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