This article studies one media fan’s consumption patterns, arguing that media fandom has been restrictively defined in cultural studies to date as a matter of faithfulness to singular fan objects. Contra such definitions, the article addresses cyclical fandom, wherein the fan-consumer constantly moves from one fan object to another, experiencing intense affective relationships to a variety of texts. This case study employs psychoanalytic ethnography to analyze such a consumption pattern, where the “surprise” of new fandoms is repeatedly sought. Christopher Bollas’s psychoanalytic concept of the “aleatory object” is used to interpret self-narratives of cyclical fandom.
Abercrombie, N., & Longhurst, B. (1998). Audiences. London: Sage.
2.
Archer, M. (2000). Being human: The problem of agency. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
3.
Bacon-Smith, C. (1992). Enterprising women: Television fandom and the creation of popular myth. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
4.
Bollas, C. (1987). The shadow of the object: Psychoanalysis of the unthought known. London: Free Association Books.
5.
Bollas, C. (1989). Forces of destiny: Psychoanalysis and human idiom. London: Free Association Books.
6.
Bollas, C. (1993). Being a character: Psychoanalysis and self experience. London: Routledge.
7.
Bollas, C. (1995). Cracking up: The work of unconscious experience. London: Routledge.
8.
Bourdieu, P. (1986). Distinction. London: Routledge.
9.
Bourdieu, P. (1990). The logic of practice. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
10.
Bourdieu, P. (2001). Masculine domination. Cambridge, UK: Polity.
11.
Campbell, C. (1987). The romantic ethic and the spirit of modern consumerism. Oxford, UK: Basil Blackwell.
12.
Campbell, J. (2000). Arguing with the phallus. London: Zed Books.
13.
Cavarero, A. (2000). Relating narratives: Storytelling and selfhood. London: Routledge.
14.
Chase, S. E. (1995). Taking narrative seriously. In R. Josselson & A. Lieblich (Eds.), Interpreting experience: The narrative study of lives (pp. 1-26). London: Sage.
15.
Craib, I. (2001). Psychoanalysis: A critical introduction. Cambridge, UK: Polity.
16.
Crossley, M. L. (2000). Introducing narrative psychology. Buckingham, UK: Open University Press.
17.
Czarniawska, B. (2004). Narratives in social science research. London: Sage.
18.
Elliott, A. (1996). Subject to ourselves: Social theory, psychoanalysis and postmodernity. Cambridge, UK: Polity.
19.
Fiske, J. (1992). The cultural economy of fandom. In L. A. Lewis (Ed.), The adoring audience (pp. 30-49). London: Routledge.
20.
Gilbert, J. (2003). Small faces: The tyranny of celebrity in post-oedipal culture. Mediactive, 2, 86-109.
21.
Gray, A. (2003). Research practice for cultural studies. London: Sage.
22.
Gray, J. (2003). New audiences, new textualities: Anti-fans and non-fans. International Journal of Cultural Studies, 6(1), 64-81.
23.
Grotstein, J. S. (2002). “Love is where it finds you”: The caprices of the “aleatory object.” In J. Scalia (Ed.), The vitality of objects: Exploring the work of Christopher Bollas (pp. 78-92). London: Continuum.
24.
Harrington, C. L., & Bielby, D. (1995). Soap fans: Pursuing pleasure and making meaning in everyday life. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
25.
Hills, M. (1999). The “common sense” of cultural studies. Diegesis: Journal of the Association for Research in Popular Fictions, 5, 6-15.
26.
Hills, M. (2002). Fan cultures. London: Routledge.
27.
Hollway, W., & Jefferson, T. (2000). Doing qualitative research differently: Free association, narrative and the interview method. London: Sage.
28.
Jenkins, H. (1992). Textual poachers. New York: Routledge.
29.
Johnson, R., Chambers, D., Raghuram, P., & Tincknell, E. (2004). The practice of cultural studies. London: Sage.
30.
Josselson, R. (1995). Imagining the real: Empathy, narrative and the dialogic self. In R. Josselson & A. Lieblich (Eds.), Interpreting experience: The narrative study of lives (pp. 27-44). London: Sage.
31.
Kleinman, S., & Copp, M. A. (1993). Emotions and fieldwork. London: Sage.
32.
Kuhn, A. (2002). An everyday magic: Cinema and cultural memory. London: I. B. Tauris.
33.
Lacey, J. (2000). Discursive mothers and academic fandom: Class, generation and the production of theory. In S. R. Munt (Ed.), Cultural studies and the working class: Subject to change (pp. 36-50). London: Cassell.
34.
Lefebvre, H. (2004). Rhythmanalysis: Space, time, and everyday life. London: Continuum.
35.
Leledakis, K. (1995). Society and psyche: Social theory and the unconscious dimension of the social. Oxford, UK: Berg.
36.
Mann, G. (2002). Transformational, conservative, and terminal objects: The application of Bollas’s concepts to practice. In J. Scalia (Ed.), The vitality of objects: Exploring the work of Christopher Bollas (pp. 58-77). London: Continuum.
37.
Minsky, R. (1998). Psychoanalysis and culture: Contemporary states of mind. Cambridge, UK: Polity.
38.
Mittell, J. (2004). Genre and television. New York: Routledge.
39.
Molino, A., & Shumar, W. (2002). Returns of the repressed: Some new applications of psychoanalysis to ethnography. In J. Scalia (Ed.), The vitality of objects: Exploring the work of Christopher Bollas (pp. 95-107). London: Continuum.
40.
Muggleton, D. (2000). Inside subculture: The postmodern meaning of style. Oxford, UK: Berg.
41.
Negus, K., & Pickering, M. (2004). Creativity, communication and cultural value. London: Sage.
42.
Nightingale, V. (1996). Studying audiences: The shock of the real. London: Routledge.
43.
Osborne, P. (2000). Philosophy in cultural theory. London: Routledge.
44.
O’Shaughnessy, M. (1999). Media and society. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
45.
Parker, I. (1997). Psychoanalytic culture: Psychoanalytic discourse in western society. London: Sage.
46.
Phillips, A. (1993). On kissing, tickling and being bored. London: Faber and Faber.
47.
Phillips, A. (1994). On flirtation. London: Faber and Faber.
48.
Sandvoss, C. (2003). A game of two halves: Football, television and globalization. London: Routledge.
49.
Sandvoss, C. (in press). Fans: The mirror of consumption. Cambridge, UK: Polity.
50.
Silverstone, R. (1999). Why study the media?London: Sage.
51.
Stacey, J. (1994). Star gazing: Hollywood cinema and female spectatorship. London: Routledge.
52.
Thornton, S. (1995). Club cultures. Cambridge, UK: Polity.
53.
Walkerdine, V. (1986). Video replay: Families, films and fantasies. In V. Burgin, J. Donald, & C. Kaplan (Eds.), Formations of fantasy (pp. 167-199). London: Methuen.
