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In the thesis, I cite my co-participants as well as non-academic literature just as I do more traditional academic literature – since they all played an instrumental role in expanding my thinking. I didn’t want to position academic literature as superior to fandom literature nor did I want to position my individual analysis and commentary as superior to those of my co-participants. My co-participants’ knowledge complemented my own. While I was in overall control of the project, we collaboratively created knowledge through our conversations. In preparation for our episodes, we decided what literature to refer to and which intersectional themes to explore. Such a variety of sources exposed me to multiple interpretations and opinions.
While the traditional PhD document relies on a solo-authored format, knowledge-making and sharing is increasingly collaborative and digital. The Marginally Fannish podcast demonstrates this; unfortunately, I wasn’t permitted to present episodes in lieu of a thesis document. As a compromise to this individual translation of a collective process, this thesis attempts to include my co-participants’ voices in the chapters as much as possible in order to highlight their contributions and insights in their own words. I use a lot of direct quotes because I want to include as many voices as possible to counter-balance my own as well as leave room for readers to create their own interpretations.
Both feminist and participatory research foregrounds those engaged in the research project by shifting the centre from where knowledge is said to generate. In this interactive research, my co-participants and I came to the episodes with our own ideas, experiences, theories, interpretations and insights. There was no one-way transfer of knowledge – I was engaged in critical pedagogy as much as my co-participants. My thinking became much stronger thanks to this conversational and collaborative knowledge-making. I wanted the thesis to reflect this process so that different knowledges were equally respected. By not placing academic literature/my own analysis in a separate, exalted position over my co-participants’/other fans’ different ways of knowing, the slightly unconventional structure attempts to democratise hierarchies of knowledge-creation within academic contexts. |
| Keywords: |
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