Courage to be a fan
the alethurgical dispositif that governs cosplay
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.15448/1980-3729.2025.1.46784Keywords:
cosplay, fans, care of the self, ethnographic foucauldian genealogy, alethurgy.Abstract
Cosplay is a participatory phenomenon in which its practitioners publicly express their fan relationship with the media product they are performing using costumes and the playing pop culture characters. Such manifestation represents positions in the face of conflicts between fans but is also associated with identity and political issues. These positions can be interpreted as an elaboration of Foucauldian subjectivity through “care of the self”, when subjects (re)configure the government forms that guide their routine practices. Thus, the present study aims to understand how the interactional support between cosplayers governs their performances. To this end, a Ethnographic Foucauldian Genealogy (EFG) was carried out between 2020 and 2024. The results indicate the existence of two power diagrams: inspiration and honor, which establish ways for cosplayers to take care of themselves and their colleagues. When added together, the two diagrams reveal the dispositif of courage implied by cosplayers to express their fan relationship, personal values and respect other fans. Such a dispositif is, therefore, an alethurgy exercise when subjects commit to expressing the truth, aiming to improve the social context in which they act.
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