"A sacrifice is made when the dark gift is shared": Queering narrative and fan techniques against purist reading practices

Abstract

I connect and contextualize purist reading practices in contemporary queer anglophone fandoms, particularly in m/m slash fandoms, with anglophone eighteenth-century moral panic over women's novel reading. Using transhistorical methodologies and queer studies frameworks that draw from Sara Ahmed's theory of queer phenomenology, I analyze discussions around the TV show Anne Rice's Interview with the Vampire (2022–) as a case study of purist reading in fandoms and propose how the media object itself resists fixity through its queer narrative structures, particularly camp and narrative opacity. I also examine how some fans, in turn, have responded with creative video editing and explication as an alternative to prescription. I ultimately propose a queering of hermeneutics toward these queer media objects as a strategy against purist reading practices and rhetorics.