Beyond resistance: Gender, performance, and fannish practice in digital culture
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Date
2010-12
Authors
Hampton, Darlene Rose, 1976-
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
University of Oregon
Abstract
Although the web appears to be a welcoming space for women, online spaces--like offline spaces--are rendered female through associations with the personal/private, embodiment, or an emphasis on intimacy. As such, these spaces are marked, marginalized, and often dismissed. Using an explicitly interdisciplinary approach that combines cultural studies models with feminist theory, new media studies, and performance, Beyond Resistance uses fandom as a way to render visible the invisible ways that repressive discourses of gender are woven throughout digital culture. I examine a variety of online fan practices that use popular media to perform individual negotiations of repressive ideologies of sex and gender, such as fan-authored fiction, role-playing games, and vids and machinima--digital videos created from re-editing television and video game texts. Although many of these negotiations are potentially resistive, I demonstrate how that potential is being limited and redirected in ways that actually reinforce constructions of gender that support the dominant culture.
The centrality of traditional notions of sex and gender in determining the value of fan practices, through both popular representation and critical analysis, serves as a microcosm of how discourses of gender are operating within digital culture to support the continued gendering of the public and private spheres within digital space. This gendering contributes to the ongoing subordination of women under patriarchy by marginalizing or dismissing their concerns, labor, and cultural tastes.
Description
x, 160 p. : ill. (some col.)
Keywords
Gender, Digital culture, Fandom, Intimacy, LiveJournal, Machinima, Vidding, American studies, Multimedia communications, Web studies, Gender studies