| Summary: | The phrase "fielding fandom" intends to take advantage of the many entailments of
the word field. Designating at once a space or sphere of interest characterized by
joint activity and the processes of picking up, putting into action, and responding
skillfully, this research includes a consideration of the data gathering techniques,
re-presentational strategies, and interpretive skills the contemporary researcher
of popular culture can bring to both playing the field and interpreting a particular
field of play.
In general, this research is an interpretive account of my own close reading
strategies and experiences in relation to those popular cultural texts and
discourses around childhood that have compelled me to “read wrongly” (Weber &
Mitchell, 1995). More specifically, it considers various close encounters that
shaped the interactions between other readers in a participatory context (the
online fan community Television Without Pity) and, as shaped by a particular text
(the Reality TV program Kid Nation). I argue that during these contemporary
literary engagements, the subjects of and for reading were discursively formed as
individuals employed various strategies to negotiate the inherent paradoxes of
the Reality TV text.
Emphasizing the ‘real’ in reading popular cultural texts suggests that it is not an a
priori form, but rather, must be bracketed from the everyday ways in which we
come to know the world. I suggest that reading these texts as a fan-tellectual
evokes game-like epistemologies and situated discursive strategies that may also
be used to inform the ways in which popular and school-based ways of knowing
and forms of knowledge are addressed in the context of teacher education. The
image of the researcher as fan-tellectual suggests that educators, too, should
strive to recognize and take advantage of the many ways of knowing
“(other)wise” (Vinz, 2000) and tolerance for ambiguity and paradox being a fan
entails.
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