…I posit that the unexamined yet assumed whiteness of media fan spaces has allowed for successive theorizations about

…I posit that the unexamined yet assumed whiteness of media fan spaces has allowed for successive theorizations about their workings to have now solidified into accepted histories. This positioning now forces any consideration of racial dynamics within those spaces to be considered as something additional to, rather than constitutive of, media fan identity. Because the activities of (white) women interested in reworking popular cultural texts have been the target of societal scorn (like Cath), the project for the reclamation of their practices has been constructed as a particular narrative around the ways in which fan communities engage with difference and how fan works engage with bodies and sexualities.

In this theoretical construction, any discussion of race becomes an exception, an interruption, and a bringer of fandom drama.

__

Share: