In lieu of original content, because I have a cold and my period, both

[marnanightingale]

"I think what we are seeing are efforts to map an intermediate space we can't quite define yet, a borderland betwen passion and intellect, analysis and subjectivity, ethnography and autobiography, art and life ... [t]he anxiety around such work is that it will prove to be beyond criticism, that it will be undiscussable. But the real problem is that we need other forms of criticism, which are rigorous yet not disinterested; forms of criticism which are not immune to catharsis; forms of criticism which can respond vulnerably..."

Ruth Behar, Anthropology That Breaks Your Heart, in The Vulnerable Observer.

Discuss, with reference to fannish preoccupations, productions, and critical and analytical activity.

Or, you know, not, but I thought it was interesting. I'll be along as soon as I can think again...

Comments

[gryphons-lair.livejournal.com]

I never really thought about it before, but...

Fanfic is critique, isn't it?

What do I mean? Well, let me try to explain.

How many of us have written a fic because we had to explain a particular conflict in canon, or fill in a gap in the plotline? Because we thought Character X wasn't given a fair shake, and wanted to fix that? Isn't all of that, in a way, a critique of the original?

But it's not a 'critique' in the way ordinary people use the word. It's not a detached, scholarly discussion of what's wrong and right with the plot, characterizations, etc. It's a story in its own right, and that makes it both more subtle and harder to, for lack of a better word, refute.

By which I mean, if I post a long meta about how I'm convinced that Horatio Hornblower was sexually abused as a small child, and cite examples from canon that I think support that viewpoint, my readers can say "I don't agree with you, because..." and cite contradictory bits of canon to show why they're right. But if I write a story where Horatio has a flashback to being abused when he was four, people are far less likely to dispute the issue with me. The most they'll say is, probably, that they "didn't like the story" or "couldn't get into your premise" or some such. (I do not, by the way, believe that. I was just picking a potentially-controversial example.)

But that story would still be a critique of how Horatio was portrayed in the series. Wouldn't it?

And on some level, I think we're all aware of it. One reason I think this is a recent long, rambly meta from marinarusalka about Bootstrap (a very interesting meta, you should go read it here (http://www.livejournal.com/users/marinarusalka/149325.html?)) which she ended with:

"Sigh. Now that I think of it, this would all probably be better written in a fanfic than in essay form."

Fanfic IS meta. Or critique, to use the non-fannish term for it. It's just meta wrapped up in a plot and dialog.

[commodorified.livejournal.com]

Mmm, yes. And also, meta itself is a different kind of critique, one that values engagement and passion and vulnerability, and at the same time analysis and rigor.

Criticism that breaks your heart, in other words.

And on yet another level, what sort of methods and approaches are we developing/can we develop for critiquing these engaged critiques?

On the one hand we get the big messy fannish fights, and on the other the people who feel constrained not to engage in critique, and I could posit that these things are to some degree a function of either -- in the first place -- the consciousness of and commitment to vulnerability and passion, or -- in the second -- the analysis and rigor being dropped, of the attempt to combine the two breaking down.

And somewhere in there is there a sort of method emerging? And if there is, what would that look like?

[norah.livejournal.com]

I stuck this in my memories under "Anthropology and fandom: liminal criticism" and then a few hours later thought WTF am I using that word for, it's a pretentious academic word.

http://parole.aporee.org/work/hier.php3?spec_id=19650&words_id=900

But yeah, fandom is a wierd space - it accesses and is accessible to both the creation and the consumer. And I really need to go back to work and I am afraid to pretend to think anyway, so there I leave it.

[commodorified.livejournal.com]

Oh hey, four years in a religion department. studying anth -- I do not fear the use of the word liminal. :-)

And I don't think it's pretentious, cause there is no better word for the things it talks about.

I hadn't thought about that and if you get a chance to expand that would make me very happy, cause I really mostly wanted to throw that out and see where it went.

I was pondering fandom as not so much an intrinsically liminal critical space --okay. now I have to figure that out, what that would be -- a space that was BY NATURE outside the walls of the critical city and would never be inside it, though what was found there might be brought back inside the walls -- but as a minimally explored one, a space that is in the process of being occupied, and so is liminal only conditionally and temporarily -- this is interesting, in that context -- Ron Moore seems to be a man who has ventured, even lived, outside the city walls for awhile and then gone back inside, taking what he knew, and it makes me wonder how many more of them are in the city, you know?

So, will the city walls move outwards? And if they do, will we -- some of us at least -- keep travelling, finding new places outside, and invest in them because they ARE outside, or will we be happy to go back in once the city becomes a place that we find welcoming?

Oh, Lordy, LOOK what you started :-)

Oh, I don't know...

[icewolf010.livejournal.com]

...but I do know a lot about criticism. At least of the literary type.

The original "critics" of English literature, Pope, Johnson, et al, would have been aghast at what the 20th century did to criticism. They turned it into the science of of weighing a poem, of measuring a paragraph.

Originally, criticism was a how to guide: how to (or how not to) write well. And critics were extremely rigorous. Actually, this does link into fandom. Specifically the kind of anti-fandom where people write fanfic to criticize authors/filmakers/whatever they don't like. Like those hilarious Anita Blake sendups where everyone wears dark blue jeans. :)

The first "English novel" was a g-dawful piece of dreck called Pamela: Or, Virture Rewarded, written by Samuel Richardson, published in 1740. It raises something of a chicken/egg controversey. Did Pamela start the stereotype of the virtuous serving girl persued by her evil lustful master, only to "convert" him by her virtuous example and be rewarded with marriage and high status, or is it merely a prime example of the theme?

Anyway, while the masses ate up Richardson's novel, critics had a field day. Most prominent is Henry Fielding and his send up of Richardson's saccharine serving girl, Shamela. This is the same guy who wrote Tom Jones. You do the math. :)

So, fandom has been around a long time, and the "scientific method" of literary criticism perpetrated in high schools (at least in the US) is not what the critical founding fathers had in mind at all, at all.