Yeah 1 of the many things I think #fanstudies needs to reckon with is its history of (sometimes implicitly/sometimes explicitly) assuming that all subversion of authority/the man/the powerful is virtuous/laudable

No text is sacred. No authority ought be given default deference https://twitter.com/melstanfill/status/1347563715462377472

But the consequences of that are different when "the authority" in question is science telling us what to do about climate change or COVID, and that vaccines don't cause autism. It's different when it is laws design to protect the public interest.

And the truth is, fan studies provides a good model for understanding this right wing movement. They have a VERY 'transformative' understanding of the Constitution, the Bible, mainstream news, science, even pop culture. And it underlies much of their political thought & action

And that begs the question: what happens to traditional fan studies thinking when we turn it around on ourselves & say we want the things we consider 'good hegemony' (science, mainstream news, certain legal protections) to be treated as having sacred authority & default deference

Fan Studies often implicitly placed itself on the side of the righteous (liberal) underdog subverting conservative cultural authority. But what happens when we are the people trying to maintain authority over others who want to subvert it? Suddenly subversion is bad b/c...

...it is against the things WE hold dear that have acquired a certain level of cultural clout/power/hegemony. Now we want authority to be authoritative (but only about 'good' authority that we agree with, e.g., science)

The (implicit) fan studies premise that subversion is virtuous was based on the (implicit) assumption that conservatism would remain hegemonic

What happens when that shifts & suddenly conservatives can cast themselves as the scrappy underdogs throwing off yoke of liberal tyranny

(For the record, I'm not saying I think their politics are morally equivalent to leftist politics, or that the consequences of their subversions are equivalent to ours. They aren't)

But that's also exactly the point.

Foundational fan studies work tended to treat all subversion as (more or less) good, b/c it assumed power/hegemony would remain conservative in nature.

It assumed (liberal) fans would always be cast on the losing/transformative side. What happens when that stops being the case?