Rikke Schubart

Bottom of the Iceberg: The Archontic Text

When I read Fanged Fan Fiction I learnt a new theoretical term: the archontic text. I also learnt the expressions canon and fanon (the former I knew, but the latter was new), discovered the true taste of lemon and vanilla, and learnt the meaning of snappy abbreviations like OOC (Out of Character), AU (Alternate Universe), and (fem)slash (same-sex relationships). You may think you have heard all there is to know about vampires, but Fanged Fan Fiction shows that the best-selling and block-buster phenomena Twilight, True Blood, and The Vampire Diaries are merely the tip of the iceberg. The major part of this cultural phenomenon exists below, as the fanon, or fan fiction, written by fans. The book has two aims: to provide a solid theoretical framework for the analysis of fan fiction and to show that this fiction should not be cast aside as some obscure “dark matter” (Lev Grossman’s term) but is a valid object for academic research. Those who disagree should consider that Fifty Shades of Grey, a fanfic variation on Twilight, sold more copies than its origin text and more copies than the Bible. The rest of the iceberg is calling.Fanged Fan Fiction is clearly structured, with an introduction staking out the territory and presenting the relevant theories, followed by a chapter introducing the origin texts to anyone unfamiliar with the vampire books and film/television series, and then four chapters dedicated to the fanon. Let us return to the archontic text. Leavenworth and Isaksson import this term fromDerecho (2006), who uses it to denote fan fiction that adds to an ever-expanding archive of texts surrounding a canon. The fanon is the fan fiction (and other creations, such as online worlds) relating to a canon, which is a set of origin texts. Derecho coined her term after Derrida’s notion of the open archive in Archive Fever (1996). The difference between “ordinary” and archontic intertextuality is that the first is seen as a relation between texts, while the latter emphasizes the relationship between a canon and creative individuals generating interpretations of canonical texts. Fan fiction is proudly intertextual, and fanfic texts “enter the archive of other works by quoting them consciously, by pointedly locating themselves within the world of the archontic text [and] generate variations which explicitly announce themselves as variations” (Derecho 2006: 65). The archontic text is derivative, personal, intertextual, and self-consciously aware of its place in an archive, often including AN (author notes) about how it is situated and how it should be read.