E N D
“Thus is revealed the total existence of writing: a text is made of multiple writings, drawn from many cultures and entering into mutual relations of dialogue, parody, contestation, but there is one place where this multiplicity is focused and that place is the reader, not, as was hitherto said, the author. The reader is the space on which all the quotations that make up a writing are inscribed without any of them being lost; a text’s unity lies not in its origin but in its destination. Yet this destination cannot any longer be personal: the reader is without history, biography, psychology; he is simply that someone who holds together in a single field all the traces by which the written text is constituted.” The Birth of the Reader
“Which is why it is derisory to condemn the new writing in the name of a humanism hypocritically turned champion of the reader’s rights. Classic criticism has never paid any attention to the reader; for it, the writer is the only person in literature. We are now beginning to let ourselves be fooled no longer by the arrogant antiphrastical recriminations of good society in favour of the very thing it sets aside, ignores, smothers, or destroys; we know that to give writing its future, it is necessary to overthrow the myth: the birth of the reader must be at the cost of the death of the Author.” --Roland Barthes (from Image, Music, Text, 1977) The Birth of the Reader
“In 1980 [Stanley] Fish collected his theoretical essays of the 1970s in his fifth book, Is There a Text in This Class? The Authority of Interpretive Communities. . . . These essays, beginning with "Literature in the Reader" but tracing his shift in such essays as "Interpreting the Variorum" away from reader-response criticism toward the theory of interpretive communities, consolidated his position as one of the most influential and most cited theorists of his time, influential despite or perhaps because of his refusal to settle on a fixed position or stance. The dynamic quality Fish once ascribed to reading was by now a property of his work on reading and interpretation. . . . The Interpretive Community
“The most sustained section is a group of four lectures that gave the book its title. These lectures, the most extended exposition of the theory of interpretive communities, answer the question in the title with both a no and a yes. No, there is no text if by that one means an unchanging entity with a fixed meaning; yes, there is a text because every interpretive community fixes and defines the meaning of the text it reads and, in a sense, writes.”—Johns Hopkins Guide to Literary Theory and Criticism The Interpretive Community
Go here to read a long, fascinating colloquy between Henry and Matt. http://www.intensities.org/Essays/Jenkins.pdf
Contributions to Fandom Studies in My Books • In Full of Secrets • Henry Jenkins. "Do You Enjoy Making the Rest of Us Feel Stupid?" alt.tv.twinpeaks, the Trickster Author, and Viewer Mastery In Deny All Knowledge • Jimmie L. Reeves (Texas Tech University), Mark C. Rodgers, and Michael Epstein, University of Michigan), Re-Writing Popularity: The Cult Files • Susan J. Clerc (Bowling Green State University), DDEB, GATB, MPPB, and Ratboy: The X-Files’ Media Fandom, Online and Off
In Fighting the Forces • Kristina Busse. Crossing the Final Taboo: Family, Sexuality, and Incest in the Buffyverse • Justine Larbalestier. Buffy’s Mary Sue is Jonathan: Buffy the Vampire Slayer Acknowledges the Fans • Amanda Zweerink and Sarah N. Gatson. WWW.Buffy.Com : Cliques, Boundaries, and Hierarchies in an Internet Community • In Teleparody • Matthew Hills. The Perils of Post-Theory TV: Substituting Fandom for Academia, a Review-Essay of TV Guides: Towards Embedded Theory by Iain John Austen and Autarchic Tele-visions by Sarah-Jane Smythe • In Unlocking the Meaning of Lost • Porter, Lavery, Robson. Chapter 7: Cult(ivating) a Lost Audience: The Participatory Fan Culture of Lost
Fandom Activities • ARGs— Alternative Reality Games (playing / theorizing
Fandom Activities • Blogging
Fandom Activities • Conspiracy Theories (Researching / Disseminating)
Fandom Activities • Easter Egg Hunts (Engaging in, disseminating results of)
Fandom Activities • Fanfic (Writing/Reading/Reviewing)
Fandom Activities • Fan Vids (Creating / Sharing)
Fandom Activities • Fanzines—Writing, Reading
Fandom Activities • Podcasting—Listening to / Broadcasting
Fandom Activities • Posting Boards—Reading / Posting / Lurking
Fandom Activities • Spoilers (Seeking Out / Disseminating)
Fandom Activities • Webisodes / Mobisodes— • Watching, Discussing
Fandom Activities • Websites (Creating / Maintaining)
Fandom Activities • Wikis (Creating / Maintaining)