Abstract

This study defines deokjil (fandom practice) not as mere reception but as an artistic practice that actively produces aesthetic value. The process by which individual subjects within K-pop idol fandoms compete to secure aesthetic legitimacy is redefined as an emergent narrative performance through which Aesthetic Sovereignty is established. In this process, fans employ sadomasochistic affects and autochorissexual voyeurism as aesthetic devices, constructing an autonomous aesthetic norm grounded in the extremization of gender hierarchies. Taking Lee Hee-ju’s fiction as its primary object of analysis, this study provides a symptomatic reading of her work. Grounded in a cultural studies framework that reconceptualizes fandom as an aesthetic community, this study adopts a multidisciplinary approach centered on narrative analysis, supplemented by queer theory and sexuality discourse. Through this, it argues that deokjil constitutes a site of emergent narrative performance organized around the struggle for aesthetic sovereignty, and demonstrates that the ‘shota aesthetics’ enacted by the subjects of Lee Hee-ju’s fiction represents a narcissistic practice of Self-Authorization through which subjects retroactively confirm their own beauty.