Tuesday, December 09, 2008

Experiment possibilities (and final papers), collection for NCATE, and calender revision(?)

Materials, Constraints, Discover: multiple movements: (finish discussion)

The Author and Authorship (re: ) A-22/23

Historical shifts in "author function":

I. Pre-authorial phase

Work itself, reception, cultural function predominate. Author doesn't exist except (as in science) in minor way. Reliability or truth doesn't come from 'author' himself.

II. Authorial Phase - (figure of writer provides a guarantee)

1. Court writer (authority granted by patron; reinforcing power and order)
2. Opposition/independent (authority in market, readership; "seeming" power to critique)
3. Genius (authority vested in "greatness" or sublimity of the work; legitimated in being seen as "apart from" the social world, i.e. neither for nor against but "above" the fray)

III. Post Authorial Phase

1. Barthes: Death of the Author - proposition that tradition of "readerly texts" gives way to "writerly" idea

Writerly texts are open or indeteriminate in ways that alter the writer/reader dynamic; meaning is produced in the process of reading; text does not propose or "impose upon" but exists as a field of possibilities; emphasis towards pleasure and activity of reading rather than "goods delivered"

Foucault: "Author Function" - while Barthes is correct in ways that "author" functions to contain meaning, suggests important historical role of various phases in the understanding of author in relation to work. A Marx or Freud as "author" exerts power that free floating text could not.