Elder Wands and Jane Austen Notepads: The Harry Potter Archive and the Academic Community
¶ 1 Leave a comment on paragraph 1 0 Sheila Gross
¶ 2 Leave a comment on paragraph 2 0 Dr. Alexis Lothian
¶ 3 Leave a comment on paragraph 3 0 ENGL 985: Archives and Feelings
¶ 4 Leave a comment on paragraph 4 0 8 October 2013
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Elder Wands and Jane Austen Notepads:
The Harry Potter Archive and the Academic Community
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¶ 9 Leave a comment on paragraph 9 4 As a scholar of Literature (and I am purposely using the capital “L”), I am expected to research and publish within a specific field. This will give me credibility, a job (hopefully), and maybe even tenure, if I ever finish this doctoral program. I will market myself as a nineteenth-century British Lit-o-phile and spew out my archive of knowledge in this subject area during an interview. How tidy. When I am not participating in my scholarly pursuits (when I take a break from academia), I often find myself at Hogwarts. I will come back to the question as to whether I combine my scholarly pursuits with my Harry Potter archive. I call this an archive because my participation in the world of Harry Potter goes beyond the books. Films, collectibles, clothing, fan sites, online communities, and even scholarly work make up my Harry Potter archive.
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¶ 11 Leave a comment on paragraph 11 0 Much like Judith Halberstam’s “silly” archive in The Queer Art of Failure where she turns to animated film which, for her, “opened up new narrative doors and led to unexpected encounters between the childish and the transformative and the queer” (20), the Harry Potter archive opens doors as well; for me, it opens the door between the academic community and the Harry Potter community. While my interest in the Harry Potter archive is not necessarily a queer one, Halberstam’s focus on “low theory” or popular/low culture most certainly informs the way I value the archive. Halberstam believe[s] in low theory in popular places, in the small, the inconsequential, the antimonumental, the micro, the irrelevant; [she] believe[s] in making a difference by thinking little thoughts and sharing them widely” (21). Evidence of Harry Potter’s popularity clearly shows that the archive is not small, inconsequential, antimonumental, micro, or irrelevant in the context of popular culture. However, in the context of capital “L” literature, the archive certainly appears this way. The Harry Potter books are non-canonical texts, and young adult books do not typically overflow reading lists for graduate courses. Same case with the films, I would imagine. Despite this view of Harry Potter, I feel a part of both the academic community and the Harry Potter community. Rather than being at odds with one another, they inform each other, and therefore, the Harry Potter archive becomes something more monumental within my scholarly pursuits and personal life.
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¶ 13 Leave a comment on paragraph 13 5 My interest in nineteenth-century British literature includes how women are portrayed in literary texts, what female issues are discussed in the text, and how early feminism informed the works of women writers. This is also my interest in the Harry Potter books and films, with particular attention to the main female character, Hermione Granger. I had the opportunity to explore this topic in a research project entitled “Hermione Granger as the Great Architect: A Gender Analysis of the Harry Potter Books and Films” for a literature and film course I took in my Master’s program. I actually received special permission to do my final project on Harry Potter. We were required to research something about the five books and films assigned in the course. There were two reasons why I wanted to write about Harry Potter: 1) the literature and film course seemed like a safe space to write about popular culture, and 2) I wanted to present at the Ravenclaw Conference at Edinboro University in fall. This conference was the scholarly part of Edinboro University’s Potterfest, a week of fun and games surrounding the Harry Potter archive. The conference was a unique experience: I was participating in a scholarly pursuit with fellow members of the Harry Potter community. This was the space where both communities of academia and Harry Potter came together. The Ravenclaw Conference may not have been unique in the fact that it was a conference focusing on an archive from the realm of popular culture. With the popularity of Cultural Studies within English Departments, conferences on popular culture are prolific. For me, the uniqueness of the Ravenclaw Conference lied in the blending of the two communities to which I belong, and this experience became significant in how I think about literature, texts, objects, archives. Halberstam’s use of the “silly” archive opens the door, as she says, to new ways of knowing. She asserts that the “publish-or-perish pressure of academic life keeps [us] tethered to conventional knowledge production and well-traveled byways” (6). This is what I was hinting at in my introduction. We are expected as scholars to follow our interests, as long as these interests are in some way marketable to a university’s English department. The Ravenclaw Conference stands in opposition to this traditional way of knowing. Avery Gordon in Ghostly Matters: Haunting and the Sociological Imagination also argues for a new way of knowing. She writes that a “major goal of [her] book is to get us to consider a different way of seeing, one that is less mechanical, more willing to be surprised, to link imagination and critique, one that is more attuned to the task of ‘conjur[ing] up the appearance of something that [is] absent’ (Berger 1972:10)” (24). Gordon’s new way of seeing is particularly apt in the case of the Harry Potter archive where ghosts glide down the halls of Hogwarts and J.K. Rowling’s wonderful imagination allows us to believe in magic.
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¶ 15 Leave a comment on paragraph 15 6 Popular culture conferences and journals are unique spaces where popular culture has a home, but the Harry Potter archive is non-academic in many ways. What I mean by non-academic is that much of the archive resides outside of the university, in “low culture.” In fact, the Harry Potter archive is basically a major corporation. J.K. Rowling holds the rights to almost everything Harry Potter, except for fan sites. Halberstam’s “silly” archive also rests within corporations. Although animated film is “a genre engineered by huge corporations for massive profits and with multiple product tie-ins,” Halberstam can still find alternative narratives within these films (19). I am also aware that the Harry Potter archive is a massive corporation. For instance, you can only purchase the e-books and audio-books on J.K. Rowling’s interactive Pottermore site. Official Harry Potter merchandise is only available at the WB shop online. The corporation of Harry Potter also allows you to be part of a community. Pottermore is an interactive way to read the Harry Potter books as well as to be a part of the Harry Potter community, literally. After becoming a member (membership is free), you become a student at Hogwarts alongside Harry. You choose a pet and a wand (or rather, the wand chooses you) in Diagon Alley; you get sorted into a house (I am in Ravenclaw); you cast spells and brew potions; you search for objects in each story moment; and you connect with other site members. Therefore, while Pottermore is part of the Harry Potter archive, Pottermore is an archive itself. It archives the experiences of site members through profile pages and comment sections and creates a space for a Harry Potter community.
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¶ 17 Leave a comment on paragraph 17 4 There are many other spaces and objects within the Harry Potter archive. Fan sites, such as MuggleNet, are other spaces where members of the Harry Potter community can communicate with each other, test their knowledge on Harry Potter trivia, submit fan fiction and artwork, and learn more about the archive. How different are these communities from those of the academy? In my experience, when I want to learn more about, say, Jane Austen’s works, I communicate with other scholars, I consult previous research I have done, I look to other researchers and writers, and I most certainly endeavor to learn more. The major difference between the two communities is context, and I will end with this “silly” example. My collectible elder wand stays in a protective box at home on my bookshelf while my Jane Austen notepad accompanies me to class. It is my elder wand pen that is able to participate in both contexts.
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Works Cited
¶ 21 Leave a comment on paragraph 21 0 Gordon, Avery F. Ghostly Matters: Haunting and the Sociological Imagination. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2008. Print.
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¶ 24 Leave a comment on paragraph 24 0 Halberstam, Judith. The Queer Art of Failure. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2011.
¶ 25 Leave a comment on paragraph 25 0 Print.
I want to comment on your “interest in nineteenth-century British literature (which) includes how women are portrayed in literary texts, what female issues are discussed in the text, and how early feminism informed the works of women writers.”
The point is that we need to be careful in dealing with this literature. This is because, as I reiterated in my assignment, although there was much victimization of women in the 19th century, there were elements of female agency and strength in the 19th century society.
In most critical reviews about 19th century literature, the underlying theme is the absence of what can be termed as power. Put another way, women do not have the power to influence what happens to their loved ones or themselves. This is the state that leads to the victimhood that these reviewers refer to. However, there are several published works that offer an alternative reading of women’s power in relation to men. The theme of female strength has been picked up by several feminist critics who desire to reverse the notion that women are weak, and therefore in need of protection and provision by men, which often results in mistreatment and servitude.
One voice in particular that is worth noting in the debate over female powerlessness and male domination of society is that of Laura Donaldson, in their book, Decolonizing Feminisms: Race, Gender & Empire Building. Exploring the politics of identity in the Victorian age with particular attention to issues of women’s experience, Donaldson’s book shows how female power has more potential than most people in society are willing to accept. Donaldson treats the perception that women are weak as a form of colonial thinking. Thus, the process of rethinking that a certain gender is weak and can only be a victim or is of an inferior race is through what she describes as decolonization, which in the case of literature, simply means going back to the textual and contextual evidence and modeling behavior from these building blocks. Donaldson locates a strong link between imperialism and white feminism, arguing that, by claiming the existence of “a single hermeneutic truth,” white middle class feminism is involved in an imperialist agenda that tends to colonize the mind with forced ideas. Many other writers authenticate Donaldson’s view, which proves that we need caution in treating this aspect.