Of irritation, texts and men

Abstract

This is a case study of reading detective fiction which argues that different types of methodological and theoretical questions about relations with informants have not been raised sufficiently often in feminist audience studies or have been lost from its research agenda. They are: how to approach the culturally well established?, what is the place of texts in (feminist) audience research? and, how does this affect the positions of researcher and researched? In this case study (set up to research constructions of femininity and feminism in crime fiction), masculinity emerged as an issue because of nagging doubts about the interaction between interviewers and interviewees. Doubts and irritation led to reflection on issues of class, and then masculinity and on how to lay two old ghosts: the fear of being paternalistic in overinterpreting what informants say as an expression of their deepest being rather than as the discursive material that is produced in interview situations; and the fear of conflating audience interpretations with what a researcher may read into a text. Ghosts need laying to rest; therefore the issue of masculinity today is used here to introduce texts into the audience research project. The combination of audience and textual analysis is used to show the link between popular fiction and the public sphere, or how popular genres may contribute to cultural citizenship.

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