![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Meta: Academia and Fandom: What is the Role of the Ivory Tower?
What is the relation between academia, acedmic concerns or interests, and fandom? I take up the issue at ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
fanthropology.
I wonder if![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
kayjayuu is right, and it's the content of academia rather than the language per se, which pushes people off--because the "academic language" acafen use, like "authorial intent" and its cousin the "intentional fallacy," really don't do all that much to exclude non-middle class individuals. If one can't figure out the meaning from context, one can always look it up rather easily (always assuming one has internet access, which is a sort of systemic bias). I don't really see acafen talking about the pre-eschatological ontology of Buffy, the phenomenoligicalesque lack of teleology in Firefly, or even the deontology of Angel. Although if someone is having these discussion, please please pretty please point me their way!
But acafen are good at problematizing things--anything!--as that is what we're trained to do, basically. It's a good part of what we do here atfanthropology. This is especially true of feminists, (the second wave problematizes the first wave, but is in turn problematized by the third wave, which is problematized in return by the not-dead-yet second wave. . .) who constitute a large chunk of acafen. But could the negativity, the lack of an actual, practical solution (since everything's potentially problematizable), the masturbatory character of the whole thing, cause some to recoil against this perceived "ivory tower" mentality?
( Just follow the fake lj-cut. )
My flist is chiefly composed of acafen--both teachers and students--so I'd be very much interested in what you think on the issue. You can comment here rather than atfanthropology if you like.
fanthropology.I wonder if
kayjayuu is right, and it's the content of academia rather than the language per se, which pushes people off--because the "academic language" acafen use, like "authorial intent" and its cousin the "intentional fallacy," really don't do all that much to exclude non-middle class individuals. If one can't figure out the meaning from context, one can always look it up rather easily (always assuming one has internet access, which is a sort of systemic bias). I don't really see acafen talking about the pre-eschatological ontology of Buffy, the phenomenoligicalesque lack of teleology in Firefly, or even the deontology of Angel. Although if someone is having these discussion, please please pretty please point me their way!But acafen are good at problematizing things--anything!--as that is what we're trained to do, basically. It's a good part of what we do here at
fanthropology. This is especially true of feminists, (the second wave problematizes the first wave, but is in turn problematized by the third wave, which is problematized in return by the not-dead-yet second wave. . .) who constitute a large chunk of acafen. But could the negativity, the lack of an actual, practical solution (since everything's potentially problematizable), the masturbatory character of the whole thing, cause some to recoil against this perceived "ivory tower" mentality?( Just follow the fake lj-cut. )
My flist is chiefly composed of acafen--both teachers and students--so I'd be very much interested in what you think on the issue. You can comment here rather than at
fanthropology if you like.