The Fans of Cultural Theory
The Fans of Cultural Theory
Alan McKee
In common usage, the word “theory” refers to a “scheme or system of ideas or statements held as an explanation or account of a group of facts or phenomena” (OED). But in the humanities, the word “theory” (sometimes capitalized to “Theory”) has a particular usage. For humanities academics (particularly in cultural studies, philosophy, and literary studies), “Theory” is the term used to describe a subset of philosophical writings—those that pay attention to questions of representation and culture, and particularly those written by the philosophers of continental Europe. Among the most influential “Theorists” are Karl Marx, Sigmund Freud, Gayatri Spivak, Edward Said, Homi Bhabha, Julia Kristeva, Judith Butler, Jacques Lacan, Theodor Adorno, Antonio Gramsci, Louis Althusser, Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, Gilles Deleuze, Felix Guattari, Slavoj Žižek, Jean Baudrillard, Paul Virilio, Jürgen Habermas, Michael Hardt, and Antonio Negri.
Many academics in the humanities—as well as other intellectuals and artists—use Theory in their work. Some go further, and enjoy reading Theory for the pleasure it gives them. And others go further still—not only using Theory and reading it for pleasure, but even integrating it into their everyday lives and identities (calling themselves by titles such as “Foucauldians” or “Marxists”), spending large amounts of time and money on collecting the books and publications of Theorists, and traveling around the world to attend meetings with other people who feel the same way. It is these “Theory fans” who are the focus of this chapter.
In some ways, Theory fans are typical cultural consumers: they buy books and journals (or borrow copies bought by libraries), and read these for pleasure. But in other ways, Theory fans—like other groups of fans—are an atypical audience. They do not just consume Theory passively. Indeed, in some ways they are remarkably active. I would distinguish three key ways in which we can describe the consumption practices of Theory fans as being “active.” First, Theory fans have a passion for Theory that goes beyond a passive acceptance of whatever they are given by publishers and conference organizers. They actively seek out more work by their favorite authors and build strong emotional relationships with it. While some consumers read Theory for purely utilitarian, work-related purposes (for example, to complete a Ph.D., prepare a lecture, or write an article that will be useful on their c.v.), Theory fans will also read it for pleasure. In order to illustrate this point, let me quote some fan comments.
I surveyed a group of Theory fans on the email list of the Cultural Studies Association of Australasia in 2003 and 2005.1 One of the questions I asked was whether they read Theory for pleasure as well as for work. Of the fourteen respondents, all stated that this is indeed the case. As one fan put it, “Yes. It can feel wickedly unproductive.” Another says, “Yes, it is always a pleasure,” while a third reads Theory “even at bedtime.” One described his fandom of Walter Benjamin as “a private passion and I can also make a living teaching and writing about his ideas.”
The fans describe a heady mix of emotional pleasures from consuming Theory. One Theory fan describes her emotional involvement with the work of Adorno: “Determination in the face of the weight of the text, like climbing. Pain at the lyric beauty of some lines. Shame that I will never be so clever”; for another, his consumption of the work of Australian philosopher Muecke “fill[s] me” with “both exhilaration and sadness.” A Foucault fan notes that his work gives her “an emotional feeling […] of challenge, satisfaction but, best of all, excitement.” Another notes that “Foucault always cheers me up […] I get very happy and stimulated, sometimes with a pleasurably manic edge.” A Barthes fan claims that “fundamentally it [reading Barthes’s writing] makes me happy. Without fail.” Some fans even go so far as to claim the ultimate emotional relationship with Theory, writing “I love Foucault,” or “I love [Benjamin].” Trinh Minh Ha inspires “love and anger” from her fans; and another Theory fan talks in similar terms as she notes of her fanship of Kristeva that “I certainly hold a special place in my heart for her.” These are all powerful emotional responses. Indeed, a Judith Butler fan writes, “When I finally understood Butler’s work, I stood up and screamed YEAH! and started laughing”—a very active response to a text!
Second, Theory fans meet together—often traveling large distances to do so—at conventions (or “conferences,” “seminars,” or “workshops”). Sometimes these events replicate the largely passive structure of mass media consumption—Theory fans will attend an event simply to listen to a favored Theorist talk to them, for example. As one Spivak fan notes, “she is brand-like, meaning that if I see a product with her name I will be attracted to it. If I saw [an] event she would be speaking at, I would want to go.” Theory fans like to feel the thrill of physical presence with their heroes—although several pointed out that they would not actually want to speak to them (“I’d have nothing to say and would instantly lose my voice and any cognitive capacity I might at times possess”). It should be noted that at these events there is little space for active engagement by Theory fans. Organizers may allow a short period at the end of the talk in which questions can be asked in a formulaic way, but while this is obviously “active” in some sense, it is not truly creative in that attendees have no opportunity to challenge the structure of the event, but remain within a circumscribed structure set up by organizers.
An example of such an event would be “Giving an Account of Oneself: A Public Lecture by Judith Butler.” This talk, given by the popular American Theorist, took place in Sydney, Australia, in June 2005. Theory fans attended from around Australia—and were charged Aus$25 for the privilege. Butler’s reason for attending this event was not that she is genuinely interested in forming real relationships with the attendees. The power relationship between the Theorist and the fan, and the intervening levels of institutional structures, remained firmly in place.
An alternative mode of meeting is the Theory convention (or “conference”) where Theory fans will perform their own pieces of writing for fellow attendees. For example, “The Political Futures of Jacques Derrida” was a one-day symposium held in Sydney in February 2005, where Theory fans gathered not to meet a Theorist but to share their own enthusiasm for the Theorist Derrida. As the convention flyer put it, “The Political Futures of Jacques Derrida will celebrate the enduring and urgent political significance and relevance of his work” (note the uncritical tenor of that “celebrate”). The fans gathered in order to share their enthusiasm about this Theorist, to listen to other fans offer celebratory accounts of why they like his work so much, to argue about interpretations of favored texts, and primarily—as the convention flyer suggests—to produce and circulate secondary texts—what we might call “Fan Theory”—that develop and build on the authorized canon of texts by the Theorist. This convention offered Fan Theory talks with titles such as “Derrida and the Future of Critical Theory,” “On Derrida and Feeling,” and “Derrida, Decision, and Absolute Risk.”
This leads us on to my third and final point about the activity of Theory fans: they are clearly, in some way, cultural producers as well as consumers. They do not simply read the work of Theorists—they also produce, as mentioned above “fan Theory” (much like other fan groups produce “fan fiction”). Fans will write short pieces of Theory in which they examine the work of favored Theorists in detail, explaining their favorite bits of the work (key ideas, concepts that they think are useful), and arguing with other fans over interpretations of texts. Sometimes they will produce work that is more creative and will actually propose their own Theories—although always within the structural framework laid down by the Theorists of whom they are fans. And this work will sometimes even be published. As with all fan cultures, some of this is simple cottage-industry publishing—email lists, photocopied newsletters, or websites. But some Theory fans go even further. There does actually exist a whole—extremely profitable—transnational publishing industry that publishes this Fan Theory. These fans are productive, then, even to the extent of contributing to the distribution of Theory by global capitalism.
The Nature of Activity
As I have outlined above, Theory fans are clearly, in some sense, active audiences. In the 1980s and early 1990s, there was a tendency in fan studies to argue that the fact that fans are active consumers automatically implied that they were resisting capitalism. As John Fiske argued in 1987 in relation to Madonna fans, “If her fans are not ‘cultural dupes’ but actively choose to watch, listen to and imitate her rather than anyone else, there must be some gaps or spaces in her image that escape ideological control” (quoted in Gripsrud 1995: 121).
However, many writers have now pointed out that we cannot assume that this is in fact the case. Just because Theory fans are active in the sense of choosing their favored texts, building intense relationships with them, putting effort into constructing interpretations, building communities, and even producing their own texts about their favorite Theorists, this does not mean that they are genuinely resisting capitalist ideologies in doing so. As Toby Miller has recently pointed out, even as fans build communities, there is no evidence that they are using the collectivities that develop around their shared interest (such as Theory) for “some larger political purpose” that goes “beyond that interest” (Richard Butsch, quoted in Miller 2004: 193). The fact that fans are “active” consumers does not automatically mean that their practices are subversive or progressive. Theory fans do indeed put a lot of effort into producing interpretations—often quite radical and surprising—of their favored texts. But as Jostein Gripsrud has argued, this does not necessarily mean that they are resisting capitalist ideologies. In fact, as he argues, this is precisely what the transnational publishers want them to do. It is in their best interests for the Theory texts to be open to multiple readings, for two reasons. First, this maximizes their possible audience; and second, it allows for the possibility of a continuing industry of interpretation to be sold to Theory fans—books of exegesis and commentary, collections of critical essays, and “Readers” of Theorists’ writings. Gripsrud points out that the multiple readings of texts that Theory fans produce are in fact the result of “culture industry strategies” and are not “oppositional”: “If the ‘multitude’ of ‘selective’ readings are already intended or calculated by the industry, ‘the individual’s manipulation of commodity [e.g., Theory books] discourses may not testify to his/her autonomy […] but to the achieved strategies of these discourses’” (Griprsud 1995: 143, quoting Klinger).
And in fact, when we begin to investigate the structures of publishing and distribution of Theory, it seems clear that Theory fans are in fact supporting the publishing industries of global capitalism as they buy and write books of Theory. They are consumers of commodified culture. Their primary engagement with their favorite Theorists comes through reading books and journals that publish works of Theory. Some of this material is published by small-scale “cottage publishers,” some by university presses, and an increasing amount by transnational publishers such as Routledge (a subsidiary of Taylor & Francis) and Penguin (a subsidiary of the Pearson group). Even the material that is published by cottage publishers and university presses is produced within a capitalist framework, and increasingly follows market models of production and distribution (see Moran 1998: 70). And there is no doubt that the circulation of Theory published by transnational publishers supports global capitalism. Fans of Karl Marx, for example, might read a book such as Capital. They may buy a copy published by Penguin—which is owned by the transnational corporation Pearson. So when a Theory fan buys this book—or even borrows it from a library that has bought a copy—he or she (or the library) will have contributed US$12 to the earnings of a publisher that in 2004 had sales of over US$1,509 million and profits of over US$104 million (Penguin 2005). If the fan buys Marx’s text from a bookshop like Borders or online at Amazon, then again he or she will be contributing to the profits of a transnational corporation.
It could be argued that the ideas in Theory fandom can sometimes be surprisingly anticapitalist—as indeed is the case with Marx’s Capital. However, this represents a form of assimilation. Capitalism allows such Theorists to write and publish simply because Theory fans are a good market that creates profits for international corporations. It is true that the ideas circulated are not always procapitalist in any simple sense (although it is certainly possible to demonstrate capitalist ideologies at work in a text such as Capital—for example in the individualist ideology of publishing a book with the name of a single author on it): but Theory fans cannot escape the international system of commodification that they—literally—buy into every time they purchase a book. As Gripsrud points out, superficially resistant, anticapitalist products (such as pop stars with rebel images—and, we might add, critical Theorists) circulated within the mainstream do not lead to genuine resistance, but act more as a form of inoculation (Gripsrud 1995: 121).
Theory fans’ own productive fan activity becomes part of the same system when their articles and books are published by a company such as Routledge or Sage. Their labor, often given freely, is then commodified and sold back to them by the capitalist system. Theory fans are kept acquiescent to capitalism’s project by the feeling that they have some agency or control. But what they are actually doing is publishing their fan writing in cultural sites that are either rigidly circumscribed (within the publishing realms of global capitalism, or already-existing institutions such as universities that are funded by right-wing states or liberal capitalist endowments) or largely powerless (new forms of Internet “publishing” that are easily accessible but have little political purchase). And when they do publish in the mainstream, they give their labor for free in order to produce profits for transnational corporations.
Of course, I’m not saying that Theory fans are simply cultural dupes who passively consume whatever they are given. But at the same time, I am wary of romanticizing them, of assuming that just because they are in some way “active,” this should be understood as rebellion against the system of capitalism. It is simply not the case. Active Theory fans are just as much consumers of commodified culture as are those everyday readers of Theory who don’t become part of this productive fan culture. They are a key part of the international system of commodified culture that sells their favored Theorists to them, and makes money from their freely given labor.
Game over.
OK.
So. Hopefully it’s obvious by now that this chapter isn’t entirely serious. It takes the form, if you’ll forgive me, of a scherzo—a cheerful and light piece of work. It aims to make a single, straightforward point.
I would like to thank everyone who took part in the survey—their input was invaluable, and I hope they feel that the underlying point here is serious, even if the mode of argument is light-hearted. (And I must apologize to John Fiske. On every important point about cultural theory, I think that Fiske was right. Indeed, my own position as a Theory fan is Fiskean. I am a Populist.) Lest I be misunderstood, let me make my point with a leaden lack of irony. I am not seriously suggesting that we should in fact treat Theory fans as I have treated them in this chapter. My point is the opposite. I am arguing that we should not treat any fans in this way. To do so is, quite simply, disrespectful of their status as thinking, self-aware beings.
There exists a history of debate in fan studies as to whether fans really resist capitalism as a system. We can find in the self-image of some fans a claim to be resisting mainstream commodification (Jancovich & Hunt 2004: 28). And it has been charged that some early fan theorists claimed that by making unexpected uses of texts, fans were escaping the ideological control of the culture industries (as with Gripsrud, above)—although I suspect this point is overstated by critics (Fiske, for example, is usually careful to distinguish between different kinds of “productivity”). The latest stage in this argument has been for writers to point out that fans occupy a subject position that is actually constructed within, and taken account of by, capitalist media production. This fact is sometimes presented with a rhetorical flourish—fans’ media uses and fan products are made and circulated within capitalism; therefore they are not really resisting that system. The end.
I’m not convinced by this chain of reasoning. Hence the scherzo. Yes, I think it is clearly the case that fans make use of, and create, new, media texts within the system of capitalism. Just as academics do. But even if we want to retain the issue of challenging capitalism as our primary focus—and I would say that I don’t think this exhausts the potential of cultural politics—simply demonstrating an imbrication within commodified culture doesn’t exhaust the potential interest of fan culture.
Academics conduct their work of consumption and production just as much within capitalist culture as do other kinds of fans. Of course there are some elements of the academic exchange of ideas that are outside of, or at least exist tangentially to, capitalist practices (our teaching, conferences, seminars); just as is the case for other kinds of fans (fanzines, conventions, fan websites). And, more importantly, we are willing to allow that academic ideas can be of interest for the purposes of exegesis and discussion, even given the fact that significant elements of them are produced within the capitalist system. We acknowledge that it is possible for a commodified product—such as a copy of Capital, for example—to lead to the generation and distribution of ideas that are genuinely challenging. And this despite its status as a commodity. Joe Moran, in the article cited above, goes on to point out that even though academic publishing is indeed a part of commodified culture, “It is […] important not to jettison the questioning of the significance of intellectual work within cultural studies, simply because it may be implicated with academic stardom […] there is a danger of dismissing interesting and valuable academic work by automatically accusing critics of bad faith” (Moran 1998: 78). As Theory fans we believe that when a transnational publisher commodifies our ideas about “gender politics on TV, or postcolonialism, or the fashion industry and tie-ins,” those ideas can still, somehow, function as a genuine, political act—a “critique of capitalism” (Miller 2004: 194). And so I am suggesting that we extend the same courtesy to fan production: that we judge ideas on their merit, rather than on the conditions of their production.
There are a couple of arguments against this position. One could argue that academic writing, like “serious art” (Horkheimer & Adorno 1972 [1944]: 135), can escape the conditions of its production and express “a negative truth” (130), whereas popular culture can never do this because its apparent transgressions are in fact “calculated mutations which serve all the more strongly to confirm the validity of the system” (129). Whether or not one believes this to be the case is a matter of faith, turning on one’s perception of what counts as genuine critique. One cannot make rational arguments for or against believing critique to be “genuine”; it is a not a matter of empirical or historical testing (let us see what effects these critiques have) but of moral judgment (this critique is necessarily flawed because it is produced within the system capitalism) (see McKee 2005: 18). My own personal faith is not to believe that there is such a difference in essence between art and mass culture. There’s not much further we can go with that debate.
Similarly, one could argue that an interest in academic writing is rational for it speaks the Truth about the world, whereas an interest in the entertainment of fan writing is irrational and emotional. But as the quotes from the Theory fans above make clear, this is not the case (see Hills 2002: 3–7). Indeed, we already know that Theory fandom is not distinct from other forms of intense cultural consumption. Stanley Cavell made the point clearly in 1981 when he noted that “I have spoken as if, for example, Wittgenstein and Heidegger […] were clear candidates for a university curriculum, yet I know that each of them is mainly the object of a cult” (1981, quoted in Hills 2002: 4). Academics are fans, by any workable definition. We know very well that a passion for Theory is just as much a form of fandom as is loving Star Trek. We know very well, but all the same …in a classic instance of disavowal we sometimes choose to forget this, and proceed as though it weren’t the case—as though, despite all the evidence to the contrary, our cultural pleasures are rational and our ideas are genuinely challenging to capitalism, while the cultural pleasures of others are emotional and their ideas don’t genuinely challenge the system.
In this, I am arguing for opening up the methodologies of analysis—not closing them down. I don’t think we should stop examining the material conditions of production for fan texts. We need to continue doing political economy (what are the structures and institutions that enable the production and circulation of these ideas?); ideological critique (how can we interpret these texts in order to relate them back to the conditions of their production?); and audience work (what do the fans of these texts say about them?). But rather than using these approaches only to study popular culture, let’s apply them to the texts of Theory fans as well—that is, academic writing. We rarely ask about the conditions of production, distribution, and consumption of Theory. So let’s analyze not just the Truth of what Theorists say, writing exegeses of the ideas in their published works. Let’s also examine who gets to speak, which books get written, which books get published, who gets to evaluate the worth of Theory, what criteria are used to do that, and where those criteria come from; let’s find out what are the ideological underpinnings in Theory, and what effects books of Theory have on readers and on the culture more widely. Of course there already exists some work in this area (see Moran 1998: 78). Let’s have more.
And we should expand the methodologies for studying fan texts to include the exegetical modes that we currently apply to academic writing. Let’s look at fan production and judge it on the criteria of being informed, intelligent, interesting, or convincing. Ask what intellectual work it does. Indeed, much of it may be dull and nitpicking (“trainspotting” as Toby Miller recently put it—2004: 187). But so is much academic writing (is there any other way to describe yet another detailed exegesis of the writings of an individual Theorist, proclaiming the Truth of his or her insights, for example?). Much of it may not challenge capitalism directly; but the same is true of much academic work that is still regarded as worthwhile. And there may indeed be some fan production that does indeed produce and circulate interesting ideas that challenge the ideological foundations of capitalist social systems (perhaps the Star Trek fan novel The Weight, for example—see Jenkins 1992: 152–84).
We Theory fans work with passion, uncomfortably situated within commodified capitalist systems. Just as other fans do. In such a situation we occasionally manage to produce work that is interesting, intelligent, or challenging. And it is possible that other fans manage to pull off the same trick. At the moment, I suspect that the way we distribute our analytical methodologies makes it that much more difficult to acknowledge the fact that this is the case.
NOTE
1. All quotations come from fourteen surveys completed by Theory fans accessed through the Cultural Studies Association of Australasia email list, in response to questions posted on the list on 25 July 2003 and then again on 17 February 2005.