Critical Narrative Project

Participatory and fandom culture are figured worlds which have grown to warrant attention and significance both on the device and in the classroom. Having first become enthralled with fandom studies in my first year of graduate study while sitting under Dr. Balaka Basu’s Digital Narratives for Young People, I became intrigued by the interactions and perceptions of the fan identity. With technology and modalities strengthening participatory culture, the platform which houses this figured world has fostered the fandom identity. But this is why it’s important to look beyond the fan within its figured world. To take a step back is to examine the discourses whose commentary may commend or criticize, giving a better understanding of the identity as it creates new ways of being outside of its home platform.

Because of the social tension surrounding the fandom over what is “real” and what is “fiction” or “fantasy”, the dominant discourses of “real life” often casts the fandom as Other. In the narrative that follows these “real life” discourses are illustrated as outsider (parents, teachers, non-fandom friends, society, and scholar). However, this narrative also includes a metaperspective as the fan (fandom) indulges in the practice of commenting upon itself with a perspective it imagines outside discourses attribute.

This narrative serves as a precursor to my Rhetorical Analysis project and pushes to explore an identity using both the perspective and language of academic, social, and online discourse. In doing so, the reader will notice the ways in which these discourses appear, interact, and attribute meaning through language and image.

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