Identity, Community, and Sexuality in Slash Fan Fiction: Pocket Publics

This book explores slash fan fiction communities during the late 1990s and early 2000s, documenting the history of a feminist, queer media subculture. It argues that online slash communities created an alternate public space that provided opportunities for unanticipated encounters with complex sexual, relational, and political practices, forming a "pocket public" that protected participants from harassment and censorship.

Format: Hardback
Length: 282 pages
Publication date: 12 December 2023
Publisher: Taylor & Francis Ltd

This captivating book delves into the vibrant world of slash fan fiction communities during the transformative years of the late 1990s and early 2000s, as they transitioned from print to digital circulation. Through an extensive and in-depth exploration spanning over ten years of online and in-person ethnography, the author offers a profound examination of slash fan fiction, which consists of original stories written by and circulated within female-centered communities about same-sex characters borrowed from previously published sources. By documenting the history of a feminist, queer media subculture that often remains obscured in dominant histories of the internet's development and the contemporary focus on industry-friendly but often misogynistic digital fan subcultures, the book sheds light on the unique infrastructure, creativity, and ways of life of these communities.

The book argues that online slash communities created an alternate public space that offered opportunities for unexpected encounters with a wide range of complex sexual, relational, and political practices. Through the formation of a "pocket public," a digital space that is public enough to be found and protected enough to shield participants from harassment and censorship, slash contributed to readers' tools for experiencing and thinking about pleasure and ways of living.

This insightful and comprehensive study will captivate students and scholars engaged in the fields of media studies, literary studies, anthropology, new media, audience communities, convergence culture, fan studies, women's studies, and queer studies. The introduction of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons [Attribution-Non Commercial (CC-BY- NC)] license. This study was funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (grant 435-2019-0691).

Dimension: 234 x 156 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781032584331