Unsettling Relations: Disrupting the Ethical Subject in Fan Studies Research

This paper takes as its focus the strategies by which ethical stances are established and legitimised in fan studies writing. It argues that, as a matter of ethics, such stances should always be placed under interrogation. This can be achieved by disrupting the entities that are often invoked in claims about what constitutes ethical practice in research – ones that may otherwise quickly become naturalised points of reference. Using as an exemplar Busse & Hellekson's articulation of the 'fans first' principle, the paper considers how ethical positions become sedimented and normalised within academic fields of practice. In doing so, the paper develops some counter-principles for an ethical destabilisation and (where necessary) dismantling of received ethical subjectivities in fan studies research.