Fan Affirmation: Alethurgy on an Indie Music Fandom

Abstract

Context: highly identified with the genre, indie fans are engaged and productive, especially in virtual communities where they circulate opinions and share experiences. Objective: since relations mediated by consumption provide conditions for constituting subjectivities, we rely on Foucault’s theory with the aim of analyzing how the interactions of indie music fans evidence an alethurgical process of subjectivation. Methodology: to do this, we performed a netnography on a large global forum for indie music discussion. Results: results show a cultural configuration in which the communal sense legitimize conducts, based on emotional testimonies and manifestations of expertise, which establish the very condition of fanity associated with the capacity of its members to outline the fan object, develop a fan authority and then to position themselves in relation to the market logic in which the genre is inserted. Conclusion: thus, we conclude that indie music fans perform an alethurgy of affirmation. The study innovates by adopting the concept of alethurgy as a means of analyzing the subjectivation of fans, which is evidenced as a theoretical gap in the field of CCT.

Keywords

• fans
• indie music
• subjectivity
• alethurgy
• netnography