Open AccessFemslash fandom and the cultivation of white queer genealogies: Longing for histories, reading for futures
Author(s) -
Emily Coccia
Publication year - 2022
Publication title -
transformative works and cultures
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
ISSN - 1941-2258
DOI - 10.3983/twc.2022.2225
Subject(s) - queer , white (mutation) , reading (process) , futures contract , fandom , interpretation (philosophy) , sociology , heteronormativity , aesthetics , visual arts , history , media studies , gender studies , art , law , computer science , political science , biochemistry , chemistry , financial economics , economics , gene , programming language
The recent surge in fan activity around historical figures like Emily Dickinson and Anne Lister reveals an ongoing desire for and investment in cultivating queer histories as a way of addressing the harms of erasure. This popular recovery project, however, reproduces existing hierarchies insofar as it most commonly makes wealthy, white histories legible, leaving others unclaimed and unrecognized. Despite these current tendencies, I offer "too close reading" as a fan-inflected scholarly methodology that holds the possibility of helping readers better recognize less overt forms of queerness across media and in the archives.