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

[davin heckman]

Chris,

I am wondering if there isn't room for multiple notions of authorship.
 I hate to keep going back to the same point of reference, but in the
film Inception, there is this wonderful relationship between the
protagonist and an "other" (Don't read this if you hate spoilers....
but it really isn't much of a spoiler).  The "other" does represent a
real person, yet this person is, at the end of the day, mediated
through the perception of the protagonist.

Which brings me to the point I mean to make.  Isn't writing always
directed at a recipient?  You imagine a reader.  At an unconscious
level, you labor of words, not because of how they come out, but
because of where they will go.  Even when you write "for yourself,"
are you not imposing an order upon thought which distinguishes that
particular train of narrative from the others that we reject (for not
making sense, for being unbelievable, for not conforming to a common
rationality, etc.)?  In other words, are you not writing for a
recipient?  Are you not writing in favor of a particular model of
consciousness over another one which you can conceive?  At a very
basic level, I think the critique of authorship from the basis of
language and culture at the passive level (I use words taken from
others) and at the active level (I order them so that meaning can be
retrieved from them), points to a social dimension of authorship.
Recognizing this does not necessarily mean that the notion of
authorship itself is threatening (although, I suppose the value of
authorial presence rests in the potential for consequence, which is in
its own way, always potentially threatening).  It's less of change in
authorship than a change in how we think about it.  It points to the
dynamic between subjectivity and objectivity.  We experience the
author (and ourselves) as singularities, but we know that we are of
and about culture.   It takes an enormous feat of consciousness to
take the vast undifferentiated sea of stimulation that we swim in and
focus it into any form of inessential perception.

But aside from this change in thinking-about-writing, there are also
different ways of writing itself.  From the non-modern modes of
"writing" (oral traditions, folklore, ritual, art, song, etc.) to the
post-modern methods of "writing" (collaborative, random, appropriated,
found, accidental, etc.), there are concrete examples of narration and
lyricism that resist notions of authorship.  Take, for instance, the
development of the many "hoax" emails that people swear by.  Now, some
of these are likely the products of single, authors paid to serve a
clear agenda (See, for instance, Sarah Palin's claim about "death
panels" in the recent health care debates in the US)  But there are a
host of other hoaxes that seem to have no clear point of origin, and
have been revised and refined over multiple retellings, to the point
where a single hoax can be driven in radically divergent directions
(For example, there is an urban legend about some teens on LSD
capturing a gnome, only to discover that it is really a child.  In
it's earlier form, it seems to be a story designed to suggest that
taking LSD will turn you into a kidnapper.  But there are versions in
which the teens capture the gnome, only to discover that they have
rescued a lost or abandoned child.  Other versions alter the story in
various ways, with the lost child replaced by a dwarf.  Elsewhere, the
drug addled teens capture a Jehovah's Witness, etc.  In any case,
whatever the original intent of the story was, it is bent towards new
priorities in the retelling.  And it might be hard to say which
version of the tale is the "best" or most "authoritative."  If all
this can happen organically, why can't writers set out on such a
process deliberately?  Isn't it possible to relinquish the author
role, but still be left with a "text"?  What of "focus groups" or
"marketing studies" as a vehicle for textual production?  Perhaps such
art might not be all that coherent or even all that good....  but you
could say the same for the volume of texts produced by author's
working under the conventional paradigm.

I don't mean to devalue art or suggest that all cultural production is
equivalent....  I only mean to say that there could be many modes of
cultural production, all of which have the potential to produce works
that resonate with readers along certain lines.  I tend to be an
elitist in terms of what I prefer, with intimacy and presence ranking
high in terms of how I value a particular creation.  I like to imagine
that there is a single subject with whom I interact when I encounter a
work (I like to read a book by so-and-so, because I want to interact
with a person that I imagine having given form to the ideas.  I want
to wrestle with someone who is masterful, who can surprise me!  But
even this is something of a fiction.)  When I read a comic book,
should I look at the artist?  The character?  The press?  The writer?
Which is the more reliable indicator that I will be satisfied?
Sometimes the writer, but writers tend to thrive with certain
characters, and do a horrible job with others.  And this phenomenon is
paralleled in the literary world, with some writers thriving within
and against certain socially determined structure as defined by genre
or form and the associated reader expectations.

I think the struggle we deal with today is, and our cultural
production seems to affirm this, where is the pleasure, power, and
knowledge in life against the backdrop of a shifting notion of the
person.  In a world where corporate personhood, increasing
dispossession, mass migration, globalization, and other innovations
reshuffle the spaces of daily life, where will our desires lead us?
What do we mean by "we"?  Do we want this world?  Or another?  What
will this other world be like?  If so, what will we struggle for?  In
other words, in a world where the essentials themselves are being
forcefully renegotiated....  what can we live with?

Davin


On Thu, Jul 29, 2010 at 12:27 AM, christopher sullivan <csulli at saic.edu> wrote:
>
> 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 . . .
>>
>> This, I think, will be fun.
>>
>> Watching these scientists at work, systematically experimenting with
>> hybrid creatures born of the word and some friends (images, moving
>> pictures, sound, code), and some other things that just wandered into
>> the party unnoticed, it will be fun.
>>
>> It will be a regenerative period for authorship. It already is.
>>
>> All the Best,
>>
>> Scott
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
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>>
>
>
> Christopher Sullivan
> Dept. of Film/Video/New Media
> School of the Art Institute of Chicago
> 112 so michigan
> Chicago Ill 60603
> csulli at saic.edu
> 312-345-3802
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