A/N: The following essay was written for an independent study at Brown University. My ultimate goal is to submit this paper for publication, so any suggestions
on how to revise it or which publications might accept such a work would be highly appreciated. Though I did not use beta readers in a traditional sense,
I would like to acknowledge several individuals who directly and indirectly contributed to this essay. Thanks goes to Charlie Verge for our long conversations
on Crane's Beach and for giving me the confidence to put these crazy ideas to paper. Thanks also go to Suzanne Stewart-Steinberg, for her encouragement
and invaluable advice. Thanks to Laura Atkinson, and to all members of the Alpha Delta Phi Society, for humoring my fanfiction obsession. Finally, thanks
go to Helen F. Smith for sparking my interest in narrativity and literary criticism. You told me to stop psychoanalyzing literature, and I never listened.
Whether or not this was a good thing remains to be seen.
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Introduction
In a 1994 lecture titled "Archive Fever," Jacques Derrida asks a startling question: What would have been the consequences for the science of psychoanalysis
if "instead of writing thousands of letters by hand[Freud and his disciples had had access to MCI or AT&T telephonic credit cards, portable tape recorders,
computers, printers, faxes, televisions, teleconferences, and above all E-mail?" (Derrida 16). Though Derrida does not address the ramifications of this
"retrospective science fiction," he does offer some insights as to the nature of Freud as an archivist, the dependence of psychoanalysis on its own archive,
and the ways in which the very word archive itself is inextricably linked with power and authority.
Threaded throughout Derrida's lecture is a deconstruction of Western metaphysics and the Western obsession with the search for the origin, a search, Derrida
argues, that is not only fruitless, but counterproductive; an archivist searching for the origin of an archive will only create more traces, more archive.
Derrida calls this destructive desire "le mal d'archive" or, in English, "archive fever," and he associates this term with the compulsion to repeat and
the Freudian death drive as described in Beyond the Pleasure Principle. For Freud, the death drive is a desire to return to an inorganic state, free from
tension. It is a silent apparition that makes its presence known only through certain manifestations of the pleasure principle, of which the compulsion
to repeat is a part. Like Freud's grandson, who is compelled to enact and re-enact the disappearance of his toy, Derrida's archivist is caught up in the
contradictory desire to add to the archive (the so-called archontic principle) and to locate the origin and thus escape from its confines (Archive Fever).
However, these efforts to escape will only result in more repetitive and destructive acts.
One particularly telling example of this repetition compulsion in action is that of Freud himself, whose efforts to work through his own troubled relationship
with his father are responsible for the ways in which the image of the murder of the father dominates almost all of his texts. In this way, the archivist
and the writer are driven by similar forces, for while the archivist is consumed by the search for the origin, the writer is equally plagued by the desire
to create that which is original. Thus, it can be argued that for writers, archive fever takes the form of what Harold Bloom refers to as anxiety of influence.
Freud expresses this anxiety with his introduction of the aggression instincts at the beginning of chapter six of Civilization and its Discontents: "In
none of my previous writings have I had so strong a feeling as now that what I am describing is common knowledge and that I am using up paper and ink and,
in due course, the compositor's and printer's work and material in order to expound things which are, in fact, self-evident" (Society and Its Discontents
64). For Bloom, the mission of all authors is to renounce the existence of one's precursors, or fathers, because to deny one's own birth is also to deny
one's death. Anxiety of influence, in addition, is a writer's fear that he has nothing to say that has not been said before and that he is merely following
in the father's footsteps. But is archive fever, and by extension anxiety of influence, really inevitable? If control of the archive had been wrested from
the father once and for all, and originality was abandoned in favor of repetition with a difference, could the suffering induced by archive fever be circumvented?
Which brings us to yet another question: What would Derrida, or Freud, for that matter, make of the postmodern practice of fanfiction, for Derrida's explanation
of archive fever is just as applicable to literature as it is to history.
In general, the term fanfiction refers to any work that deliberately adopts the characters and world of an existing work. Fanfiction takes a plethora of
forms. Texts range from one hundred word fragments (or drabbles as they are called) to novels of epic proportions. Such texts can be based on children's
books, such as The Baby Sitters Club Series, premodern works ranging from biblical texts to Shakespeare, and, most commonly, science fiction and fantasy
novels such as J. R. R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings trilogy. Fanfiction can also be written using characters from comic books or television shows, and
there is even a subset of fanfiction, so-called "real person fiction," which speculates on the lives of public figures and celebrities. For the purposes
of this study, however, I will be focusing my attention on the archive of fanfiction based on the Harry Potter series written by J.K. Rowling, both because
I am most familiar with this corpus and because its size and popularity lends itself to theories that will still hold true for other varieties of fanfiction.
Fan-scholars hold differing views about which texts can be considered fanfiction. In an upcoming book on fanfiction and fan practices, Abigail Derecho
states that some fans posit a broad definition of fanfiction and pinpoint its beginning as far back as the Jewish exegetical tradition of Midrash, while
others, cautious about blurring the boundary between literature and fiction too radically, theorize that fantexts must be written from within a fan culture
by authors who identify as fans. According to this viewpoint, fanfiction began either with the Jane Austen societies in the 1920's, or with the first Star
Trek fanzines in the 1960's. Whatever your conception of fanfiction, all fan texts belong to a broader category traditionally referred to as derivative
literature, or what Derecho renames as archontic literature. For Derecho, the term "derivative" or "appropriative" applies notions of ownership, of propriety,
of property, of the unquestionable power of canonical texts. The archontic text, however, is the embodiment of the loss of any notions of ownership or
propriety. Fanfiction writers can claim no ownership of the characters about which they write, and the practice remains in the gray area of copyright law.
There is nothing "proper" or "authoritative" about fanfiction. As Derrida writes, "By incorporating the knowledge deployed in reference to it, the archive
augments itself, engrosses itself, it gains in auctoritas. But in the same stroke it loses the absolute and meta-textual authority it might claim to have"
(Derrida 69).
Unlike other, more pessimistic thinkers, Derrida does not bemoan the loss of meta-textual authority, since he views literature as an endless vehicle of
pleasure, or jouissance, a web of multiple interpretations. It is this lack, this breakdown of the power differential between reader and writer, this ability
to transcend death through the abandonment of the quest for meaning, from which fanfiction derives its curative properties, in much the same way as does
the postmodern practice of narrative therapy. One cannot deny that archontic texts are inherently repetitive, but repetition need not only be narrowly
defined as a strict, mechanical replication, as Gilles Deleuze states in Difference and Repetition. For Deleuze, repetition can also refer to "the more
profound structures of a hidden repetition in which a 'differential' is disguised and displaced," or repetition with a difference. The author of an archontic
text does not wish to achieve replication or mastery; he only seeks to create a text that at first glance seems repetitive, but which contain differences
that carry the original text to the nth power. It would be as if Freud's grandson had decided that instead of simply throwing his toy over the side of
his cot over and over again, he would precisely measure the timing and trajectory of his toy after each drop. Repetition with a difference is not unique
to poststructuralists and fanfiction writers. The construct of the archontic text can trace its roots as far back as the Jewish exegetical tradition practiced
by Talmud scholars, who were given the challenge of preserving and destroying the Torah in one breath, the same challenge that fanfiction writers would
take on two thousand years later (Handelman 47). Thus, I would argue that fanfiction is not a mere phenomenon unique to postmodern mass culture, but actually
owes its origins to something far older. Like psychoanalysis, like theoretical physics, fanfiction is a Jewish art.
A Jewish Approach to Text.
In Slayers of Moses, Susan Handelman forges a link between Jewish and poststructuralist criticism. Though separated spatially and temporally, both approaches
believe the act of interpretation to be sacred, and the search for a single meaning or direction to be destructive and idolatrous. Handelman goes on to
argue that Freud, Lacan, Derrida and Bloom were a part of what she called "heretic hermeneutics"; though all of these critics-with the exception of Lacan-made
some effort to renounce their Jewish origins, their treatment of texts is essentially Jewish.
The question of what is meant by a Jewish approach to text brings us back to a philosophical debate on the nature of language between Jewish and Greco-Christian
thinkers that has been raging since the beginning of recorded history. For Plato, language is a substitution for the concept it is representing, and truth
is not to be found in the structure of language. In fact, language must be transcended. Following Plato, Aristotle argued that written language is a substrate
of spoken language and that letters are merely symbols of spoken sounds. Derrida would go on to use the term logocentrism to label any theory that privileges
the spoken over the written. According to logocentric theory, there is a rigid separation between word and thing, or in Saussurian terms, between signifier
and signified. For Aristotle, the spoken is favored over the written because spoken language represents presence (referring to the simultaneous presence
of both speaker and hearer) while writing represents a state of absence, a poor substitute to be used only in cases where circumstances preclude a meeting
between speaker and hearer. For the Jews, the distinction between signifier and signified is irrelevant, since even the shapes of words are crucial in
the interpretation of Jewish texts.
It was precisely this difference of opinion over presence and absence that caused the rift between Jewish and Christian thought. Though Christianity challenged
Greek philosophy through its insistence that the world had no innate necessities because it was created by an arbitrary god, Christianity is indebted to
Platonic and Aristotelian thought in its treatment of language and text. Christianity extended the desire for presence further than did the Greeks. Jesus
Christ became the divine presence, the one true signified, and the text was supplanted by the flesh. The Jews believed that the supreme commandment was
to love God's text more than God himself, and not to find the correct interpretation of the law. For the Jews, to engage with the text always meant to
argue with it, to question the very foundation on which it rested, and it was this very argumentation, this relationship with an absent God that the disciples
of Christianity so fervently wished to escape. Paul expressed his frustrations with the Jews in this way: "But their minds were hardened; for to this day
whenever Moses is read a veil lies over their minds; but when a man turns to the Lord the veil is removed" (2 Cor. 14-17. Qtd. In Handelman, 88). For Christians,
the written word represented not only absence, but also a state of exile and instability.
According to Handelman, Christian thought is predominantly lexical and metaphorical, with the central metaphor referring, of course, to Christ, a signified
for which all signifiers can be substituted. On the other hand, Judaism rejects this tendency to emphasize similarity and mask difference through the act
of substitution, and as a result, Jewish thought is predominately propositional and metonymical, thus allowing for hundreds of meanings. Noted linguist
Tzvetan Todorov makes the distinction between lexical and propositional symbolism through the use of the following statement from the Talmud: "God will
reward even animals" (Handelman 54). Whereas a lexical interpretation might substitute animals for "the humble of spirit," a propositional interpretation
might pose the question: "if it is thus for a beast, for men it is all the more certain that God will not withhold His reward?" Likewise, whereas metaphorical
thought substitutes one signifier for another, a substitution which effaces the differences between the signifiers in question, metonymy embraces difference.
For example, the first Mishna of the tractate Bava describes four categories of damages for which every Jew is held responsible: ox, cistern, grazing and
conflagration, or, expressed in another way, horn, tooth, pit and fire. To take one of these categories, "tooth" represents the damage caused by an animal
through any act that gives it satisfaction, whether it be eating or rubbing against a wall. For the Jews, however, the relationship between "tooth" and
"rubbing against the wall" is based on association, juxtaposition and contiguity, rather than mere substitution.
A contemporary example of this Christian approach to text can be found in Peter Brooks' essay, "Freud's Master plot." In brief, Brooks aligns metonymy
and metaphor with the pleasure principle and the death drive respectively. While poetry is dominated by metaphor, Brooks argues that narrative always involves
a dynamic interplay between metaphor and metonymy. At the center of any text is metaphor, and any metonymical impressions in the text are placed merely
to guide the reader on a path towards the illumination of that metaphor. In other words, we are compelled to reach the end of a novel by forces similar
to the Freudian death drive, for only after the metaphorical death of the novel can we make sense of what came before (Felluga np). As we have discussed
earlier, Derrida labels this destructive desire to achieve death in order to find new meaning in the beginning as archive fever. But Brooks, who clings
fast to the belief that meaning does in fact exist, and that a reader can indeed escape from the confines of a text, does not see this desire as destructive.
He has elevated death to the position of ultimate, Christ-like signified. His argument also implies a narrative boundedness, a clear demarcation between
reader and writer, between one text and another. Talmud scholars, deconstructionists and fanfiction writers, however dissimilar they might appear, all
share this vociferous denial of narrative and authorial boundedness and of the Freudian death drive as the only explanation for textual desire. Aside from
a very important exception that will be discussed later, members of all three groups do not seek closure; in fact, they actively resist it. When one reaches
the end of the Talmud, of a fanfiction, of any archontic text, there is no ultimate release of tension. There are only more potentialities to be realized,
more jouissance to be experienced, an infinitude of stories to be read. If anything, the production and consumption of archontic texts, especially fanfiction,
is motivated by Eros, not thanatos; it is, to put it bluntly, a veritable orgy of analysis.
To understand the commonalities between Talmud scholars, deconstructionists and fanfiction writers, it is first necessary to examine their treatment of
the archive and of archontic texts. For the Jews, the Talmud is archontic, in every sense of the word. Though work on the Talmud was finished in the fifth
century B.C., no scholar is accredited with its completion. Talmudic interpretation continues to this day, and this is why it is often said that the Talmud
was never completed. Moreover, each volume of the Talmud begins on the second page, because, as one interpretation puts it, in order "to teach that no
matter how much one has learned, one hasn't begun to fathom its depths" (Handelman 46). In the very layout of its pages, which was later adapted by Derrida
in Glas, the Talmud blurs the lines between text and commentary. In the center of each page is a passage from the Mishna, which is surrounded by interpretations
from the Gemara. Toward the periphery are discussions, explanatory notes and references and cross-references. Interpretations of the Torah arrived at by
exegetical methods described in the Talmud are just as valued as interpretations given in the text itself, for, according to rabbinic thought, "the written
scriptures are intentionally incomplete and are meant to be accompanied and supplemented by the oral Torah" (Handelman 32). In turn, the Talmud, though
written as a commentary on the Torah, is not seen as an inferior text but rather as an entry in the archive of Jewish thought. According to Simon Rawidowicz,
the Jewish system of thought had two beginnings. The Talmud was not merely a commentary that particularized the inherited written law but "a new act of
weaving undertaken by master weavers of rare power" (Handelman 41).
Like any archive, the Talmud is a cacophony of contradictory voices, since Jewish thought revels in contradiction. a well-known Talmudic passage states:
"For three years Beit Shammai and Beit Hillel were disputing, the former asserting, "The law is in accord with our views," while the latter contended,
"The law is in agreement with our views!" A heavenly voice answered, "Both statements are the words of the living God, but the law is according to Beit
Hillel" (Eruv. 13b qtd. In Handelman 56). Though practically speaking, Hillel's interpretation was the correct law to follow, both interpretations were
"the word of the living God."
The Mdrashic texts are even more playful, since decisions surrounding these texts are not subject to the same practical constraints as the interpretation
of the law. One source posits that each word of a scriptural verse has seventy meanings, seventy being a rabbinical designation for "endless," and so a
format commonly found in the Midrash Aggadah is to dissect a verse from scripture and list all the various combinations and permutations of its meanings
(Handelman 67). Writers of Midrash often use these elaborate forms of word play to fill in the places where the Torah is lacking, such as the kind of tree
from which Adam and Eve ate. Some argued that the food in question was wheat, others the grape or the etrog. The willingness of the writer of Midrash to
participate in these discussions suggests that he is comfortable with ambiguity and resists closure, that what motivates him has nothing to do with the
death drive and everything to do with pleasure. For the writers of the Talmud, the challenge of their undertaking was to reject and preserve the text in
one breath (Handelman 41). Deconstructionists and fanfiction writers, for the most part, do not share this need to treat the texts they are interpreting
with such delicacy, and therefore the potential for play is infinitely multiplied. We have already touched on the similarities between the Jewish exegetical
tradition and deconstructionism. This similarity lies in Derrida's insistence that there is nothing outside of language, or outside the text, and that
all texts are citing other texts, with or without quotation marks, which is why all texts should be viewed as entries in a larger archive. Not surprisingly,
online repositories from which fanfiction can be deposited or retrieved are referred to as archives, and they bear a striking resemblance to their Talmudic
ancestor.
Fanfiction as a Jewish Art
How, might you ask, is a group of stories, written by amateur writers, at all similar to the Talmudic archive? First, like the Talmud, the archontic principle
ensures that the fanfiction archive will never be complete. Even after the final installment of the Harry Potter series is released and the fates of the
characters are revealed, fanfiction writers will still manage to find more silences in the text, more avenues that Rowling has failed to explore. Rowling
has herself admitted that she has entire notebooks of information on the Potterverse that she has not found a place for in any of the books. Thus, for
differing reasons but with similar effects, both the Torah and the Harry Potter books deliberately withhold information from their readers. As a result
of this dual incompleteness, fanfiction lacks the metatextual authority to which Derrida refers to in archive fever. In fact, according to Derecho, fanfiction,
and all archontic texts, symbolize the overthrow of that authority and of the humanist ideology that has dominated European philosophy for the past five
centuries. She argues that archontic texts are the literature of the eccentric, and she points to historical examples of how minority groups, especially
women, modified or contributed to canonical texts to subvert stereotypes and challenge patriarchical ideology (Derecho 108). Not surprisingly, the vast
majority of fanfiction writers are women, and subjects of their texts often concern characters marginalized in the originary series, most notably Harry
Potter's nemesis, Draco Malfoy, Potions master, Severus Snape, and other members of the Slytherin house. Fanfiction also subverts humanistic definitions
of authorship as well, in that no fanfiction can owe its existence to one author.
Aside from the obvious fact that all fanfictions are reliant on the originary text, collaboration and co-authorship are essential facets of the fanwriting
culture. The Internet allows fans to share their work with fellow authors from all over the world. Typically, a fanfiction writer will engage the services
of one or more betas, the term used to designate a writer who has voluntarily agreed to critique and edit the story of another author before it is published
online. The role of a beta is varied, from correcting minor grammatical mistakes to pointing out flaws in the characterization or plot, to contributing
suggestions for the direction of the fiction. In some cases, a story's readers can also have a profound effect on the course of the fanfiction. Most fanfiction
archives provide mechanisms for readers to review each chapter of a fiction, and reviewing is highly encouraged, since reader feedback is one of the only
ways fanfiction writers profit from their work. In short, the usage of co-authors, beta readers and reviewers de-emphasizes the individuality of the author
and authority in general. The postmodern view that the divide between reader and author is an artificial construction is consistent with Jewish thought,
since all interpreters and readers of Talmud are authors in their own right and are given free reign to question the validity of arguments made by earlier
authors. Even God himself, the supposed author of the Torah, instructs his people: "Is not my word like fire... and like a hammer that breaks the rock
in pieces' [Ger: 23-29, as cited in Handelman, 72). Here, God is denying his absolute authority over the text.
In the past two decades, psychologists who practice narrative therapy have denounced their authority in a similar fashion. Narrative therapy, whose premise
is that the world is viewed through a succession of stories and that the drive to narrate is fundamental to humankind, came about largely as a result of
the work of biologist Umberto Maturana. Maturana held that no living system can take a metaposition to another living system (Perry 24). He coined the
term "structural coupling" to refer to the process by which two systems perturb and couple with one another to form new systems. Such a view enabled family
therapy to become more postmodern in its sensibilities. For the first time in the history of the discipline, therapists began to explore the possibility
that all of therapy was interpretation, and all therapists were interpreters whose views were as fallible as those of the clients they were attempting
to treat.
According to narrative therapy, it is impossible for one human being to objectively and correctly interpret the behavior of another, and every act of interpretation
is a misreading. Most conflicts stem from our negative misreadings of one another, and the goal of narrative therapy is to help clients come to "compassionate
misprisions" of one another, a decision to "interpret the actions of the other as ... a fellow sufferer" (Perry 31). This definition of compassionate misprision
closely parallels Bloom's definition of interpretation: "a way of opening the text to one's own sorrow" (Handelman 194). Fanfictions, which Bloom would
consider as interpretations and criticisms in an alternate form, reveal the sorrows of their authors. Though the Harry Potter books rarely mention traumatic
experiences common to teenagers and younger adults, such as self-mutilation, eating disorders, rape, and other forms of abuse, these elements often appear
in fanfiction. More specifically, the Rowling books, aside from a few brief mentions of magical ailments, fail to mention disability of any kind, and thus
a genre of Harry Potter disability fanfiction has begun to emerge. These stories, with Laguera 25's Summon the Lambs To Slaughter being a prime example,
open the Harry Potter world to the realm of disability. They allow the authors themselves, many of whom are disabled, to enter the Potter universe and
view the Potter characters as "fellow sufferers." For authors like Laguera, whose novel depicts the life of a Hogwarts student with cerebral palsy, fanfiction
is a form of narrative therapy because it allows the new author to edit a dominant text and give voice to their marginalized stories. Fanfiction and narrative
therapy are alike because both encourage clients and readers to explore various potentialities and become authors in their own right. In the case of the
former, the therapist has willingly surrendered his power to impose an ultimate meaning; in the case of the latter, the readers have playfully rebelled
against the author and have distributed her power among themselves.
The playfulness of Talmud scholars and fanfiction authors is also revealed in the ways in which both relate to other texts. In the Talmud, there is no
spatial separation made between text and criticism, and the web-like layout of its pages have led David Porush and others to make the comparison between
Talmud and hypertext, with the footnotes and other side notations analogous to hot buttons, and each commentary analogous to a frame (Porush np). Concrete
evidence of the sort of textual melding found in the Talmud would be present in the fanfiction archive as well, had not modern copyright law ensured that
the originary texts be absent from the fanfiction archive. As a result, the textual blurring is more subtle.
Fanfiction writers borrow phrases, paragraphs and entire scenes from originary texts. Sometimes quotations are given verbatim and sometimes they are modified
slightly. When an entire scene is used, the changes are more apparent, since most authors take advantage of the opportunity to present a scene from a fresh
perspective. Though the use of quotation marks to designate this textual borrowing is unnecessary, because all fanfiction is blatantly written in quotation
marks, writers do acknowledge the texts they are quoting in author's notes at the end of their fanfictions. Fanfiction writers also borrow from each other.
These borrowings can be large or small, from the use of a spell mentioned in another author's fanfiction to a retelling, or remix as it is called, of another
author's story. Fanfiction authors make the designation between canon, or the originary texts, and fanon, which refers to plot or character conventions
that have been incorporated into so many fictions that it is virtually impossible to trace their source. In other words, the term "fanon" marks the fans'
collective ownership of the modifications they have made to J. K. Rowling's world to make the texts more amenable to their written exploits. Again, it
is a de-emphasis on individuality and an encouragement of shared authorship. Once a character or a spell or a particular plot premise is said to be part
of fanon, and in most cases even before, it is fair game for another author to use, modify or otherwise shape for his own purposes, without being obligated
to acknowledge its creator. Characters can be quite different from their canon counterparts. For example, whereas canon Snape is ugly, vindictive and cruel,
fanon variants have been known to be described as sexy, romantic and "snarky," a neologism meaning caustic or sarcastic but with a more positive connotation.
The fanfiction form known as the "song fic" is another example of textual blurring. in a songfic, the lyrics of a song are interwoven with the story, sometimes
with no symbols or spaces to designate where song ends and story begins.
The fanfiction archive, like the Talmudic archive, also lacks any sort of central principle around which it is organized. Instead, the technology of the
Internet allows the reader to choose the structure or structures with which she is most comfortable, or which best suits her needs at any given time. When
locating a fanfiction, a reader can search by title, by author, by length, or by categories such as "angst," "drama," "romance" or "fluff." Readers can
also search by character pairing (or ship, as it is referred to in the fannish community). The malleability of organizational structures is but one example
of the cacophony, multivocality and contradiction that is at the heart of any fanfiction archive. Just as the law according to Beit Hillel and the law
according to Beit Shammai are both entered into the archive of Jewish thought, so too are a thousand various and sundry interpretations of the Harry Potter
canon, in the forms of fanfictions. Professor Snape is not a vampire; he just happens to resemble one. Professor Snape is in fact a vampire and has, for
the past fifteen years, been relying on Headmaster Albus Dumbledore for weekly blood donations. Snape is Harry's father. Snape has a long-lost daughter.
The Order of the Phoenix won the war against Dark Lord Voldemort. The Order of the Phoenix lost the war against Dark Lord Voldemort. Harry Potter and Ginny
Weasley are the match made in heaven and will become engaged at the end of the series. Ginny is far too slavish in her devotions to The Boy Who Lived,
and know-it-all Hermione Granger is far more suited to his tastes. Some of these interpretations come about because of clues found in the text.
Fictions that posit the theory that Harry Potter is a Horcrux (i.e. that a piece of Voldemort's soul resides in his body) fall into this category because
they are predicated on facts found in the text (i.e. Harry's link with Voldemort and Voldemort's treatment of Harry). However, fanfiction writers use these
facts metonymically rather than metaphorically, since the inferences on which they base their stories are reached through associative and juxtapositional
means. Metonymical interpretations of the text also lead to the production of so-called "alternate universe" fictions. These stories are set in a world
that bears no spatiotemporal relation to the one Rowling created, but in most cases, still resonates strongly with the originary texts. The Heart's Obligations
by Schemingreader takes place in a small Belarusian town in the nineteenth century, and revolves around the story of Severus Snape and Remus Lupin, two
Talmud scholars in love. Though the settings are radically different from the Hogwarts of the Harry Potter books, the traits of the characters are preserved.
For instance, Lupin had heart disease instead of lycanthropy. The decision to transpose the Harry Potter characters into a nineteenth century shtetl might
seem jarring in its randomness, but herein lies its ingenuity. The Heart's Obligations is a product of what Kierkegaard calls the rotation method. For
Kierkegaard, "boredom is a root of all evil," and arbitrariness is the best way to overcome it. In Either/Or, he makes the following recommendation to
his readers: "You go to see the middle of a play, you read the third part of a book. By this means you insure yourself a very different kind of enjoyment
from that which the author has been so kind as to plan for you" (Lehman np). Aside from the use of alternative universes, the rotation method can be seen
in the common fanfiction-writing practice of issuing "challenges" on Livejournal communities or mailing lists, in order to generate new ideas for stories.
Challenges will often include an arbitrary set of guidelines for the writer to follow, with regards to form, length or content. For example, the "WIKTT
Marriage Law Challenge" proposed a world wherein witches of non-magical parentage would be forced to marry "Pureblooded" wizards. Though most writers were
aware that this challenge was little more than a cheap plot device to force unlikely pairs into romantic situations, the challenge spawned hundreds of
fictions of various quality, and the production of "marriage law" fictions continues to this day. But as we shall soon see, the rotation method is only
one technique postmodern authors have used to combat the compulsion to repeat.
Fanfiction as a Postmodern Phenomenon
Thus far, we have demonstrated that the attitudes of fanfiction writers towards their texts, if not influenced by the Jewish exegetical tradition, strongly
resemble it. But what qualities of fanfiction are essentially postmodern, and what are qualities that lend a text to fanfictionalization? One of the ways
Umberto Eco draws the distinction between modernism and postmodernism concerns the attitude of each towards art and repetition. Modernism, with its stress
on originality and innovation, labeled any token that could be replicated as mere craft, and it drew a firm distinction between this lesser form and the
"major arts." As a result, modernism was critical of mass media, especially highly reiterative genres such as the Western and the detective novel (Eco
np). Postmodernism, on the other hand, makes no such distinction. It uses intertextuality and other literary strategies which were once exclusively used
by the avant-garde in order to mock the idea of the avant-garde." For example, in Kenneth Koch's book 1000 Avant-garde plays, Koch proposes a staging of
the "To Be or Not to Be" Speech to be performed with six different sets of stage directions, which include instructions for the hero to interrupt himself
after the "sea of troubles" sentence to smoke a cigarette (Lehman np). Fanfiction authors also take part in this mockery, but it is their fellow writers,
and not the avant-garde, who are usually their targets. Parodies of fanfiction clichés are so common that the form even has a name: crackfic. Some "crackfics"
exemplify common errors made by younger, amateur writers, such as poor grammar, misspelling of canon names or terminology, or the inappropriate use of
netspeak or slang. Others parody the use of a Mary Sue character. In science fiction and fantasy circles, the term "Mary Sue" is used to refer to a character
created by an author for the express purposes of allowing the author to insert herself into the story. Mary Sue characters are often one-dimensional, omnipotent
entities and are easily spotted and greatly disliked among fanfiction readers. In one example of such a fic, Mission, get Dobby laid, by Fervesco, Headmaster
Dumbledore discovers the joys of reading fanfiction and inserts himself into a story in which Moonbeam Starlight, an American transfer student with hair
like a cinnamon waterfall and eyes like pools of aquamarine loveliness, attempts to take over Hogwarts. These fictions demonstrate the author's awareness
of the absurdity that can be found when trawling the fanfiction archives, and how an intelligent writer can turn the foolish antics of her younger compatriots
to her own advantage.
These metanarratives are indicative of a larger postmodern trend, a tendency to emphasize the process by which art is made so that the process becomes
part of the value of the work itself. Umberto Eco gives the example that all Broadway musicals are essentially about the production of a Broadway musical
(Eco np). One of the most common forums through which fanfiction is disseminated is the weblog, or blog, an online publishing tool. Livejournal is the
most widely used blogging service. Most people use livejournal as a way to share the trivialities of daily life with friends. Some fans use Livejournal
strictly to post their fanfictions or recommendations; others devote their journals to non-fannish pursuits, while still others combine daily experiences
with the posting of fanfiction. In these latter cases, many fanfiction writers use their journals to share their writing processes with their readers.
"I need a beta for chapter 13," would be a typical example of such a post. Or, "I'm experiencing writers' block. Anyone got suggestions?" The effect of
this exposure is that, unlike most famous authors who shroud themselves in mystery to prevent unwanted attention from their readers, fanfiction authors
have no such mystique. The availability of personal information sends a strong message that the author and reader have equal status as fans, and in some
cases, as struggling writers. There is no need for a fanfiction reader to speculate on the composition of her favorite fan author's shopping list. Chances
are, such information is but a few clicks away.
The use of weblogs demonstrates another difference between modernism and postmodernism. While modernists believed that art was society's only salvation,
and created art that expressed their sadness at the meaninglessness of the world, postmodernists had no such delusion about art, or their ability to gain
mastery over language. Instead of glorying in innovation and "modernity," Postmodern art embraces the aesthetic of the consumer and the banal. It does
not attempt to transcend the mundane, but only to present the mundane in such a way that it generates shocking revelations about the uniformity and lifelessness
of postmodernity, and gives us a possibility of adopting new modes of perception that go beyond capitalism (Haider np). In fantastic texts, for example,
"contrastive banality" is used to pose ontological questions about the clash between the normal and the paranormal, and to illustrate the perversity of
everyday life. Brian McHale gives the example of Richard Brautigan's In Watermelon Sugar in which a young boy discusses his arithmetic homework with the
tigers who have just killed his parents (McHale np). In the Harry Potter books, the Dursleys' imprisonment of their nephew in a cupboard under the stairs
and the minutiae of magic and its study are both made to appear equally routine. As McHale states, "the characters' failure to be amazed by paranormal
happenings serves to heighten our amazement." The very language used in the organizational structure of the fanfiction archive is exemplary of this consumerist
aesthetic. Most fanfiction archives require that authors give their stories warning labels in their summaries. Warnings range from taboo sexual subjects,
to "spoilers" for books in the series, to the inclusion of "character death." To a person who does not read fanfiction, this latter warning sounds quite
odd: unless the synopsis is particularly poorly written, Fitzgerald does not warn his reader that Jay Gatsby will die at the end of his novel. Like warning
labels on compact discs, or ingredient labels on cans of food, the warning labels attempt to ensure that the reader is getting exactly what he or she wants
out of the text. To summarize, whereas modernists were quick to denigrate the repetitious, nonsensical products of consumerism, postmodernism thrives on
both nonsense and repetition.
Though Delouze's principle of repetition with a difference was originally intended to describe scholarly work, it can be applied to virtually any postmodern
work, with the practice of serialization being a good example. Serial texts, though discontinuous, are also highly repetitive, and it is from this repetition
from which most series derive their popularity. As Umberto Eco puts it when explaining why readers like Nero Wolf novels, "It is not a matter of discovering
who committed the crime, but, rather, of following certain 'topical' gestures of 'topical' characters whose stock behavior we already love" (Eco np). For
the naïve reader, serialized texts of this nature appear, on the conscious level, to be original, and the motivation to read these texts stems from the
subconscious, infantile desire to hear the same story over and over again. Critical readers, however, are conscious of both this desire and of the repetitions
of the text, and the intrigue lies not in the content of the story, but in the satisfaction of identifying the variations of these repetitions and the
role they play in the text. Naïve readers of the Harry Potter series, for example, will believe that Rowling's descriptions of Hogwarts and of her fantastical
beasts are of her own creation, while the critical reader will understand and appreciate how Rowling has enmeshed the nineteenth century school story and
Gallic folklore into her work. By the same token, the naïve reader will view each of the six Harry Potter books as separate entities, while the critical
reader will note their commonalities in structure and plot and will be quick to take note of Rowling's innovations and departures from these expectations.
When one reads a work of fanfiction, or any work of archontic literature, there is a mutual resonance between the old and new texts, so it is as if one
is reading two texts at the same time. If a reader chooses to abandon her outdated views on "originality," and embrace repetition with a difference, she
is, in essence, freeing herself from the repetition compulsion of the archivist caught in the death throes of archive fever. The cure, in this case, is
the radical acceptance that there is no cure at all, and that one might as well continue with the business of play and of the creation of more archive.
This attitude, which is the one adopted by most fanfiction writers, is a common characteristic of postmodern art and doubly refutes Peter Brooks' hypothesis
of textual boundedness and textual desire. It also forces us to re-evaluate our criteria for determining whether a text is "literature."
As well as the preoccupation for "originality" discussed earlier, other criteria for "good" works of literature included the length and completeness of
a text. As we mentioned earlier, most fanfiction writers have no pretenses about originality. Perhaps this is why authors refer to their texts as "fictions,"
or "fics" for short, and only rarely use the word "novel." A novel denotes a story that is new; a fiction denotes only a story. And as far as length is
concerned, in the fanfiction community, a so-called "drabble" of less than a hundred words can garner copious praise from its readers, and many communities
and forums exist for the sole purpose of encouraging these texts.
Another distinction between modernist and postmodernist writers lies in their conceptualization of endings. The endings of the realist novels of the nineteenth
century, of the sort favored by Brooks, usually tied all the loose plot elements of a story together and forced the reader to see the beginning of the
story from a whole new direction. The modernist novels of the twentieth century abandoned this oppressive neatness, and most novels of this type seem to
lack endings altogether. In contrast, postmodern novels often present a multiplicity of endings, the effect being, as Brian McHale puts it, such a postmodern
text "flickers, opalesces, at precisely the point where we conventionally expect either maximum clarity and definition (a closed ending) or total opacity
(an open ending)" (McHale 176). The majority of fanfictions are incomplete, not because the author believes in the shocking emptiness of the modernist
ending, but because the nature of the archive, and the internet itself, has led them to discard any notions of completion in favor of a more process-oriented
approach.
Though the unmoderated archives like do allow authors to post stories in their entirety, many authors choose to post their stories as "works
in progress," meaning that they publish chapters as they finish them. In this way, it is very easy for an author to post several chapters of a story and
then decide to abandon the endeavor. In most circumstances, the writer will choose not to remove the unfinished story from the archive. In fact, some of
the most popular stories in the Harry Potter fandom include those that have never been completed, with "Summon the Lambs to Slaughter" by La Guera25 and
"Pawn to Queen" by Riley being but two examples. The Internet is constantly in flux. With the click of a key, authors are free to eradicate their story
from existence, whether merely from their own hard drive or from the Internet. And sometimes stories disappear as a result of a change in web-hosting,
a loss of funds, or other factors beyond an author's control. As a result, one's search for fanfiction is riddled with dead ends, tantalizing traces generated
by search engines of stories and entire archives that no longer exist. In Lacanian terms, for a fanfiction writer, there is no guarantee that the letter
will arrive at its destination.
Getting the Hang of Thursdays: An Interlude
Some fanfiction writers, who are not perturbed by the instability of the media, take advantage of the technology of hypertext, and in so doing, deconstruct
the concept of an ending. For this reason, the example of Getting the Hang of Thursdays by Hayseed deserves to be discussed at length. To briefly summarize:
an accident in Severus Snape's Potions class causes Hogwarts to be drawn into a time loop wherein the same Thursday is repeated again and again. On each
Thursday, three seemingly unrelated events happen without fail: fourth-year Graham Prichard breaks his jar of armadillo bile during his morning class,
seventh-year Hermione Granger breaks her Time-Turner, and at precisely 2:34 in the afternoon, Hermione always dies. For some unspecified reason, Hermione
and her potions teacher are the only two characters who are aware of the existence of the time loop, and after having come to this realization, Severus
slightly before Hermione, they spend the fanfiction trying desperately to break the time loop and prevent Hermione's death. As the story progresses Severus
becomes more and more moved by his student's death, and their shared predicament leads them to develop a friendship with romantic overtones. Hermione's
death is finally circumvented on day 403, when she discovers that escape, and not prevention, is the only way to avert disaster. In other words, instead
of attempting to prevent the jar or the Time-Turner from breaking over a twenty-four hour period, Hermione and Severus concentrate all their effort on
escaping the objects and circumstances that are conspiring to bring about Hermione's death for the one minute period during which she has previously died.
Getting the Hang of Thursdays is a perfect example of Deleuze's repetition with a difference in action. The chapter titles alternate in order to tell the
same joke over and over again: "Pete and Repeat went for a boat ride. Pete fell in. Who was left?" As well as serving as alternate endings for the story,
the last two chapters provide alternate fates for the hapless boatmen. Incidentally, this meaningless refrain, and the equally meaningless objects that
play a central role in the story (the time-turner, armadillo bile etc) are example of what Slavoj Zizek would call the obscene presence of the postmodern.
Repetition with a difference is also evident through the occasional use of quotations from the Harry Potter books. In chapter seven, when Hermione has
just discovered the makeup of the substance that always explodes in potions class, Snape tells her, "I see no difference." In Chapter 18 of Harry Potter
and the Goblet of Fire, Snape makes the same comment to Hermione, whose teeth have become magically enlarged. Unlike Snape, the reader does see the difference,
and she appreciates Hayseed's cleverness in using this line in an entirely new context.
One would expect to become easily bored while reading about the happenings of the same day one hundred odd times, but Hayseed's talent is to alter the
pattern just enough for the reader to be surprised by the unanticipated moment of tenderness between Hermione and Snape and not enough for the reader to
still be fully caught up in the claustrophobia of the story and witness the madness and despondence brought on by the endless monotony. By the end of the
story, not only does the behavior of the characters become more and more rash, but objects caught up in the time loop begin to disintegrate. Severus' lecture
notes develop gaping holes and eventually disappear altogether, and there are disturbing places in the walls of the castle where no matter exists. What
is ironic about this story, and eerily similar to archive fever and the Freudian death drive, is that the more the characters attempt to gain mastery over
the time loop and over death, the more repetitive their actions become. It is only after the epiphany that death cannot be prevented, and can only be postponed,
that change finally comes about. Disaster is only averted when the characters realize that repetition is unavoidable. Though Hayseed does definitively
conclude that Hermione's death can be avoided, the question of whether the time loop was broken is never given a definitive answer.
In my email correspondence with the author, Hayseed wrote that if she were publishing Getting the Hang of Thursdays in book form, she would have ended
her story with Hermione and Severus, after having successfully prevented Hermione's death for the first time, spending the remainder of the day together
and then falling asleep, not knowing whether they had broken the time loop. However, since she was publishing her text as a work of fanfiction, she wanted
to take advantage of the potentialities of the internet. She wrote two endings for her fanfiction, the "Pete punched Repeat in the nose" ending, in which
the time loop is not broken and Hogwarts eventually disappears completely as a result of entropy, or the "Pete and Repeat go for Coffee" or "happy" ending,
in which the time loop is broken and Severus and Hermione are left to contemplate the fate of their relationship, now that there is a risk of exposure.
Like many fanfiction authors, Hayseed had decided to publish Getting the Hang of Thursdays as a work in progress. One of the archives she was using, Obscurus
Books, would allow her to post the endings in such a way that only one ending would appear, giving the fiction the allusion of completeness. To heighten
the ruse, Hayseed decided to give Obscurus Books the exclusive rights to the last two chapters of her story for another two weeks. After the initial posting
on Obscurus Books, it took her readership about ten hours to realize what the author had done, since one can theoretically read both endings if one refreshes
the page.
Hayseed's text demonstrates that although fanfiction might be a postmodern phenomenon, not all fanfictions are postmodern. Some elements, such as the glaring
absences in the stonework of the castle, are essentially modernist, as is the opinion that Hermione and Severus will be able to rescue the castle through
scientific enquiry. So, too is their refusal to succumb to the meaninglessness of their existence. However, the focus on everyday objects-- an orange,
a stack of essays that must be graded over and over again, a diminishing pile of lecture notes--is very much postmodern. As a result of its multiple endings,
the story flickers between the modern and the postmodern, presence and absence, closure and uncertainty. Hayseed's story, and one could argue, fanfiction
in general, shows us that beginnings and endings are not innate necessities, but rather human constructions we have created to make sense of a nonsensical
world.
Individual Differences among Fanfiction Writers
Getting the Hang of Thursdays would not appeal to every reader and writer of fanfiction, however. Just as some people express anxiety in situations involving
closure or endings, people on the other end of the continuum are equally fearful of situations in which closure is lacking. For this latter group, the
long delays between installments in the Harry Potter series must be anxiety-provoking, and thus the need arises to read and write fanfiction. Unlike their
Jewish and postmodern counterparts, these readers and writers are motivated almost entirely by the death wish. Instead of a continuous buildup of tension
with no promise of release, the act of reading fanfiction becomes a repetitive search for the ultimate release, that is, a search for fanfictions that
end the series in a satisfactory manner. The same set of generalizations applies to writers of this type, for whom the desire for closure corresponds with
the obsessive search for the origin. Writers of this sort see fanfiction as an opportunity to wrest power from the original author so that the series can
die on the reader's own terms. In less extreme forms, this tendency is more monotonous than destructive. Readers and writers who fear a lack of closure
tend to post their stories only when they are completed, and to prefer stories that are canon-compliant.
Negative consequences arise when a fanfiction writer attempts to displace Rowling as the father of the text. In one case, "big name fan" Cassandra Claire
incorporated long passages from novels and television shows into her fanfiction and claimed them as her own. The same writer became angry when other fans
decided to continue writing her widely popular "Very Secret Diaries" series-a Lord of the Rings parody-after she decided to discontinue the project (Cassandra
Claire-Fandom Wiki np). Cassandra Claire has also been accused of profiteering from her writing by blatantly encouraging her readers to send her money
and computer equipment and selling merchandise based on her fanfiction through an online store. The Harry Potter shipping debates also typify this struggle
to achieve the ultimate resolution. Up until the release of the sixth book in the series, Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince, the question of romantic
pairings was largely left unresolved. There was an ongoing debate between those who advocated the Harry/Hermione relationship, and those who supported
the Hermione/Ron pairing. In the sixth book of the series, Ron and Hermione became involved, and one would think that the so-called shipping wars would
finally be at an end. Unfortunately, this was not to be. Some Harry/Hermione shippers became so angry with Rowling for her decision that they decided to
boycott the Potter books. Though many of these readers wrote fanfiction, they were not interested in exploring potentialities that resided outside the
boundaries of the text. These readers and writers, as well as those exhibiting less extreme behaviors, would support Brooks' theory of textual desire and
would view fanfiction as a tool created for the sole purpose of bringing about the perfect death.
Harry Potter as Mediocre Postmodern Fantasy
We have yet to elaborate on what qualities a text must have in order to make it open to fanfictionalization in the first place. Before attempting to answer
these questions, again using the Harry Potter texts as an example, it is necessary to view the Harry Potter books in the context of postmodern fantasy.
Maria Nikolajeva argues that fantasy is a modern creation and began at the turn of the twentieth century with Edith Nesbit's novels, which dealt with the
chaos caused by the introduction of magic into the everyday world (Nikolajeva 136). English language fantasy reached its zenith in the 1950's and 1960's,
and Nikolajeva argues that this rise in popularity was a result of scientific discoveries, such as the theory of relativity, which changed our views on
natural laws and opened the very real possibility of phenomena that are the subjects of fantasy, such as nonlinear time, ESP, and multiple worlds (Nikolajeva
139). Unlike modernist texts, which are primarily concerned with epistemological questions of knowledge and narration, postmodern fantasies are largely
concerned with ontological questions: "Which world is this? What is to be done in it? Which of my selves is to do it?" Postmodern fantasies often involve
heterotopias, or the dissonance between multiple and fragmentary worlds (McHale 20). The Harry Potter books present two dimensions, the magical and the
non-magical worlds, which seem to overlap in odd and contradictory ways. A case in point is platform nine and three-quarters at King's Cross station, which
is interpolated between platforms nine and ten. An alien space is introduced "between two adjacent areas of space where no such 'between' exists" (McHale
82). Hogwarts school is another such interpolated place. Though we know that Hogwarts exists somewhere in the north of Scotland, its exact geographic location
is impossible to pinpoint. Harry Potter, the hero of this series, is constantly struggling with ontological questions, and like most heroes of postmodern
fantasy, he pays dearly for his involvement in the magical world. He learns quickly that people in the wizarding world can be just as cruel as in its ordinary
counterpart, and that war is just as present and just as real. He is resentful of the role he is forced into as The Boy Who Lived, and the savior of the
wizarding world.
The heterotopic nature of fantasy makes it the ideal genre for fanfictionalizing, since none of the universes are complete, allowing the reader to fill
in the gaps. This is especially true for the Harry Potter books, for though J.K. Rowling is an excellent storyteller, her world-building skills are somewhat
weak. In "From Elfland to Hogwarts," a play on Ursula LeGuinn's "From Elfland To Poughkeepsie," John Pennington criticizes Rowling for defying the rules
of high fantasy, in that the language of the magical world is always grounded in the mundane language of the everyday. Pennington does not see this juxtaposition
in terms of the postmodern technique of contrastive banality, but only an indication of Rowling's superficiality. In his opinion, Rowling does not engage
in the self-referential and intertextual play which characterizes the postmodern. Rowling is obviously indebted to authors of high fantasy, such as Tolkien,
Lewis, and Carroll, but she presents her creations as original, and she does not share the joke with her reader. Pennington gives the example of chapter
seven of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, which is titled "The Boggart in the Wardrobe." If Rowling's text were truly postmodern, Pennington argues,"one
would expect to find some self-conscious reference to Lewis' wardrobe" (Pennington np). This criticism of Rowling's work is certainly valid, though there
are elements of parody and playfulness that Pennington overlooks. Pennington also criticizes Rowling's series for lacking a unifying center, without which
"the Potter books become adrift, often merely piling up conventional--and trite--fantasy clichés" (Pennington np). Though each book does involve some variation
of the confrontation between Harry and the Death Eaters at the end of the school year, Pennington observes how this fight against evil is often overshadowed
by the same kind of concerns any teen might encounter in middle and high school, such as physical appearance, participating in sports matches and apprehension
over platonic and romantic relationships. In Pennington's opinion, Harry and his friends do not seem to take evil very seriously, though it must be acknowledged
that this article was written before the release of the fifth and six books of the series, which do take on a darker tone as the threat of Voldemort becomes
ever more present. Pennington argues that because of this overshadowing, and the fact that the books contain no character or element that is an antidote
to the evil of Voldemort, the good versus evil dichotomy cannot be called the center of the series.
The theme of power in the novel fares no better, because Harry and his friends are very much under the sway of their instructors and are often victorious
through no powerful deed of their own but because of help from an outside source--or sheer luck. The role of magic in the books is an even worse candidate,
for Rowling does very little to explain magical theory or to designate the difference between the dark magic used by Voldemort and the harmless spells
used by Harry and his friends. Finally, according to Pennington, Rowling's world is often cartoonish and silly, and Rowling fails to meditate on the serious
philosophical and ontological concerns raised by high fantasy.
Even after taking the last two books of the series into account, many of Pennington's criticisms are justified. However, his claim that "the Potter books
do not enlarge potentiality" is patently false. Obviously, Pennington has not been exposed to the swirling mass of potentialities that is the fanfiction
archive. Ironically, the very criticisms Pennington raises might give us some insight into the reasons behind the large quantity of fanfiction generated
by the readers of the Harry Potter series. Pennington sees the lack of a center in the Harry Potter books as a fatal flaw. However, in Derridian terms,
a text without a fixed center is said to be a system with a lot of "play," and one can argue quite easily that the anarchy of the Harry Potter books is
what has allowed the text to be open to fanfictionalizing. Intelligent readers of the Harry Potter books are not only aware that the text lacks a center,
but also that Rowling's world-building skills leave much to be desired. One fan-scholar, known as Jodel, writes, "There is no well-conceived and solidly
constructed secondary world to be found here. Not even close. There is no solid foundation. The whole edifice shimmies in a high wind. This is not an Alternate
Universe."
This is our own world as reflected in a funhouse mirror" (Jodel np). Evidence of the flimsiness of Rowling's magical world is not hard to spot. Rowling
does not give any back-story concerning the history of her world, nor does she make any attempt to account for its social structure. Aside from the textbooks
and spellbooks required by the Hogwarts curriculum, Rowling makes no mention of literature in the wizarding world, thereby denying the existence of the
mechanism by which it was created. Other omissions, though seemingly trivial, are equally noticeable, such as the glaring question of how Muggle parents
learn about Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, since most sensible parents would dismiss the Hogwarts letter as childish foolishness at best or
some kind of pernicious scam at worst. In addition, there is no mention of where children under the age of eleven are educated, which is a question that
merits an answer, considering that the Hogwarts education is greatly lacking when it comes to the three r's. Even more disconcerting are the abundance
of dangling plot elements that Rowling supposedly was going to resolve in later books but has in all likelihood since forgotten. For example, in an old
interview, Rowling mentions that Harry Potter's parents' line of work was somehow significant, though as Jodel points out, "We may indeed still discover
what James or Lily did for a living. But I doubt that this information will turn out to be anything that is required for solving the problems which we
have been set for the last installment of the adventure" (Jodel np).
Abandoned plot threads can also lead to contradictions and inconsistencies in the Harry Potter timeline. For example, In chapter one of Harry Potter and
the Sorcerer's Stone, Dumbledore states that "we have had precious little to celebrate for eleven years," suggesting that Lord Voldemort has been conducting
his terrorist activities from the period from 1970 to 1981. However, the sixth book in the series undermines the validity of that statement when we learn
that Tom Riddle had become Lord Voldemort by the beginning of 1957. Jodel suggests that Dumbledore's comment that Voldemort surfaced in 1970 was a bit
of flotsam that she has since abandoned. Obvious flaws in logic or arithmetic aside, since the seventh book in the series is yet to be completed, it is
currently impossible to determine how many of these plot holes and inconsistencies were actually a result of careful deliberation, and how many simply
a result of sloppiness on Rowling's part.
In either case, the silences of Rowling's text achieve the same reading effects as the silences in the Torah: both have encouraged their readers to give
voice to the text through their own writings and interpretations. However, in the case of fanfiction, Henry James' prophecy that the reader's insistence
on literalization, on filling the silences of the text, will bring about the death of the text will not come to pass, for there are just too many silences,
too many potentialities. The vagueness of Rowling's world, whether it be deliberate or accidental, has provided endless fodder for fanfiction writers.
The presence of one enigmatic sentence can lead to the creation of an entire novel. For example, SerpentClara was inspired by a single sentence describing
Hermione Granger's reaction to Death Eater Lucius Malfoy in Chapter 8 of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire: "Mr. Malfoy's eyes had returned to Hermione,
who went slightly pink, but stared determinedly back at him." In attempting to make sense of Hermione's blush (one does not generally blush because of
someone one does not like), SerpentClara writes the story of a sordid love affair between the two, a love affair which caused Hermione to betray her friends
and even her own blood.
Many of the questions and criticisms John Pennington raised in his dismissive review of the Harry Potter books are addressed by fanfiction writers. Stories
about the childhood of canon characters, if not common, are at least plentiful. Other authors concern themselves with the history of the wizarding world,
the sociological effects of its class structure and the Voldemort wars, and the inner workings of wizarding law enforcement. Stories about the roles of
various wizarding creatures and the intricacies of magical theory abound. Maeglin Yedi's Penance is the Play posits that dark spells used by Voldemort
release so much magic that they unbalance the caster. In Maeglin's world, this release is so potent that it is a hundred times more satisfying than the
pleasure of orgasm, so is thus highly addictive. Maeglin's theory not only sheds some light on the difference between harmless and dark magic, but it also
is a reasonable explanation for Voldemort's cruelty and insanity. Another of Pennington's criticisms to which Harry Potter fans respond is the issue of
the liberal amount of silliness spread throughout the series. No doubt the Carrollian humor was designed to appeal to the young children for whom the series
was intended. Fanfiction writers, many of whom are twenty or older, are working under no such constraint. As a result, fanfiction writers take the opportunity
to grapple with the larger ontological and existential questions from which Rowling has steered away. A particularly poignant example is that of Pir8fancier's
Snape: The Home Fries Nazi, which, despite its title, is a serious look at a disturbing potentiality: "How would the wizarding world react if its magic
disappeared? Can a wizard achieve a new identity after being stripped of his magic? As the title of this fiction with its reference to Seinfeld, and earlier
discussions suggest, fanfiction writers are quick to make up for Rowling's deficiency as a postmodern author by incorporating narrative play and intertextual
references into their work. Fanfiction writers acknowledge Rowling's indebtedness to other authors in the form of cross-overs, or fanfictions that combine
the Harry Potter world with the world of another text. One can easily find cross-overs with contemporary media, such as Buffy the Vampire Slayer, or CSI,
as well as with works of high fantasy such as Lord of the Rings, and fairy tales such as Beauty and The Beast and Sleeping Beauty.
Conclusions
The paucity of intertextual references in the Harry Potter books, and her failure to acknowledge her debts to other authors, suggests that unlike her readers,
Rowling is still under the sway of archive fever and anxiety of influence. Most fanfiction writers, on the other hand, are free of such a constraining
force. These writers have no desire to be the father of the text, and the idea that an individual can own a world or a character seems conservative and
outdated, in light of movements that promote the free dissemination of information. Such authors have no pretense towards originality; their work is repetitive,
but they are aware of their repetitions, and this awareness is what separates them from authors who take a Christian approach to the text, in that they
write fanfiction to bring about the death of the text. With the erasure of the desire to become the father of the text comes a diminishment of the symptoms
of archive fever and anxiety of influence. What anxiety remains need not be repressed, for a fanfiction writer can discuss her fear that her plot might
be too similar to that of another writer without fear of shame or retribution. Thus, fanfiction is not merely a means by which amateur writers can play
in a prefabricated world, as professional writers often argue. Fanfiction is not simply a form of entertainment, but a form of therapy. To return to the
beginning of things, or as close to the beginning of things as one can get: "what would Derrida, or Freud, for that matter, make of the postmodern practice
of fanfiction?" Of course, we will never know. But it is easier to speculate on the first question than the second; Derrida would probably delight in yet
more evidence that archive fever is not inevitable. Freud might be too much the master, too much the modernist, to appreciate the phenomenon. Perhaps he
would worry that others would steal his literary creation, that of the case study, and make a mockery of it. But even Freud would be forced to recognize
the therapeutic nature of a practice whose writers inhabit a world where the Bloomian and Derridian specters no longer loom, where repetition with a difference
supplants originality, interpretation displaces meaning, and where it is possible to transcend death.
Works Cited
Cassandra Claire - Fandom Wank. Fanfic Wank Wiki. 18 August 2006. 22 September 2006.
Crapfic. Mission: Get Dobby Laid. 24 March 2006. 22 September 2006
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