The Performative Power of Gendered Practices: Negotiation of Space through Dominant Discourses in The Mary Sue and its Readership

Date
2016-01-29
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Abstract
This project is a narrow examination into the fan news website The Mary Sue (TMS) and its readership in the wake of a merger with another fan news website, Geekosystem. The thesis uses Performativity to investigate the tension between the corporate demands of the online community and the community’s uses of the online space. As TMS defines itself as a woman-centric fan space, the thesis relies on Fan Studies and Cyberfeminist literature to explore how gendered fan practices structure a community’s membership boundaries. A combined Foucauldian Discourse Analysis and Ethnomethodological approach demonstrates how an online readership negotiates corporately-dictated discourses through management of their own community practices and membership boundaries. Research includes collected TMS articles as well as surveys and interviews with the readership. The thesis illustrates how acknowledgement of individuals’ “middle ranges of agency” (Sedgwick 2007, p.632) opens analysis beyond powerful/powerless binaries and into how individuals navigate intricate, forceful discourses.
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Mass Communications, Anthropology--Cultural, Gender Studies, WomenÕs Studies
Citation
Rowe, S. (2016). The Performative Power of Gendered Practices: Negotiation of Space through Dominant Discourses in The Mary Sue and its Readership (Doctoral thesis, University of Calgary, Calgary, Canada). Retrieved from https://prism.ucalgary.ca. doi:10.11575/PRISM/28271