Transformative Works and Cultures (Sep 2008)
Ownership, authority, and the body: Does antifanfic sentiment reflect posthuman anxiety?
Abstract
This essay examines three Japanese anime texts—Ghost in the Shell, Neon Genesis Evangelion, and Serial Experiments: Lain—in order to discover metaphors for female fan practices online. In each of the three texts, women overthrow corporate, governmental, or paternal control over the body and gain the right to copy or reproduce it by fundamentally altering those bodies. These gestures are expressions of posthuman anxiety and "terminal identity." In addition, they involve confrontation with an uncanny double in some way. But how can they provide models for cyborg and fan subjectivity in an era in which bodily and textual reproduction, especially among females, is such a hotly contested issue? And how is the antifanfic backlash related to the phenomenon of the uncanny?
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