Introduction

Abstract

The iterative power generated by the passion for a fictional universe, its world, and its characters is nowhere better represented or illustrated than among those we call fans. This contemporary chimera, as disparate and unconventional as it is, reflects both the worst and the best of a social and psycho-social phenomenon that has only been recently studied within academic circles. Notable figures in this flourishing field of study include Camille Bacon-Smith, Hills, Jenkins, Grossberg, Fiske, as well as John Tulloch and Kurt Lancaster. There are now countless recent contributions whose interpretative and heuristic approaches vary and are part of openly  transdisciplinary epistemological approaches, drawing from sociology (Bourdieu, Foucault) as much as psychology (Lacan, Winnicot, Csikszentmihaly) and anthropology (Geertz, Turner), or even literature (de Certeau, Barthes), among others.