are actually good test cases of this argument since we do not reap external benefits from our work. Neither one of us are academically employed in such a way that would allow publication to grant us tenure or increase our pay. In fact, I used to work in an environment (public boarding high school in the Deep South), where my scholarship had more potential to hurt me rather than grant any form of reward. But there certainly are scholars who are either in grad school or on the job market or tenure tracked or tenured who can and do profit however incidentally from published research. So let's see what that actually means, how they do or do not "use" fandom.

Here's the thing: I'm sure we've all read that really bad essay (or book) where you just want to headdesk and ask the person what they were smoking (and if you have no idea what i'm talking about be happy; if you want a list or PDF files, ask and I'll happily send examples your way : ). Oddly enough rarely are these people "in" fandom! So could we maybe argue that being in fandom and doing academic work actually increases the quality of the scholarship and the accuracy of representation? Now, the argument has been made that outsiders might be more objective, but to me that resonates too strongly with an anti-identity politics argument that feels whites teach African-American literature "better," that straight people are more objective when explaining queer studies, etc. I think that BS when I am the one in supposed objectivity and when I have a supposedly vested interest (like I ever don't).

I clearly don't speak for all acafans, but the thing is: logically, only someone immersed in the community and its values would probably even think about that. A couple of conferences ago I had a long debate with someone (a fanboy :) who hadn't ever even thought about not linking into bulletin boards. After all, they were PUBLIC, weren't they? For me, in a way, being involved with OTW is actually also in a small way and on some level about educating other scholars that there *are* ethical guidelines and internal expectations that they may not be aware of. In fact, when a few weeks ago someone emailed me to ask how to engage with vidders because they wanted to use some vids in their work I was ecstatic! Not only did that indicate that vids were being looked at alongside other things--the fact that they'd realized that just tracking down the vid and discussing them might not be the right thing to do in and for that community was important to me.

(3) The third point has me slightly confused again. I'd love for you to start a public post raising these issues, because I think there's something central you're getting it, but I'm not sure I fully know where you're heading here. In the broadest sense, OTW has a policy of supporting transformative works as legitimate (as opposed to plagiarism, which is claiming other people's work as your own) including remixing, and also supporting fair use both of creative and scholarly kinds. That being said, of course, there are rules as well as conventions, both fannish and scholarly, about how and when to quote, link, remix, and comment, and OTW's broad fair use position shouldn't stop that conversation, even though as an organization, they've taken a clear stand.

[rez-lo.livejournal.com]

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.

If, I suppose, only to me.

[ithiliana.livejournal.com]

Does she?

I am not trying to start a fight here.

But let me explain: although I am on the Board of the journal, and I am going to spread the news of this journal far and wide, I will not be submitting an essay to it because my whole department has recently been informed that in order to keep getting administrative support (we nearly lost our doctoral program a little while ago), we *must* publish in more elite and reputable journals. Now, they do say "reputable" for your field, but that still hav every specific meanings in academia.

Reputable/elite means: longevity (this journal just started up; it has no history).

It also means that the journal rejects a whole lot of submissions (if a journal rejects 80-90% of submissions, they are partaking of HIGH standards). That is good. The journal doesn't have any record.

I suspect for a lot of people the number of women involved makes it automatically suspect/lower down, touchy-feely, not partaking of true academic rigor and hardness (the phallic language is strong among the gatekeepers of academia).

This journal also have an openness to scholarship by fan scholars and in a variety of areas that are not traditional/elite academic that would make the gatekeepers look down on them. For one thing, there are academic departments where online publishing doesn't count (not even a peer-reviewed journal). They will probably be open to collaborative work (and in my discipline, collaborative is considered a wee bit iffy--I do collaborative work but I can afford to).

This journal is trying to push boundaries, trying, among other things, to bring in more fan scholarship, trying to challenge academic elitism and suppositions. That's a valuable effort, but as someone involved with similar journals, I know just how badly they will be looked upon by many academics (and in future if I see the type of criticism I've seen used, I might just quote it for you all).

There are people *in fandom* who affect the debates about fandom on a scale unavailable to most fans and most aca-fans: can we talk about all the press that Lexicon has gotten? About all the press that Rowling's famous debate with the mods of the HP site got?

Yes, some aca fan might have access to bigger soapboxes than your average fan (none of us half as big as Henry's), but some fans have access to much bigger soapboxes: I'm not saying your point is valid, but it's more complicated than the "academics have all the power" and "fans have none."

[ithiliana.livejournal.com]

Do academics pay attention to the fan soapboxes? Probably not, but what many don't realize is that they won't pay attention to fan studies as well--i.e. the ones who'll read this stuff are, primarily, the ones who do it, and people who want to do it, and major critics of it. Most academics won't know it, won't read it: I cannot even keep up with reading the academic journals from the organizations I belong to, let alone any others. There are thousands of the darn things.

And we're all tiptoeing around not naming names in terms of scholars, but I would be interested (email me) in those you consider got it so wrong who are in fandom.

I am still flabbergasted by the attitude that sets up the idea of a right/wrong argument about fandom (academics, outsiders to fandom and insiders in specific areas of fandom), and says they'd rather have outsiders make it. (I'm not sure you've made that above, but it connects to people who've said that).

We have to limit/qualify our arguments--and the best scholarship does that.

What that argument starts to sound like to me is basically: we'd rather have the white straight men who have the most cultural capital keep making wrong arguments about fandom, but we'll go after and attack any white woman who dares to do so (I only know two academics of color who publish in fandom, both female, although I hope there are more). And there are some fairly nasty personal attacks starting to happen, including outing of people.

And that's depressing as hell.

Academics have made a whole range of arguments about parts of fandom: can any argument include all of fandom? And if the field of argument in academia is growing daily, one can only hope that the good as well as the bad will grow. And every academic argument is understood to be partial, incomplete, in process, subject to change over time, subject to challenge from everybody else--but apparently that view of academia is hidden (probably because most fans only read a couple of pieces and no more, and yeah, why should they, except that if they judge academia on that, it's like judging fandom on well, two pieces of fanfic).

And nobody would do that, would they?

[rez-lo.livejournal.com]

No firestarting intended on my end, either, and none assumed on yours. And I'd really, really like to avoid any inadvertent contribution to Wank In The House Of Fandom, so I'll take the topical part of this to email. *g* But I feel as though I should respond at least partially in this forum, since I think these are general issues. First:

I am still flabbergasted by the attitude that sets up the idea of a right/wrong argument about fandom (academics, outsiders to fandom and insiders in specific areas of fandom), and says they'd rather have outsiders make it. (I'm not sure you've made that above, but it connects to people who've said that).

I'm not very clear about what you mean here. I'm not intending to set up a right/wrong argument about fandom, only to say that the power to shape and affect discourses about fandom accrues more readily to fans whose fannishness is also a cause of affiliation with institutions that pronounce on culture.

There are people *in fandom* who affect the debates about fandom on a scale unavailable to most fans and most aca-fans: can we talk about all the press that Lexicon has gotten? About all the press that Rowling's famous debate with the mods of the HP site got?

But I'm not talking about individuals (and even my topical disagreements are not with individuals but with positions). I'm looking at the class of fans for whom fandom also has a direct bearing on their profession.

(none of us half as big as Henry's)

But Henry remembers your name, does he not? Pays you a modicum of professional courtesy, might even refer someone your way, or your name to someone else, if the chance came up and he happened to think of it? And since not even Henry, prodigious as he is, can field every request for expert testimony or an interview for publication or a quote for a news story or a chair on a panel... that's what I was trying to describe with the "cultural transponder" thing.

I'm not saying your point is valid, but it's more complicated than the "academics have all the power" and "fans have none."

I hope that isn't what actually comes across, because I don't think either of those things is true. The rhetorical construction of these issues to absolutes or binaries is very discouraging, I agree. I don't want to contribute to it, and I don't think I have.

What that argument starts to sound like to me is basically: we'd rather have the white straight men who have the most cultural capital keep making wrong arguments about fandom, but we'll go after and attack any white woman who dares to do so (I only know two academics of color who publish in fandom, both female, although I hope there are more). And there are some fairly nasty personal attacks starting to happen, including outing of people.

But I am not making this argument. And I'm not attacking anyone, personally or otherwise. It is in fact precisely the point that it's women scholars working from within fandom that makes this set of concerns so important to me, because I do most sincerely want you to represent me, include me, value my fannishness. Do I expect more of you than I do of the straight white man? Yes. And perhaps that's unfair. I don't know.

[ithiliana.livejournal.com]

I'm tired but must continue because more copyediting is due tomorrow, and my brain is buzzing.

I'll cut from your post and try to respond directly since I admit that my past experiences may be affecting my reading abilities. I was driven out of fandom once by anti-academic battering in an APA I was in, and after I left, I stayed away for years. I came back only because of women, and I purposely hang out with mostly women. Some are academics, but many, if not most, are not.

I'm not very clear about what you mean here. I'm not intending to set up a right/wrong argument about fandom, only to say that the power to shape and affect discourses about fandom accrues more readily to fans whose fannishness is also a cause of affiliation with institutions that pronounce on culture.

I agree that in some places, academics have more power to shape some discourses. However, in many discourses, we have little or no power. An occasional academic gets called by the occasional journalist, but most of the time, media types sail right on into writing about fandom with no input from academics. And, yes, most of the time it's Henry Jenkins, but we can talk more about that later.

I guess that as someone in an academic discipline which has very little impact on anybody these days (the culture wars during the 1980s went after literature departments first, for daring to teach Alice Walker and Toni Morrison which meant that Shakespeare was thrown into the gutter -- and I can give you name and titles of the people saying that: Lynne Cheney and George Will among them. Michael Berube has blogged about all the anti-multicultural lit and anti-gender stuff coming from the popular press and media), I have a hard time believing that the stuff I write really affects anyone because I've had very little external proof that anybody reads my stuff, beyond a fairly narrow circle of academics all in my own field(s). I write about feminism and science fiction, Tolkien's book and Jackson's novel, and fan studies (I've had one article published, and I'll be glad to send you a copy if you wish).

I've given a few papers, to a room with maybe 10-30 people, who spend four days listening to other papers. I've made some good connections with some of them. Print can always have effects beyond the immediate--but I don't see my discipline as having any major cultural capital and haven't for years (my theory is they wouldn't be graduating women as 60% of English PhDs if the discipline had any stature--and even then it's a rare department that has even 30% women tenured raculty). The cultural capital and power is in Computer Science and engineering, and I suppose Business, and medical and related disciplines.

So in effect: yes, aca-fen have that connection to outside cultural institutions that create and circulate discourses.

But so do fen who are journalists, bloggers, and those work in tech and computer science and internet related companies. Does anybody worry about those people's opinions shaping anything--and yet they must!

Fans jumped in with FanLib too. That's shaping discourse.

So why so much ire against *one* group?

And I know I keep shifting to individuals--but well, when people make arguments about a group/aca-fen, all I can see is that MY experience, my publications, my theories, my methods aren't being represented (hmmm, that does sound familiar!).

So a lot of the anti-academic arguments I was mocking in that one post set up what I considered a straw-aca-fan.

When I actually talked to a few fans who could tell how they'd been hurt by a publication, the actual examples were mostly students--that doesn't negate their hurt (publishing on the internet something that had been presented as for a class only), but again, that's not me, and yet, I'm being lumped in with that group beause I'm part of it.

By that argument, if one fan behaves badly, all fen are in the same boat, and nobody would accept that.

[ithiliana.livejournal.com]

Henry? Well maybe he remembers my name.

In which case he remembers I posted about how one of my papers took on a generalization he made about women creating fanfiction because they were forced to watch all the masculine shows and brought romance in, and I was writing about women who loved sf (and never agreed it was for boy's only) and wrote dark stuff and porn and action stuff--a minority among fen, and stories, but still, contradicting him. The *only* post he made on the fandebate community was to "inform" me that he'd written a lot more since that piece was published, and it wasn't fair to only work from that perspective, and I had to read all his work.

And he'd probably also remember I showed up calling a lot of the men in that debate sexists and got them very mad at me, including some of his best buddies and ex-students. I esp. remember one of his ex students who got roundly corrected by a number of women for not knowing that the novel used to be dominated by women, back a century or two. An MA in media studies does not give you knowledge about the history of the novel, but he thought he could spout off and claim that it was always written by men.

And since that debate--well, did you notice the article about OTW that cited Henry only? He didn't give that writer any other names, although I gather he didn't realize he was the only person being referenced. But no, I don't think he will give my name to anybody (the journalist I mentioned I talked to the other day? Was referred by a woman scholar who was referred by a woman scholar.)

And let me be clear too: he's in a different discipline than I am--we don't publish in the same types of journals or attend the same conferences. I don't go to the media conferences, and don't care too, so it doesn't matter that I spouted off.

There are two men I know who'd probably refer people to me, in that situation, both academics, one queer, one a feminist, and neither does fan studies (in fact, they're such good friends they wrote me letters for my slashing proposal). They do science fiction--although one is sneaking over into fanzines as well as pulp zines, using archival material (the OLDer fan productions). The other does children's lit and the fantastic.

However, the vast majority of time networking is done, that I have benefitted from, it's from women.

I was the one saying why bother with the aca-fan debate, I don't care about bringing the boys in, or spending time educating them, I want to create networks among the women because my experience in academia is that 99% of the time, it's women who'll support other women, recommend them, etc.

Showing up and calling the men sexist does not get one referrals, but I really didn't give a damn. Actually, I got a nice invite to read a paper on slash because women who were lurking and reading at that debate liked how I kept calling the guys on their sexism (and tried to bring in the subject of racism).

[ithiliana.livejournal.com]

It is in fact precisely the point that it's women scholars working from within fandom that makes this set of concerns so important to me, because I do most sincerely want you to represent me, include me, value my fannishness. Do I expect more of you than I do of the straight white man? Yes. And perhaps that's unfair. I don't know.

It might be unfair, but it's not at all unusual. Women faculty get evaluations all the time that "judge" them in ways white male faculty are not judged; we're used to it.

I wouldn't try to represent you or your fannishness--at least, that's not how I talk about and see my scholarship. Fans are myriad, all ages (I stay away from minors because of legal issues and also personal choice--I hated adolescents when I was one, and would never teach in high schools), all ethnicities, all genders, all nationalities, all areas of ability/disability, all the human condition.

By virtue of being one person writing from a related batch of theories/methodologies, I'm excluding most of fans/fannishness. I am interested in queerness and how it manifests itself within LOTR online LJ fandom. I am interested in racism imbroglios. I am interested in f/f slash--and I'm very interested in why little academic scholarship on fandom covers either race or f/f/ slash (more is coming! we have an essay for our anthology on f/f slash in ST). I'm also interested in why most academics ignore RPF--a good number of my works in progress (it can take me two years to write an essay, another two years to get it published, academic time being what it is) point out gaps in the scholarship, gaps that I've noticed because they connect mostly to what I see/value in fandom. I am not going to spend a lot of time writing about other fandoms (if I'm not in it, I'm not going to write about it); I'm not going to write about gen or het. At the moment, I am thinking that a new and interesting project would be fan scholarship and meta, because that's so often overlooked. So unless your fannishness fits in that very narrow area, I am excluding you -- because as far as I'm concerned, a more limited focus/argument is stronger. I am not saying Fan/fandom is X, I'm saying there's this thread/type of discourse among a million others in fandom.

I'm sorry if this sounds horribly elitist: but I have no desire to try to represent "all" kinds of fannishness. I cannot; it would be insane to even try. My goal would rather be to create opportunities for more work by more scholars covering all the cool stuff that's out there that's barely been touched upon. And I am working on a super sekrit plan for just that that you'll all be hearing about in a few months.

So being criticized for not representing X and Y--well. I have no defense. I don't, I haven't, and I won't.

I know that early movements in a new field have to paint with broader strokes--and that's what happened. But I'm not interested in broad strokes, universal or foundational theories, or major structural issues--and I'm not interested in psychology (I analyze texts). That's why I was criticizing Henry's claim: that fanfiction was created by women forced to watch male texts and they wrote romance in.

I don't like or read romance. I refuse to designate sf a male text, as did the feminist and women writers of sf I love. And nobody forced me to read anything (although I did have to sit through a helluva lot of country music shows growing up when anad were I did).

So I know I'm babbling, I know I'm over the text limit, but I guess--I've admired how you've written in the past, and I'm frustrated because there is no way that I can see that I can do what you would like me to do.

[kbusse.livejournal.com]

What I meant by external benefits is that I do not reap traditional academic benefits, i.e., I do not get tenure, class reduction, paid for my research. In fact, I pay my own way to academic conferences to participate in the debates and all research is done in my free time--the same time that I'd do anything else like, say, write a story or make a vid. As for incidentalness--yes, whatever I write is very central to my fannishness but how is that different from any other fan's production?

And of course I'm building a reputation as a public commenter on fandom--like most do who have a blog and talk about fandom or who comment in Henry's blog or engage in LJ meta. I'm really not sure how my reputation building is qualitatively or even quantitatively different from that of, let's say Laura Shapiro's to just throw out a name of a fan who engages in fandom under her own name and whose accomplishments have made her a representative of sorts.

I can't really say much about the transmission history of "feral fan." It's not a term used by anyone I know or myself in our academic work, so there really is no academic text where it could or should be studied.

But you're right: I do affect the terms of debate about fandom, and I am well aware of that responsibility. I'm not sure what else I can say. My work is out there, and I am and will be judged on that. My essays are part of a larger debate and I do the best job I can to not misrepresent and to limit my statements to keep them true (qualifiers are my friend as are narrow case studies).

I'm not sure how to answer the last issue, since I simply disagree. I understand why an outsider miscategorizing you feels less problematic, but in the end, the essay is still out there to be cited and referenced. Moreover, I'm not sure what you're referencing that excludes you and whether the exclusion is rhetorical (i.e., here are people talking about fans in a language purposefully complex and insiderish) or content based (i.e., here are people talking and they're discussion fandom in ways that don't resonate with me).

[ETA: Since I wrote this you've said a bit more, and I do understand that you're expecting more of us--as you well should. But I actually think we *are* doing better, and maybe you might need to cc me in that email you're sending to ithiliana, because I'd love to know where you've felt that scholarship by fans has left you excluded, frustrated, etc.

As for the larger underlying issue of cultural capital and what it means to make yourself a name in fan studies...yes, it is definitely an issue that we need to be aware of and cannot ignore, but it is also an issue that can't be resolved I think. Also, I could invoke Foucault or talk about fish in really tiny ponds, but I may just share yet another personal anecdote: if we still had any contact, my former diss committee would more than likely disavow me for my current work :) ]

[rez-lo.livejournal.com]

You and ithiliana are both very patient; I appreciate that. It's not a great feeling to be adding to the demands you're already responding to, and I don't do it lightly, at least from my point of view. I'll think about how best to frame my topical worry in an email with copies to you both.

[ex-gnomicut.livejournal.com]

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?

Hi. I'm a review editor for TWC, and, like Karen and Kristina, I'm an independent scholar. I'm only answering this question for myself, though of course you asked it of Kristina.

My increased reputation as an academic in the field of fan studies doesn't help me as a fan, because I keep my fan and academic identities extremely separated. There are definitely people who know both my fan and academic identities, but that list is small, so I'm certainly not building any fannish cred by participating in fan studies.

You would think that being an editor on a peer-reviewed journal would at least help me in academia -- but it doesn't. I'm an independent scholar, and I in fact have been advised to take several of my academic papers off my resume. It's not just that having a section for academic papers makes you look too expensive as a candidate for a nonacademic job. It's specifically my fannish papers, which have titles which, I have been advised, make me look like not a serious candidate. If I want to gain professional benefits, I would take the invitations I've been offered to work with steering committees in my vocation -- invitations I've turned down because my independent scholarship eats up so much of my free time.

In other words, I'm doing this for love. For love, and because I have an irrational need to overcommit the tasks I don't have time to fulfill. It gets me social props with the very small circle of people who are also acafen who know who I am, but not nearly as much fannish love as I have gotten from fannish activities.

[rez-lo.livejournal.com]

Thanks very much for the comment. I'll admit to being a little frustrated by my seeming inability to be clear about what I mean by things like influence and benefit. It's been instructive to see the shifting frames of reference we all seem to employ instinctively and often to the confusion of interlocutors.

Maybe I need to restate, first, that I have no truck with the argument that there's something wrong, inauthentic, immoral, tainted, or otherwise evil about the fannishness of acafen in any of its manifestations. I understand that there are those who do believe this. I wish I could differentiate my arguments from theirs a little better than I seem to be doing so far.

My concerns have nothing to do with individual cases. The fact remains that power to shape discourses about fandom accrues more generously to the class of fans whose fannishness is a cause of their affiliation with an institution (like scholarship) that pronounces on culture. Keeping one's fannish and scholarly identities separate doesn't affect that.

Influence is the ability to amplify some sets of ideas about fandom, and to damp others. Your work is an instantiation of that power. Scholarly affiliation carries cultural privilege, regardless of any individual's experiences within the hierarchy of either academia or fandom itself. (I'm not an academic but I'm not entirely ignorant either. I understand completely that fannish stuff isn't exactly the gold standard in the ivory tower these days. That doesn't actually matter very much to the point I'm trying to make.)

OTW has set out to build power to affect the dominant cultural discourses about fandom. Acafans, pro-writer fans, constitutional and IP lawyer fans are among those who, as a class, have more clout out the gate in the enterprise. Fans who aren't any of those things know this. From my little corner, a lot of us think that's fine, as long as the privilege is acknowledged and open to challenge, and there's respect paid to the fact that unintended consequences are not only possible but certain. My own respect for the commitment and vision evident in OTW so far is enormous.

[slashpine.livejournal.com]

Lovely post, thank you so much for your comments. Please accept my apologies for being so slow to reply!

1. Meta as a continuum - yes, precisely. I very much locate "academic essays" not as a qualitatively separate category, but rather as one of multiple traditions spiraling out from the text or semiotic resource that inspires them -- which in this context could be either the fandom source material, or fanfic, or other aspects of fandom and its work. Like fanfics and as you say, any LJ comment, scholarly works have their own semi-established conventions of style, tone, citation, etc.

I'm not sure I don't find them less formal and rigid than the macro-cat or l33t traditions of some fandom communities :-) (At least in academia, people will copy-edit your efforts before they're posted, rather than eagerly sharing it with fandom_report. Although perhaps academia needs something like that: imagine "summary_executions," for abstracts. ;-)

2. Recognition and reward are issues complicated by the fact that our society overwhelmingly focuses on monetary forms of measurement, which can barely grasp social values as existing, let alone figure out how to 'measure' them. I like your suggestion: let's see how "recognition" actually circulates in the economy of social capital, how it is translated into financial rewards, to what extent, and under what conditions. In most cases, I suspect that the translation is at a distance and hard to correlate. "Everyone knows her and likes her work!" is a statement with social impact, but what precise weight does it have in getting someone a job? I hate to quote scientists, but ...needs more research.

Perhaps one fandom study, which could be started relatively soon, is to assess what impact involvement in fandom (including fanfic, art, RPG, etc., and/or fanscholarship) is perceived to have on young and established scholar careers (thus including students). We know anecdotally (*waves at ithiliana, above*) that fan ties have often been a negative for faculty. We'd expect them to become more positive.... Qualitative research would be a straightforward approach to this issue, which would parallel much existing work in areas like higher ed (e.g., perceptions of non-traditional women students) and workplace differences (e.g., changes after laws like Title IX and ADA).

"(3) The third point has me slightly confused again. I'd love for you to start a public post raising these issues, because I think there's something central you're getting it, but I'm not sure I fully know where you're heading here."

Haha, I don't entirely know either, or at least not right now. I'll put this on my to-do list! I'm interested in unpacking -- probably through much dialogue describing people's varied definitions, and actual instances -- the "rules as well as conventions, both fannish and scholarly, about how and when to quote, link, remix, and comment." It's a project that intrigues me. There have been radical shifts in ethical reasoning, social practice, and technological possibilities around some of these terms, but I think there's solid and defensible ground beneath. Postmodern, postcolonial, and postpositivist, perhaps. That would make for problems hooking it up with current economically-inflected legal views, which are decided not "post."

BTW, I have nothing but love for the high-ground term "transformative." Bricoleurs FTW!

As for "objectivity," science taught me long ago to reject its spurious claims of "value neutrality"; I'm with you there that the claim "Only an X can teach about X" is as invalid as "Only a non-X can speak truth about X." Certainly, a scholar's familiarity with her subject - like fandom - would seem relevant to her claims about it! It's very local and contextual, though. Meta-ethics and -epistemology make a pretty good case that just the idea that there is some ideal place from which some ideal person can see universally, without any bias, is a myth. It fantasizes an ideal state that should never have been taken as a possible reality.

[rez-lo.livejournal.com]

...And I just got back myself. Thanks very much for the quick response and the notification.