![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Fandom's taste for the monologic
Mar. 22nd, 2005 01:47 pmAnd I'm back to Bakhtin.
Because it never fails to amaze me when writers of fandom seem to assume that fandom is, or even can be, monolithic. That it can all be a single kind of thing. That one size, one style, one standard, one response, one reason can fit all. This is absurd on the face of it. We exist in a constant stew of contention and argument and vociferiously differing viewpoints; surely this is obvious? How can it possibly be ignored?
And, yet, I find myself doing it, too, and another look will tell me that it is precisely the awareness of how many differences we tally among the lot of us that drives the insistence on monologic phrasing, the attempts to say that X element of fandom is this or that. Awareness of the variance makes most of us close our grips even harder on our own variations.
(And now I'm back to Mrs. Dalloway, too: "She would not say, I am this, I am that." We use that gesture, too, and value indeterminacy, go to great lengths to claim a lack of labels. And then we turn around and make a point of seizing on labels as personal property--"I am this, but it isn't what you define it as." Again, the attempt to control meaning. Simply abandoning it doesn't seem to work for long.)
Communication is the most wonderfully ironic act I can think of. To attempt it is to acknowledge that the world consists of more than just oneself, that insurmountable differences exist, most particularly the difference between "me" and "you". Thus the centrifugal forces of language, because we all pull in different directions to a greater or lesser extent and that distance, that division, cannot be collapsed. Yet, to communicate is to seek to collapse that distance, to come to understanding, an agreement of meaning. And, subjectivity being what it is, the point of reference must always be "my" meaning. Thus the centripetal forces, tending toward singularity.
A singularity that points, once again, to division and separation, as each communicant tugs away in her own direction.
Away, towards. It isn't just relative; it's the same thing.
Of course we all insist that our singularity is larger than just ourselves, that it applies to others. To do otherwise is to dissolve into total isolation. Besides, to an extent it may well be true. The yanks in other directions should also not surprise any of us, really, since they are exactly what we are acting out ourselves in every moment.
If we lost either part, communication would not be possible. I find this useful to keep in mind.
Because it never fails to amaze me when writers of fandom seem to assume that fandom is, or even can be, monolithic. That it can all be a single kind of thing. That one size, one style, one standard, one response, one reason can fit all. This is absurd on the face of it. We exist in a constant stew of contention and argument and vociferiously differing viewpoints; surely this is obvious? How can it possibly be ignored?
And, yet, I find myself doing it, too, and another look will tell me that it is precisely the awareness of how many differences we tally among the lot of us that drives the insistence on monologic phrasing, the attempts to say that X element of fandom is this or that. Awareness of the variance makes most of us close our grips even harder on our own variations.
(And now I'm back to Mrs. Dalloway, too: "She would not say, I am this, I am that." We use that gesture, too, and value indeterminacy, go to great lengths to claim a lack of labels. And then we turn around and make a point of seizing on labels as personal property--"I am this, but it isn't what you define it as." Again, the attempt to control meaning. Simply abandoning it doesn't seem to work for long.)
Communication is the most wonderfully ironic act I can think of. To attempt it is to acknowledge that the world consists of more than just oneself, that insurmountable differences exist, most particularly the difference between "me" and "you". Thus the centrifugal forces of language, because we all pull in different directions to a greater or lesser extent and that distance, that division, cannot be collapsed. Yet, to communicate is to seek to collapse that distance, to come to understanding, an agreement of meaning. And, subjectivity being what it is, the point of reference must always be "my" meaning. Thus the centripetal forces, tending toward singularity.
A singularity that points, once again, to division and separation, as each communicant tugs away in her own direction.
Away, towards. It isn't just relative; it's the same thing.
Of course we all insist that our singularity is larger than just ourselves, that it applies to others. To do otherwise is to dissolve into total isolation. Besides, to an extent it may well be true. The yanks in other directions should also not surprise any of us, really, since they are exactly what we are acting out ourselves in every moment.
If we lost either part, communication would not be possible. I find this useful to keep in mind.
