“Fandom as Performance”
Jeff List
University of Kansas
Abstract: This paper is an ethnographic reading of fan behavior during the 2009 NCAA men’s basketball Final Four® in Detroit, Michigan which analyzes interviews with fans, documentation of displays from the various student sections during the games, and descriptions of my encounters with fans during the weekend. Fandom is an emerging field of discourse in the areas of sociology, psychology, and sports management/marketing. Current scholarship addresses the process of fan attachment, motivation, and benefits; however it does not address the performativity of displays of fandom. Following Stacy’s Wolf recent work on female performance of fandom and employing Judith Butler’s construction of “performance,” I explore various ways college basketball enthusiasts perform fandom, articulating how they understand their allegiance to their team. Also, through Richard Schechner’s “restoration of behavior,” I examine the ritual elements in fan behavior. I argue that fandom enables access to personally meaningful experiences, rather than simply being an expression of social identity. The subjects in my study described their identity as nostalgic experiences from childhood and their time in college, as members of a community, and as part of their school’s tradition. Performance studies offers a way to examine fandom in terms of this network of experiences.
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