Today’s Technology Review has an interesting blog from Henry Jenkins on recent developments regarding “fansubbing,” in which American viewers (or at least viewers in America) translate and subtitle Japanese anime that hasn’t yet been released in the US. Jenkins’ earlier article on this phenomenon, “When Piracy Becomes Promotion,” discusses the practice (and its intellectual property issues) in detail. The latest news is that a major anime studio called “Media Factory” has asked some fan sites that distribute fansubbed anime (mostly via BitTorrent, to the tune of ninety terabytes per day) to stop handing out or linking to copies of its works.

Following the easily visible threads of this story has led me from the MIT Anime Club in the late 1970s to the poignantly-titled Anime-Faith website (“Anime-Faith is chill,” it proclaims), where this morning one can download eighteen of these fansubbed productions. One title on the list is not available for download, however: Anime-Faith simply notes that it is “now available from Pathfinder Pictures.” This little notice is at the heart of the fansubbing community’s ethical understanding of itself. Once the title has been made available for retail purchase, ethical fansubbers take it off their sites–or at least that’s the promise they make.

Fansubbing, like fan fiction, is a fascinating example of learning communities that spring out of entertainment phenomena. (That may be a distinction without a difference, but bear with me.) To put it another way, the distance between a fansubber or a fanfic writer and a scholar may, in certain instances, be nil. One could make the same argument about creative writing, but writers I’ve known always have favorite writers whose work serves as touchstones for their own creativity, so there’s no news there. To flip the idea around, however, is to consider whether fandom, mutatis mutandis, might be a useful paradigm for understanding and encouraging learning communities.

I anticipate some early objections.

Q: Doesn’t a fan simply lose him- or herself in a kind of superficial hero worship? Won’t fandom be another opiate for the masses?
A: Not necessarily. Fans are not necessarily infatuated or fatuous. And the idea of fandom might encourage a sense of personal agency, commitment, and community in the learning enterprise.

Q: Can fandom coexist with critical thinking?
A: Insofar as critical thinking means an habitually ironic, distanced, self-excusing skepticism, I suppose not. But it’s obvious from that definition that I don’t believe such critical thinking should necessarily be at the heart of the educational enterprise. Nor do I think such “critical thinking” is even what its name promises. But that’s another blog.

Q: Can fandom coexist with critical thinking?
A: As fandom approaches the condition of a maturely loving relationship (modulating distance and devotion in a cycle of ongoing understanding) with ideas and their expression in human utterance and praxis, yes.

Q: Isn’t this all rather Dead Poets Society?
A: The idea at the heart of that film is worth exploring, despite the sentimental narrative that surrounds it. Or because of it.

The fact is, fan communities flourish and generate astonishing energy, whatever our official attitudes and strictures, and they will continue to do so. That energy can obviously fuel great personal commitment and creative output. It’s a renewable and communal source of energy that education would do well to explore more thoroughly.

Love is not all you need. A clear head and a light bulb are also handy, as Bob Dylan once said. But without love, where would you be now?