Captain Certeau and Lieutenant Jenkins in a Network of Metaphors : Fan Fiction in the Space between Subversive Imagination and Empirical Conformity
Abstract
The Theories of fan art nad fan fiction have been dominated by the metaphor of textual poachers since 1980s. Henry Jenkins used the metaphor of poaching to describe the activities of TV series fans.
The metaphor that refers to the analogy between amateurish creative activities of fans and gatherers of fruits in corporate orchards has been, however, picked up in conceptual garden of the French thinker michel de Certeau. According to Certeau, poaching should illustrate and express the paradoxical situation of a reader who feels obliged to follow the lines of a perceived text and simultaneously usse his/her imagination to fill out the empty gaps.
The essay compares the two concepts and targets their limits. Based on the analyses of practical fan fiction, it contrasts the pleasures offered through reading and the delights offered through fan fiction practice.
While reading involves the contact with the otherness of a written text that might challenge the reader's self-confidence, fan fiction stands on the pole of oral culture tradition. The elements of redundant repetitions and revitalizations of archetypal constants, typycal of fan fiction, may help to conform our own identity and the reliability of the interpretations of the world we live in.