Our description of the three dimensions of fan-studies may suggest neatly demarcated approaches. As we indicated in the introduction of this chapter, the pathologizing discourse on fandom is still in currency, particularly in popular discourse. The cultural dimension, which is driven by a desire to counter this discourse, remains of crucial importance. The performative dimension shifts the focus from reading fandom in terms of compliance versus resistance, towards a reading of fandom as a shared cultural practice. The last dimension sensitizes research to local particularities and cosmopolitan possibilities of fandom. Rather than reading these dimensions as contrasting paradigms, we wish to stress that they are complementary and can be combined in a singular study. By way of conclusion, we discuss two more points: one regarding the importance of the objects of fandom, and the need to study fan cultures in combination with a study of star-texts, the other referring to the political economy underpinning fan cultures. Here we return to a classic cultural studies position: reception analysis should go hand-in-hand with a textual and production analysis.
First, fan cultures are formed around specific cultural texts and the nature of these texts is what distinguishes fans from connoisseurs, citizens and scholars, not their cognitions, emotions, behaviour and everyday lives. Ideally, fan-stud- ies should involve, therefore, a more thorough analysis of the object of fandom. There can be no fan without an object of fandom. However simplistic such an observation may sound, fan-studies do run the danger of ignoring the