O cosplay sob a ótica da cultura material: como essa prática contribui para a construção identitária do fã no fandom?

Abstract

With the interconnection promoted by recent technologies added to the phenomenon of globalization and in a social form governed by consumption, a series of new conditions have interposed themselves in the social spaces of coexistence, transforming some of the most intimate forms of daily existence. The condition produced effects that deconstructed the traditional conceptions of identity production. Being the social position assumed by the subject inherent in a cultural system, the so-called cultural identity is structured in the sharing of codes and mutual signs in a given social context. Based on this understanding, Daniel Miller's theory of materiality analyzes how the agency derived from the subject-object relationship produces effects in the social space, including for the construction of identities. Currently, the cultural products of the entertainment industry are seen as excellent raw materials for building the identities of a unique type of consumer: the fan. This subject is linked to global communities by interest and affinity, maintains a high involvement with his products and with other fans, producing meanings, consolidating new forms of sociability and legitimizing this particular mode of existence. In the social space of fandom, these establish rules of coexistence and conduct, in addition to cultural identities through a series of practices, including cosplay. Bearing in mind that subjects and objects are, at the same time, co-produced in a relationship, we ask ourselves: how does the practice of cosplay contribute to the fan's identity construction within the fandom? To this end, assuming the position of afghan and an ethnographic approach, we seek to understand the issue through material culture. Our results pointed to the agency of a co-creation that starts from the choice of the character to be staged and that occurs through identification, political strategies, aesthetic attributes and solidarity; these fulfill social functions of social recognition, rescue and [re] construction of autobiographical memory, promotion of self-confidence, strengthening of affective bonds, establishing the self through the eyes of the other. Cultural identity is thus constructed, producing knowledge that is taken to the other social fields in which this subject participates.