As you know, I totally agree with much of what you say, and will happily blather here a while during my lunchbreak.
I think all texts are in conversation with source texts, with each other, and with the writer's--the conversation/dialogic is so strong that not even the most negative elements of literary studies as an academic field can shut that down (I have this hate/love/hate/hate relationship with Harold Bloom who I am queering for a project on slash elements in "original" sff by women, the one thing I love is that he sees writers in conversation with each other--what I hate of course is his elitism, snobbery, insistence upon injecting his penis into the discussion and claiming it's only MEN MEN MEN who do this, and it's not at all sexual khhanksbye).
Writers know this--if you go into the pre-internet days, reading letters written by writers to writers about writers, and reviews, and review essays show this to the max (so do the publications of their journals).
Fanfic just brings readers into it more directly and perhaps in a somewhat different sandbox (the internet) (although look at all the pro writers who are on LJ and interacting with readers in ways that could never be achieved in the old fan letter days--I started writing fan letters early on in life, one of the earliest to Dorothy Dunnett and OMGF I got a reply).
But despite all the work to make out that fan fic and original fic are these totally different critters, I see more similarities than differences.
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winterfish
no subject
Date: 2010-04-12 05:17 pm (UTC)I think all texts are in conversation with source texts, with each other, and with the writer's--the conversation/dialogic is so strong that not even the most negative elements of literary studies as an academic field can shut that down (I have this hate/love/hate/hate relationship with Harold Bloom who I am queering for a project on slash elements in "original" sff by women, the one thing I love is that he sees writers in conversation with each other--what I hate of course is his elitism, snobbery, insistence upon injecting his penis into the discussion and claiming it's only MEN MEN MEN who do this, and it's not at all sexual khhanksbye).
Writers know this--if you go into the pre-internet days, reading letters written by writers to writers about writers, and reviews, and review essays show this to the max (so do the publications of their journals).
Fanfic just brings readers into it more directly and perhaps in a somewhat different sandbox (the internet) (although look at all the pro writers who are on LJ and interacting with readers in ways that could never be achieved in the old fan letter days--I started writing fan letters early on in life, one of the earliest to Dorothy Dunnett and OMGF I got a reply).
But despite all the work to make out that fan fic and original fic are these totally different critters, I see more similarities than differences.