Dr Rebecca Williams will present a short paper on ‘The Resurrection of Twin Peaks: Ontological Security, Authorship and the Limits to Studying Returning Texts’, as part of the Post-Object Fandom: Television, Identity and Self-narrative (Bloomsbury,2015) book launch.

The paper explores how the forthcoming return of Twin Peaks in 2016 has impacted upon the fandom surrounding the show. Many fans welcome the return of beloved shows such as Twin Peaks and the initial involvement of original creators Mark Frost and David Lynch offers a ‘guarantee’ of authenticity whilst the return of cast members such as Kyle MacLachlan presents the opportunity to re-visit favourite characters.

However, some fans remain ambivalent about accepting such resurrections and reject such new texts as commercial and inferior. Inauthentic or inferior copies of a fan object can, therefore, endanger fan attachments both by highlighting the commercial nature of fandom, as well as threatening to ‘betray’ the original characters and narrative worlds. Furthermore, since Lynch’s involvement is now in doubt, considering this moment in Twin Peaks’ history allows consideration of fan responses (both positive and negative) to the continuation of an assumed dormant textual world.

The paper thus explores how these resurrections can allow fans to maintain or renegotiate their fandom and their often complex responses to the revival of a fan object such as Twin Peaks, as well as some of the challenges of researching texts at the moment of their resurrection.

For further information and reviews, please visit the Bloomsbury Publishing website.