The Politics of Fandom

Hannah Mueller is the managing editor of Diacritics at Cornell University. Her previous publications include work on the intersections between gender, sexuality, and race in contemporary film and television, the representation of incarcerated people in popular media, and the practice of "queerbaiting" as marketing strategy.

Fandom has been celebrated both as a harmonious, tolerant space and as apolitical and detached from reality. Yet fandom is neither harmonious nor apolitical. Throughout the past century, fandom has been shaped by recurring controversies and sparked by the emergence of new circles, platforms and discourses. Since the earliest days of science-fiction fandom, fans have conceived of their communities as quasi-political bodies, and of themselves as public actors in discursive spaces. They are concerned with the organizational structures, norms, and borders of fandom as well as their own position within it all.
This latter concern has moved to the forefront as fan practices and platforms have been coopted by the entertainment industry and by political actors, forcing fans to situate their fannish and political identities in relation to both sprawling transmedia franchises and right-wing groups exploiting fannish formations for political ends. Through case studies of Glee and The Hunger Games fandoms as well as events such as Gamergate, RaceFail '09 and the Hugo Awards controversies, this book explores the complexities of political fandom.