Saara L. Taalas

Fandom as a mode of second production: active audienceship of the rising shadow

Looking and visuality imply an audience. The aim of this paper is to open audiences passive role as a communicative receiver for discussion. The paper will focus on the productive practices of a digital fandom network of science fiction and fantasy genre literature. It connects Walter Benjamins notions of the afterlife of texts and the translators task (1924, 1936) to fandom as a productive network (Fiske, 1992; Jenkins, 1992). The empirical analysis draws from an ethnographic study of a Finnish science fiction and fantasy literature fandom Rising Shadow digital network, www.risingshadow.net. The analysis illuminates how networked exchanges produce translation zones and loving closeness as a form of afterlife of genre texts facilitating learning, accumulation of expertise within fandom network, and even professional development that is linked to commercial publishing and fan production in media.