We Have Never Been Acafans: Notes Towards a Posthumanist Approach to Media Fandom

Abstract

Media fandoms highlight the power nonhuman actors have to move, shape, and perhaps even possess us. In stating, “I am a fan of this thing,” we have already signaled a new state of being for ourselves rooted in a deep investment with something nonhuman. However, despite the foundational nonhuman entanglements of fandom, fan studies as a field has yet to engage in a sustained, comprehensive dialogue with posthumanism. In this article, I propose a theoretical vision for posthumanist fan studies, outlining how this framework would both compliment and complicate existing fandom scholarship and explicating an emergent, intra-active view of fandom. I then offer two potential methodologies that would prove useful in posthumanist fan studies research.