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Girls who like Boys who like Boys – Ethnography of ... - Yuuyami.com

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e used toward understanding multiple aspects, such as online locality,<br />

general fandom activities, or notions <strong>of</strong> identity formation, it will have<br />

fulfilled its purpose.<br />

However, its relevancy to me is dependant on the simple strife toward<br />

understanding online fans as not only online fans, but to see their fan-mode <strong>of</strong><br />

identity as simply that: one mode <strong>of</strong> identity. It is in contrast and in the<br />

interactions with other modes <strong>of</strong> identity that one can truly appreciate what it<br />

means to be a fan, and consequently what it means to the self to understand<br />

“fan” as a mode <strong>of</strong> identity. As Jean-Paul Sartre lectured to a Parisian<br />

audience in 1945:<br />

To obtain some kind <strong>of</strong> truth for myself, I must pass by the<br />

other. The other is indispensable to my existence, as well as<br />

to the knowledge I have <strong>of</strong> myself […] Thus, we discover<br />

immediately a world, which we call intersubjectivity, and it<br />

is in this realm that a human decides what she/he is, and<br />

what the others are. Moreover, if it is impossible to find in<br />

every human a universal essence <strong>of</strong> human nature, there<br />

still exists a universality <strong>of</strong> the human condition. It is not<br />

by chance that the thinkers <strong>of</strong> today talk more readily about<br />

a human’s condition rather than about her/his nature. By<br />

‘condition’ they understand, with more or less clarity, the<br />

assembly <strong>of</strong> those limits a priori which outline her/his<br />

fundamental situation in the universe. The historical<br />

situations vary […] What does not vary, is the necessity for<br />

her/him to be in this world, to be at work here, to be in the<br />

middle <strong>of</strong> others, and to be mortal here. 18 (Sartre 67)<br />

Thus, within online fandom, one must not only perceive duplicates <strong>of</strong> fans,<br />

but also mothers, daughters, workers, teachers etc. It is only by humanizing<br />

fandom’s context, and by attempting to understand the people, in all their<br />

18 Translated by author <strong>of</strong> this thesis.<br />

151

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