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

[davin heckman]

Chris,

I really think this idea merits a closer examination: "a guilt drive
behind cultural inclusiveness."  I think that "inclusiveness" can be
used to many ends, especially within the context of neoliberalism and
its various expressions.  On the one hand, it provides a convenient
cover for people who might feel anxiety about accusations about power,
discourse, and authority.

On the other hand, I think the fact that inclusiveness can be deployed
to assuage one's guilt does not necessarily mean that it must be the
case.  You note that love relationships and family bonds are a
powerful force.  And I think "inclusivity" can stem from established
love relationships, or at least an openness to forging new ones.

To be selfishly inclusive is a strategic matter.  But it is possible
that inclusivity could be an earnest gesture towards the potential of
each person.  To a certain extent, there is a narcissism underlying
speculations about the other, but I think there is something
authentically hopeful when we participate in exchanges where we trust
another to make a contribution, and we pledge ourselves to honor their
contribution even if it wasn't the one we'd anticipated.

This is love, right?  It is the difference between the zero-sum-game
logic of capitalism (where every relationship is instrumentalized and
each interaction is subject to cost-benefit analysis) and the
excessive character of love (where interaction is driven by desires
that overshadow the costs).  In this world, there is a powerful
pressure to see everything through the lens of the zero-sum-game, such
is the power of capitalism over consciousness that it proclaims the
nonexistence of everything that cannot be mediated through a universal
currency.  But this impossible idea of art seems most potent precisely
where it resists the idea of the zero-sum-game.

To get back to your point, I think that our relationships are where
love is experienced.  But, the nature of our relationships change
against a changing world.  While I would never say that "new media,"
in general, is necessarily going to be a positive force.  I would say
that there are many examples where networks designed for rather
utilitarian purposes are being bent to serve human relationships.
Does data visualization make it possible for us to love larger numbers
of people?  Not necessarily, but it could.  It could convince us that
people are like rats.  But if we are committed to love, we could
personalize it, identify with it, and abstract our experience from
it...  it could motivate shifts in policy.  We could say, let's use
the tools to identify connect with those who suffer, identify the
causes of suffering, cooperate across borders to tackle this
suffering.  It could engender a concept of humanity that is less
provincial, and more disposed to a solidarity that takes into account
difference.

I think much of new media art will go the way of all other art.  Nice
for now, but someday forgotten.  But the stuff that sticks with us,
will most likely be the pieces that say what few had the nerve,
imagination, or critical vocabulary to state plainly.  In retrospect,
however, I think the implications of these works will be obvious.  But
for now, we are in the belly of the whale.

Davin




On Thu, Jul 29, 2010 at 5:40 PM, christopher sullivan <csulli at saic.edu> wrote:
>
> Hi David, and all, yes very much the reception (as I mentioned ) is the point of
> actualization. I do not argue that, but my perfect reader can be real or
> imagined ( I very much Like Umberto Eco's essay on the concreteness of the
> written word, and the notion of the perfect reader, in his lecture ,On over
> interpretation.
>      And I am not afraid of collaboration. I do think that there is a guilt
> drive behind cultural inclusiveness, and collaboration, that is some times in
> collaborative processes, so I am suspect. what I mean by this is that you can
> go into a neighborhood and ask everyone to give you stories about your
> grandmothers, and say you have worked with that community. but did they pick
> the topic? will they get any social recognition fro their input? or are they
> just workers for an outsiders ideas.
>
> in regards to this passage....
> 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?
>
> I have always felt that our love relationships, and families, have much more to
> do with what we can love with that corporations.
>
>
>
>     For Simon, in relation to Ontology, I think that one important aspect of
> creative communities, is actually the passing of the talking stick. that
> reception, can be both active and silent. the importance is that the stick gets
> passed around. Some notions of collaboration imply that all must speak at once,
> no ears, all mouths. and this feels fun and engaging, but also hovers at a
> particular place. So the location of the idea, the art can be located, but then
> it moves, and what was the source, becomes the receiver.
>
> There is a sense of performer, writer and audience, but it changes.
> not necessarily on the same day, or even the same month, but individual voices
> create the cultural element. thank you for you generosity, I must go. Chris.
>
>
> Quoting davin heckman <davinheckman at gmail.com>:
>
>> 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
>> >>
>> >>
>> >>
>> >>
>> >>
>> >>
>> >>
>> >>
>> >>
>> >>
>> >>
>> >>
>> >> _______________________________________________
>> >> empyre forum
>> >> empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
>> >> http://www.subtle.net/empyre
>> >>
>> >
>> >
>> > 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
>> > _______________________________________________
>> > empyre forum
>> > empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
>> > http://www.subtle.net/empyre
>> >
>> _______________________________________________
>> empyre forum
>> empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
>> http://www.subtle.net/empyre
>>
>
>
> 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
> _______________________________________________
> empyre forum
> empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
> http://www.subtle.net/empyre
>