[-empyre-] Creativity as a social ontology: Authorship

[Simon Biggs]

Chris's model of creativity, where author's are authors and reader's are
readers, with a direct process of exchange enacted between them, suggests a
profoundly different world-view than that which initially prompted this
months discussion.

Do the books we write, pictures we make, music we play, equations we compose
arise spontaneously from within the self? If so, what are the dynamics and
factors at work that allow this to happen? Do people make themselves? What
do they make themselves from? Or does something (someone) make them? Let's
not consider that last possibility...

Another approach...

When Newton described his work as being made whilst "standing on the
shoulder's of giants" he was recognising that what others were
characterising as individual genius was actually a complex discursive
process of becoming where authorship is difficult to identify. He was
recognising creativity as a distributed activity. This was not a new idea,
even then. A lot of Greek mythology (pre-Socratic thought in general) was
concerned with the collective nature of how things come to be - not just
things but also people.

Sticking with the Greeks - the sort of social relations and forms of agency
that are required to permit a world to exist where people are singular,
arising from some idealised human template, who are able to, a priori, make
things happen (act upon a world distinct to themselves) is a distinctly
Platonic apprehension of the world. This (arguably) depends on a magical (or
religious) understanding of things, a reductive and potentially infinitely
regressive model of causality where things seem to come from ... where?. We
are back at the point we do not want to go...

The original thesis of this months discussion asked:
How might we understand creativity as interaction, as sets of discursive
relations? Creativity can be a performative activity released when engaged
through and by a community. In this context the model of the solitary
artist, who produces artefacts which embody creativity, can be questioned as
an ideal for achieving creative outcomes. Creativity can be proposed as an
activity of exchange that enables (creates) people and communities.

Scott is addressing this question straight on and is clearly working from a
premise where none of us is regarded as singular in formation and the things
we make cannot be defined as having a singular origin. This isn't the place
to re-hash Derrida's work on authorship, Deleuze's on identity or Latour's
on agency...

James Leach's work on social formation relates to these territories but,
coming from anthroplogy rather than philosophy, he has approached the issues
in a distinct manner, as have some other writers in the this area - such as
Alfred Gell, Tim Ingold and, influentially, Marilyn Strathern.

The title of the discussion proposed the idea of that creativity is (or
motivates) a social ontology, a making of people, echoing James's ideas
about how ritual (creative) practices, in certain communities, allow people
to make new relationships and, through that, new people. An example in our
own culture is our legal system, where people are routinely determined
through the performative action of the law (marriage, parenthood, gender,
criminal status, wealth and our individual rights are thus determined).
Other examples are our education system and the institution of the family.
These are complex interacting social structures that have evolved as we
have, as a species, a society, communities and as individuals. They are what
make us, even when we are trying to unmake ourselves.

Within this context, and to re-formulate the month's topic, we can ask where
a book (or other artefact) comes from? What is the relationship between an
artefact and its context? What affect does it have upon its environment?

Best

Simon


Simon Biggs
s.biggs at eca.ac.uk  simon at littlepig.org.uk
Skype: simonbiggsuk
http://www.littlepig.org.uk/

Research Professor  edinburgh college of art
http://www.eca.ac.uk/
Creative Interdisciplinary Research into CoLlaborative Environments
http://www.eca.ac.uk/circle/
Electronic Literature as a Model of Creativity and Innovation in Practice
http://www.elmcip.net/
Centre for Film, Performance and Media Arts
http://www.ed.ac.uk/schools-departments/film-performance-media-arts


> From: christopher sullivan <csulli at saic.edu>
> Reply-To: soft_skinned_space <empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au>
> Date: Wed, 28 Jul 2010 23:27:23 -0500
> To: soft_skinned_space <empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au>, Scott Rettberg
> <scott at retts.net>
> Cc: soft_skinned_space <empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au>
> Subject: Re: [-empyre-] Creativity as a social ontology: Authorship
> 
> 
> Hi Scott This is all a lot of energy to argue against something that is so
> obviously true, singular authors write books... influences, editors, advise
> along the way, is not collaboration. it is very necessary and helpful, but the
> author is the main voice. why is authorship so threatening? perhaps it implies
> valuative intellectual skills, and that makes people nervous. Not me I like to
> be put in my place as an active reader, by a great writer, but I am not their
> collaborator.
> 
> There is an interesting forward in one of Isaac Beshevis Singers books about
> his
> relatinship with his translators, that supports your argument. It is a fine
> piece of writing.
> 
> Writing is social in it's moment of reception, but not conception. and that is
> fine. Chris.
> 
> 
> Quoting Scott Rettberg <scott at retts.net>:
> 
>> Hello again,
>> 
>> In the next few days I want to pick up more on some of Johannes'
>> questions and Simon's thoughts and some of the interesting ways in
>> which the idea of authorship is challenged and reformulated. I also
>> think there are some things to consider about the economics of
>> electronic literature (to the extent that there are any). Finally, I
>> want to say a few words about why I think there hasn't yet been a
>> great deal of activity in creative writing programs towards developing
>> curricula for digital writing.
>> 
>> As I wrote earlier, I think that the conception of authorship as a
>> solitary activity conducted by the creatively inspired individual has
>> always been more mythological than real. True, writing is very much a
>> reflective / recursive process, in which the individual wrestles with
>> his or her own ideas and then frames them as textual expression. It is
>> an intensely personal activity. Few print novels or poems are actually
>> *written* collaboratively.
>> 
>> But the process of writing involves more than that work, more than
>> those moments of framing thought. Stories emerge most often from the
>> examples and archetypes or other works of literature that the author
>> has read. Stephanie Meyer's Twilight books or JK Rowling's Harry
>> Potter would not have been possible in the same way without Bram
>> Stoker's Dracula or Le Guin's Earthsea novels, which might not have in
>> turn been possible without JRR Tolkien's Lord of the Rings. Works of
>> literature have always been produced in conversation with other
>> writing. Most of those writers, in turn, work in conversation with and
>> in close proximity to other writers. When Tolkien was writing Lord of
>> the Rings, for instance, he was bringing drafts of it to the Eagle and
>> Child Pub in Oxford and reading them aloud to his writer's group, the
>> inklings, which included CS Lewis, whose Narnia books Tolkien
>> disapproved of at the time. Those readings, and the discussions about
>> the books the inklings were writing at the time, are undoubtedly a
>> significant part of the process of authoring those books, regardless
>> of whose name ended up on the volume.
>> 
>> The writing process is most often social. The contemporary writing
>> workshop at American universities is social writing practiced on an
>> industrial scale. And once the book is accepted by a publisher, this
>> process continues, with editors, marketers, designers, typesetters and
>> so forth contributing to the processing of producing, distributing,
>> spinning the cultural artifact. And today's capital A Authors, those
>> lucky few who actually live off of the proceeds of their work,
>> collaborate with Oprah's book club, Charlie Rose, film-makers and
>> video game producers. The author is not alone.
>> 
>> I would argue that the reason the name is on the book is in such bold
>> type is not even really because the author is much more important than
>> any other part of the process. The name of the author is on the book
>> because it provides the publishers with an entity to contract, and to
>> purchase the rights from, and to own the proceeds of, and to sell
>> again. The author is a signature on a contract as much or more than it
>> is a human being.
>> 
>> Another authorship story:
>> 
>> The writer of digital literature suddenly finds the tools of design at
>> hand, a global distribution network at a click, and a small but
>> responsive international audience in the inbox. This is a different
>> sort of authorship, liberating but unromantic. This sort of author
>> understands the whole process in a different way, in part because she
>> is seeing the whole process in a different way, in part because her
>> audience is seeing the whole process in a different way, and in part
>> because she is operating in an entirely different sort of environment
>> and system than she might have been tutored in during her years in
>> writer's workshop.
>> 
>> She will never get rich doing this. She will never sell the film
>> rights. She will never do many things that capital A authors do. She
>> will likely live a more or less normal life and you will not recognize
>> her on the street. She will be like many famous poets in this way. She
>> will on the other hand have the opportunity to work outside of the
>> system inherited from centuries past, or participate in the building
>> of a new one.
>> 
>> She will realize the complex layers of authorship involved in writing
>> using platforms that are themselves authored.  In doing so, she will
>> become unauthor as she authors. She will lend, borrow from, steal, and
>> give in the process of writing and building literary artifacts. She
>> will be conscious of these acts. She will build with samples and feeds
>> and the inputs of an unimaginably large choir. She will play in a huge
>> sandbox with many toys, and quite likely few observers would
>> understand what she is doing or why. And then, of a sudden, maybe . .