(no subject)

“I guess if this were an academic argument, I would be trying to make the case that Red’s experience of the text, while plausible, is actually less legitimate or comprehensive, and so mine is better. And that’s where the model of academic argument stops applying - and should stop applying, in fan spaces, at least outside the context of communities that have deliberately come together to engage in constructive disagreement, like @reading221b. On some level, we all love or once loved the same show – but that’s where it ends. Academic discussion is built on an implicit contract about what the participants are aiming for. Fan conversation is not. ” -tildedsyllogism

There are ongoing discussions about acafans, especially when someone gets dogpiled on fail-fandomanon or somewhere like that about what the role of academics in fandom is, especially if someone is a fan as well as an academic. I’m a fan and an academic (or was until quite recently, though in the STEM field) and I know that I am argumentative. The skills that served me in the lab (where I was, if anything, not argumentative enough) don’t work very well in other spaces. And especially women’s spaces (as was pointed out to me quite bluntly in my writing class). But this comment about an implicit contract about where it’s OK to bring out the big rhetorical guns and where it is not, is beautifully clear and to the point