Agenciados pelo desejo: O consumo produtivo dos potterheads

Abstract

The Harry Potter saga became one of the cultural products with a major impact on the twenty-first cen­tury. Its fans, called potterheads, relate in a social space known as fandom. Their practices are based on the appropriation of the cultural text in a productive consumption process within a context of participa­tory culture. Assuming desire from the perspective of Deleuzian assemblage theory, which presents this concept as a flow of productive energy that is articulated through a collective force, this study aimed to understand how potterheads’ productive consumption is assemblaged by desire. We therefore explored multifocal data concerning practices of potterheads available on digital platforms using Foucauldian Discourse Analysis. Our results revealed that potterheads’ desire assemblage maintains their bond with the canonical universe of the saga, as a way of maintaining identity and security in the transition to adult life, through relationships in the fandom and in pursuit of broader social legitimacy. The study contribu­tes theoretically by adopting the Deleuzian notion of desire as a lens to understand the collective action of consumers in cultural contexts of practice.