Beyond aca-fandom, what do fan practices and academic labor contribute to our understanding of one another? Can these labors of love lead to coalition building across industries?

I have been engaged in a lot of discussions about participatory labor and new media lately (both in official and unofficial realms). Repeatedly, I am struck by how rarely those of us that study fans, resistance, and the free labor of online produsers (to use Axel Bruns’ neologism) see ourselves in our research participants outside of the realm of aca-fans. Recognizing the contestations surrounding the term “aca-fan,” I would argue that all scholars are fans of our research objects. If not, why would we bother? Film scholars have to be fans of film to subject themselves to hours upon hours of watching. Rare is the political communication scholar who is not, deep inside, a politics junky (the enactment of addiction language being common in many a fandom). As Jonathan Gray has pointed out, people can be fans of news though media audience studies rarely discuss the phenomena.

Certainly not all scholars are fans in the traditional sense, but they are expected to be media consumers if they want to speak with authority. This expectation, true of fan cultures as well, can be exclusionary. Studying industries or audiences do not necessarily have to consume the media at the center of their analysis (/tip o’ the hat to T.L. Taylor on that point). Analysis of texts requires familiarity with form, genre conventions, and acknowledging medium specificity, true. That is a far cry from assuming every game scholar owns the latest release or that every television scholar has watched (and liked) every acclaimed series on the air.

Even when scholars don’t claim to be fans of a medium, we are fans of research, theories, subjects, and fields. Fan, moreover, need not imply the uncritical love-fest of pure celebration. Critique,  at it’s most productive, involves the hope that that which we love could be so much better. Many digital production practices, from slash fiction to fan sites to hate watching, are acts of pleasure. As Lisa Henderson discusses in talks on her new book Love and Money, what would our research look like if it looked more like our acknowledgement sections? Can we love our research more?

When analyzing “fan practices,” by treating these as objects of study, researchers sometimes lose sight of how our experiences as scholars overlap with fandom. Beyond the love and pleasure connection, can we think about the struggles we share with the fans/audiences/industries that we study. I have heard many scholars rightly critique the exploitative if simultaneously resistive nature of “participatory culture.” Nick Dyer-Witheford and Greig de Peuter, for example, argue that the contemporary games industry has been built upon the “playbor” of its audiences.

Research, in the best of situations, is a labor of love. We produce a massive amount of unpaid labor in pursuit of the ecstasy of the research breakthrough. So do fans. As I watched the new SyFy series Heroes of Cosplay, I was struck by the massive financial investment the cast undertook, from making their costumes to traveling around the country, for the chance to win awards that may or may not have big payouts. This was largely justified by claims that cosplay could lead to career advancement. It seems odd at first… until you consider how many of us pay to attend conferences (with or without institutional support) with the promise that it will advance our careers. We give talks, write articles, edit anthologies, advise students (in and out of our institutions), all in the hopes of “making it” and/or contributing to the field. At least that is what we tell ourselves. When we wonder why fans do similar labor, can we gain insights from why we engage in projects that many of us have trouble defending to friends and relative outside of academia?

Thinking more broadly of the implications of these similarities, I have been to several conferences in the past year that have brought together game scholars, industry representatives, and artists/designers. Talking across these industries sometimes feels difficult, because we are all (as humans) so invested in our point of view that we want others to understand what our side has to offer. Alternatively, we want others to tell us what to offer them. Building on decades of critiques of such colonizing approaches to political movements though, does coalition politics offer a better frame? For example, I think many of the problems of the mainstream AAA games industry, as it is often constructed, are the problems of academia as well. The mainstream games industry like mainstream academia is largely built upon exclusion and competition. Those of us who don’t fit comfortably with the class/gender/sexuality/race/embodiment/etc.,  norms acknowledged by our respective industries are often forced into a compromise if we stay within them or charged with an uphill battle if we want to change them. Both industries have to defend their own relevance, in a way that further promotes exclusivity and hard lines between insiders and outsiders. Both industries have been guilty of exploiting contingent labor, systematically excluding marginal voices, and fetishzing their own cannons. Both often have conferences that often price out contributors that could shake things up, and then complain that they don’t have anyone skilled in doing things differently. Both rely on certification systems that are tied into exclusionary and oppressive systems for access to employment.

When we are frustrated with another industry we sometimes simply dismiss it. I have heard scholars dismiss industry perspectives, industry representatives dismiss scholarship, indie designers dismiss both (in all cases sometimes fairly, sometimes unfairly). When we are frustrated with our own industry, we try to figure out how to fix things, or leave. In acknowledging our similarities, however, perhaps the time has come to think more concretely about how we can help each other fix the systemic problems we all face.

Becoming an independent scholar is quite easy: one merely needs to defend one’s dissertation without a secure job prospect in sight. The next step, as affiliation privileges cease to exist, is to contend with university firewalls and forms where one suddenly has to define one’s identity beyond the clearly demarcated hierarchies of grad student, assistant, and associate professor. Continuing one’s job search into year two or three while teaching as adjunct instructor is generally accepted as merely a stepping stone. It is equivalent to eating Ramen noodles, and only worthy of being acknowledged once a position is secured and everyone gathers with their new colleagues to share job market horror stories.

But staying an independent scholar is actually quite hard: it requires the continuing desire to do research without the non-monetary but nevertheless quite real remunerations university positions afford. Depending on one’s institution, research constitutes different percentages of the expected workload, but most places encourage (if not demand) research and publication as part of the job description—and therefore as part of what’s done in exchange for a paycheck. As an independent scholar, however, research and publishing serves no quantifiable purpose. In a way, it’s love for learning and passion for knowledge in its purest form—or at least that idea is how I sometimes comfort myself.

In reality, though, it means that for the independent scholar, research is not and can never be part of one’s paid labor. It usually doesn’t feed into upper class teaching, as the general wisdom for the necessity of research at the university level goes. It doesn’t create lines on a vita necessary for tenure and promotion. And it doesn’t justify time spent away from one’s real jobs—be they family responsibilities, adjunct teaching, or some other way to keep yourself fed, housed, and comfortable. Being an independent scholar means that research and academic writing must be redefined as pleasure: I research instead of watching TV or reading a book; I write instead of meeting with friends or going shopping; I edit and do professional activities at the cost of my family time.

That’s the reason, I think, why there are so few of us: trying to do research without access to libraries is difficult as is trying to maintain a collegial network without being able to go to conferences. But both are possible with the Internet, online communication, and networks; email, blogs, social networks, IM, Skype—all allow us to remain in touch and to create and maintain a community of likeminded scholars without ever leaving our house or hometown. The real difficulty is in weighing, each and every time, whether you rather want to go to the pool with your kids or write another 500 words, and whether it is really worth it. I love what I do! I love researching and learning; I love brainstorming and writing; and most of all, I love sharing and debating my ideas. I am well aware of the conceptual value of academic scholarship above and beyond the CV line, the academic pecking order, and the minimal monetary or time rewards research often yields. It is a daily decision, however, to return to the open document and the virtual library—not because I have to, but because I want to.

And that, in the end, is why I am an independent scholar: I love the friends and colleagues I’ve made and the intellectual community I’ve been given. I love mentoring younger scholars and seeing their achievements and successes. I love the ability to write what and where I like with no concerns of a upsetting or displeasing anyone who could harm my career. And, I admit, I sometimes love the self-righteousness I feel in knowing I have no vested interest, that my research is as neutral as it can be. Working in fan studies, where academics motives are questioned often, I can easily and openly declare my alliances with my fellow fans.

Wherever we end up after grad school, R1 or community college, liberal arts college or regional university, whether we are lucky or strike out, sacrifice everything for our career or make other life choices, I don’t think we can do what we do without a deep passion not only for our subject but learning in general. As an independent scholar, that’s what I get to keep; that’s why I make this choice, over and over again, to continue to read, research, write, and publish.