Politicising fandom
| Author | Jonathan Dean |
| DOI | 10.1177/1369148117701754 |
| Published date | 01 May 2017 |
| Date | 01 May 2017 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/1369148117701754
The British Journal of Politics and
International Relations
2017, Vol. 19(2) 408 –424
© The Author(s) 2017
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DOI: 10.1177/1369148117701754
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Politicising fandom
Jonathan Dean
Abstract
This article aims, first, to argue that fandom matters to politics and, second, to offer a theorisation
of what I call politicised fandom. The article proceeds through three stages. Part 1 offers a
brief mapping of the existing scholarship within the interdisciplinary sub-field of fan studies and
alights on a definition of fandom offered by Cornel Sandvoss, before mapping some different
understandings of the fandom–politics relation. Here, I argue for an emphasis on the agency and
capacity of fan communities to intervene politically. Part 2 then provides an initial theorisation
of politicised fandom, highlighting four key elements: productivity and consumption, community,
affect and contestation. Part 3 offers some snapshots of how this politicised fandom is manifest
empirically via the analysis of three similar yet different instances of politicised fandom in UK left
politics: Russell Brand, Milifandom and Corbyn-mania.
Keywords
affect, celebrity, fandom, labour, left politics, pop culture
In July 2016, a colleague and I attended a rally in Conway Hall, London, in support of
UK Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn who—at the time—was facing a leadership
challenge from the former Shadow Work and Pensions Secretary Owen Smith. Halfway
through the event, Corbyn himself made a ‘surprise’ guest appearance, emerging from
backstage to rapturous applause with the same kind of choreographed spontaneity that
accompanies unexpected guest appearances at pop concerts. His speech saw several
(partly unanticipated) instances of call and response with the audience, and the end of his
speech was met by a standing ovation, stamping of feet and a spontaneous chant of ‘Jez
We Can’. We left the event in little doubt that many Corbyn supporters relate to Corbyn
in a manner similar to how fans of pop or film stars relate to their chosen fan object.
What is more, so-called ‘Corbyn-mania’ is one of several politician ‘fan communities’ to
have emerged in recent years. High-profile politicians as diverse as prospective
Democratic presidential nominee Bernie Sanders, Scottish First Minister Nicola
Sturgeon, erstwhile UK Independence Party (UKIP) leader Nigel Farage, Canadian
prime minister Justin Trudeau—as well as, of course, Donald Trump—have, arguably,
School of Politics and International Studies, University of Leeds, Leeds, UK
Corresponding author:
Jonathan Dean, School of Politics and International Studies, University of Leeds, Social Science Building,
Leeds LS2 9JT, UK.
Email: ipijde@leeds.ac.uk
701754BPI0010.1177/1369148117701754The British Journal of Politics and International RelationsDean
research-article2017
Article
Dean 409
seen fan communities spring up around them. This trend, in turn, suggests that fandom
is now an established feature of contemporary politics deserving greater analytical atten-
tion than it has thus far received from political scientists.
Against this backdrop, the aim of this article, quite simply, is first to argue that fan-
dom—the state of being a fan of a public figure or cultural text—matters to politics and,
second, to offer a theorisation of what I call politicised fandom. To flesh this argument
out, the article proceeds through three stages. Part 1 offers a brief mapping of the existing
scholarship within the interdisciplinary sub-field of fan studies and alights on a definition
of fandom offered by Cornel Sandvoss, before mapping some different understandings of
the fandom–politics relation. Part 2 then offers an initial conceptual mapping of politi-
cised fandom, highlighting four key elements: productivity and consumption, commu-
nity, affect, and contestation. Part 3 offers some snapshots of how this politicised fandom
is manifest empirically via the analysis of three similar yet different instances of politi-
cised fandom in UK left politics: Russell Brand, Milifandom and Corbyn-mania.
Fandom: From pop culture to politics
Fan studies is a relatively new field of scholarly analysis. Spurred on by earlier attempts
at legitimating scholarly analysis of pop culture—especially those associated with the
Birmingham cultural studies tradition (see, for instance, Hall, 1992; Hebdige, 1979)—
much fan studies scholarship starts by contesting popular representations of fandom as
deviant or pathological (Duffett, 2013; Jenson, 1992; Lewis, 1992; Sandvoss, 2005).
Fandom, as fan studies scholars argue, is an increasingly common mode of socio-cultural
practice and pop culture consumption. But what, exactly, is fandom? At one level, fandom
is self-evident. As Matt Hills points out at the start of his 2002 book Fan Cultures:
everybody knows what a ‘fan’ is. A fan is somebody who is obsessed with a particular star,
celebrity, film, TV programme, band; somebody who can produce reams of information on
their object of fandom, and can quote their favoured lines or lyrics, chapter and verse. (Hills,
2002: ix)
But this common-sense definition invites further conceptual reflection on how one
distinguishes the fan from the non-fan. One influential response from the first wave of fan
studies in the early 1990s is to stress the subversive and productive aspects of fandom
(Fiske, 1992; Jenkins, 1992), whereby fandom is aligned with the ‘cultural tastes of sub-
ordinated formations of the people, particularly with those disempowered by any combi-
nation of gender, age, class and race’ (Fiske, 1992: 30). Henry Jenkins’ (1992) influential
conception of fandom as ‘textual poaching’ emphasises fans’ capacity creatively to
deconstruct and rework aspects of the original fan text in new and subversive ways.
Although this emphasis on fan production—and its capacity for subversion and critique—
remains influential, it has proven vulnerable to the charge of ‘cultural populism’
(McGuigan, 1992): the tendency to over-estimate the progressive potential of fandom
(and pop culture consumption more generally). An alternative approach—such as that
advanced by Grossberg (1992)—claims that the fan, in contrast to the average consumer,
is shaped by particularly strong affective investments in practices or objects, which, in
turn, assume a centrality in the fan’s identity formation. Elsewhere, Matt Hills (2002)
stresses the subjective feelings, practices and intentions of the individual fan via an appeal
to Donald Winnicott’s psychoanalytic account of ‘transitional objects’.
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