Editorial Policies, ”Public Domain” and Acafandom

Transformative Works and Cultures ' editorial policies are transformative in their own right, putting fans first and acknowledging the dual nature of acafans.


Introduction
And what definition of privacy does this conception of academic publishing entail, both for the fan as a research subject and for the acafan herself? 2. Defining acafandom with editorial policies [2.1] The acafandom label has recently emerged in scholarly debates in the field of fan studies as a way to reconcile academic interest and "immersion in the…subject matter…[It represents] an effort to position the author within the center of the debate and to elevate different tastes within the field of media studies" (Tait 2010). As fan studies is shaping and stabilizing itself as a field or subfield in its own right, Henry Jenkins, Tara McPherson, and Jane Shattuc point out that new challenges emerge for cultural critics who are both insiders and outsiders to their research subject. The most notable of these challenges is to find a way to write about "multiple (and often contradictory) involvements, participations, engagements, and identifications with popular culture-without denying, rationalizing, and distorting them" (Jenkins, McPherson, and Shattuc 2002, 7).
[2.2] As shown by a recent special issue of the online fan studies publication Flow, "Revisiting Aca-Fandom," the debate on acafandom is currently very lively, questioning the label's usefulness as a theoretical trope, its agency as an instrument for privileging or neglecting specific tastes and topics, and its relationship with scholars' supposed obligation to reveal their emotional attachment to their research subject in case it unduly affects their positions, their likes and dislikes, or their scientific and critical distance (Tait 2010).
Pointing out that thoughtful academic study of any subject requires a very deep level of engagement with the material and time-consuming dedication, Catherine Coker and Candace Benefiel (2010) interestingly reverse acafandom's most frequently asked question: "The question…is not whether the engagement of an acafan is appropriate in the study of cultural production, but how can the critical study of any text succeed without the passionate and knowledgeable participation of the scholar?" According to Jen Gunnels and Flourish Klink (2010), the key to the acafandom debate is to acknowledge the centrality of the question of participation "in and through the body," as fandom is a performed set of practices; it is "something that one does." Her approach is reminiscent of Antoine Hennion's pragmatics of taste, which he sees as a means to put "reflexivity on the side of the amateurs and not only on that of sociologists concerned not to bias their analyses" (2009,55). Paul Booth (2010) notes that "fandom is a universal practice invoking appropriation" and that "by looking at fans, we as academics inherently validate fandom as an area of study," only to ask, "What, then, is it precisely that we validate?" With this article, I intend to add a further dimension to the debate on acafandom, discussing how it contributes to the reshaping of its own label. [2.4] While I was going through peer review and the prepublication process, I was directed by the journals' editors to an essay they had written for the Organization for Transformative Works: "Fan Privacy and TWC's Editorial Philosophy" (Hellekson and Busse 2009). The more I pondered it, the more I found myself thinking that the essay, in addition to outlining the rationale for the journal's editorial policies, was also proposing a conceptualization of acafandom by defining the right ways of doing things for an academic in the field of fan studies, and was doing so by reconfiguring the rules of engagement in what is commonly considered one of academia's essential practices: publication. 3. The fannishness of academics and the humanness of fan subjects [3.1] TWC's "strong encouragement" to contributors is, at a first glance, simple. Its editors want academics to ask fans for permission before citing their work (e.g., fan fiction, art, and videos) that is posted on Web sites or in online communities that are, formally, freely accessible and open to any Internet user. What is less simple is the rationale behind it, and what it means for an academic to adopt this policy. There are a number of things at stake here.
[3.2] First, the call for a "good-faith effort" (Hellekson and Busse 2009) to secure fan consent has implications for the researcher's stance toward the research subject; it reshapes the boundaries between the two. Indeed, in this respect, acafan research ethics appear to be closely intertwined with feminist research practices; most notably, they are reminiscent of feminist scholars' rejection of the artificial separation between the researcher and the researched, as well as the notion that such a separation produces more valid results (Sarantakos 2004). The editors of TWC, like feminist scholars, advocate a dialectical relationship between the subject and object of research, a form of participatory research, and a "conscious partiality": the "researcher's understanding of the connectedness to the experiences of the research subject through partial identification" (Cook and Fonow 1990, 79).
[3.3] Second, the editorial policy also specifically addresses fandom as distinct from other communities that are placed under the lens of the social sciences, fans as distinct from other "human subjects" in research, and fan studies scholars as distinct from other academics. "In the academic realm, publicly posted material is considered published, and thus it may be freely cited," but TWC's editors require academics to deviate from this standard and ask permission to cite fannish material, arguing that this practice is better suited to a world in which fandom is increasingly mainstream and where "many fans worry about academics citing their transformative artworks, like fanfic, fan art, or fanvids, without asking" (Hellekson and Busse 2009). For a scholar, therefore, practicing acafandom means revisiting her concept of "public domain" and her habit of freely citing creative works published on the Internet (Templeton 2008), keeping in mind what, as a fan, she would consider public, semipublic, and private; as Kristina Busse points out, "the dilemma that online researchers have to confront is how to respect a user's or group's perceived privacy while simultaneously not ignoring their voices" (Busse 2009).  [3.5] Finally, the policy suggests that the acafan should feel bound by the community norms of both academics and fans, not just by those of academia.
The acafan certainly has privileged access to the terrain of fandom, inflected by her personal tastes, and is thus more likely than a random observer to be able to grasp all the complexities and nuances of fan communities. Therefore, she is likely to do a better job as a scientist. But with this privilege also comes an additional ethical requirement, which is to remain accountable to her fan community, observing its rules as carefully as those of her academic community.  (Jenkins n.d.), which fan scholars have no choice but to either embrace or resist (Bogost 2010). Indeed, these recent experiments suggest that acafandom may be defined by research ethics that put fans first-not only because fannishness is a part of the scholar's personality and thus the scholar's tastes vis-à-vis the objects of study become relevant, but also, and maybe more importantly, because fans are themselves coproducers of amateur academic reflections on fan cultures (Hennion, Maisonneuve, and Gomart 2000).
[4.2] TWC's attempt at a hybrid editorial policy, melding fandom and academic rigor, gave the researcher in me new food for thought. It suggested that I consider how fandoms are particularly delicate research fields, not only because the researcher wears two hats as fan and scholar but also, and perhaps even more, because the two hats tend to superpose and blend; because to the publicity of scholarly sources acafandom adds the publicity, or semipublicity, or privacy, of fans' confessions, sharing, and musings; because acafandom questions and redefines the dichotomy of text and human subject, in both the observer and the observed; and, finally, because the policy asks be a discreet, yet ever-present and deeply internalized, part of her methodology. This theoretical and empirical positioning, more perhaps than the extent of her preferences and emotional involvement in her subject of study, should be the trademark of a researcher able to both deal with the fan in the academic, and bring out the academic in the fan.

Acknowledgment
[5.1] Thanks to Philipp Schmerheim for his remarks and feedback on the first draft of this piece, and, as usual, for the great conversations on how to study fans while being one.
6. Note 1. Labeling myself an "acafan by accident" is not an attempt to distance myself from the acafan identity. I use the label to indicate that I became interested in the series as a fan first, and only later asked research questions