The path from participatory culture to participatory politics: A critical investigation—An interview with Henry Jenkins

Abstract

In this interview, Henry Jenkins critically reviews his theorization of the logical and practical connection between participatory culture and participatory politics, which is enabled and facilitated by the civic imagination of various social groups strategically and affectively deploying popular culture resources for different political purposes. Henry Jenkins emphatically discusses the democratic potential of participatory culture in autocratic societies and the mechanisms to promote the progressiveness of participatory politics, and carefully yet enthusiastically defends the significance of fandom’s affective and appropriative practices for bridging participatory culture and participatory politics. In the end of this interview, Henry Jenkins also reflects on the genealogical relations of his thinking on participatory democracy with John Fiske’s political understanding of popular culture and evaluates his own theoretical contributions to the political philosophy of participatory democracy.