Brandon: Critical Fandom Studies and DH (Lothian)

In the essay “From Transformative Works to #transformDH: Digital Humanities as (Critical) Fandom,” Alexis Lothian crafts a connection between fan studies theorizing and digital humanities scholarship. She argues that we should work to understand digital humanities as a kind of fandom, noting “…that there is much to learn from attending to (DH’s) processes and practices through lenses developed by fan theorists, practitioners, and scholars” (371). 

To make this link, Lothian roots her argument in a discussion of what she calls “critical fandom,” or “the ways that members of fan communities use diverse creative techniques to challenge the structures and representations around which their communities are organized” (372). Just as fan producers create digital media (e.g. videos, websites, games) that celebrates and/or interrogates their favorite text(s), DH scholars use digital tools to celebrate and interrogate DH scholarship. 

Lothian describes critical fandom studies as “affirmational” and “transformative” to illuminate the engagement strategies undergirding critical fan production, stating, “affirmational fans engage with their source object as it is, deferring to an original author or creator; transformational fans, while they also celebrate their source, do so through an open and undisciplined process of reinterpretation that ‘twists it to the fans’ own purposes’” (376). 

Do you think Lothian makes a compelling case for reading DH scholarship as a kind of fandom? What are the stakes for making this kind of claim? 

-Brandon McCasland