Entrepreneurial Cosplay

10 Child Cosplayers Embodying Potentialities

Sara Austin

DOI: 10.4324/9781003271109-14

Cosplay exists at a nexus of ritual, performance, narrative, and play (Bruno, 2002; Winge, 2006; Winge, 2018; Lamerichs, 2010). Scholarship on cosplay occupies a variety of different fields, yet little critical attention has been paid to children who engage in cosplay. Those fan studies theorists who have mentioned children in their discussion of cosplay – such as Mizuko Itu and Janine Fron et al.¹ – focus on how adults use costuming to appropriate childhood identity and childhood culture, rather than discussing children who engage in the practice. Ito argues that adults are increasingly not only mobilizing tropes of childhood in political and personal arenas, ...