Dissolving the Author

[Gremlin]

Just finished a paper in modernism/postmodernism (for a class in ten minutes; sue me!) and I found myself working into the argument that while Calvino's If on a winter's night a traveler enjoys the luxury of the attempted dissolution of authorial authority, we find that Butler's Kindred does not, because we put such weight on the face that she is a black woman writing about the impact of slavery. White people can abolish the subject of the author with little to no perceived consequence, but because ethnic minorities are still victims of prejudice, their subjectivity cannot be done away with. After all, we would be let down if Kindred had been written by a white male because it would seem to lack "authenticity." The best way to get out of this conundrum, I posit, is through anonymity. And the best way to become anonymous is through the internet. You can be whoever you choose to be online, formulating your own identity that can publish whatever you like. I may or may not be a hispanic male teenager, a white female twentysomething, American, Canadian, Chinese. If I were to write a narrative discussing the particular lives of any of these people, you would be unable to judge the "authenticity" of it because my context wouldn't affect yours. Therefore, more needs to be done concerning anonymous publication on the internet for the sheer authorial freedom it grants.

tl;dr: Anonymity and the internet is the future of postmodern or post-postmodern culture and literature.

Discuss.

[lugaru]

Mmm... If only. When I wrote my criticism on Haunted by Chuck Palniuk I did a little research into this subject since the book of short stories is unified by a main story about a bunch of aspiring authors on a quest to suffer so that their stories may be percieved as authentic.

In the end ethnicity is somewhat important amongst critics (especially in America) but biography and history is the ultimate trump card. Take for example the "holocaust survivor who was raised by wolves" or the "white gangsta who was raised by black gangs"; two recent auto biographies reputed to be crappy books elevated to being an item of interest by the false history these people created around themselves. They become survivors and our own guilt makes us ignore their flaws as writers.

In the end I think it is a mater of empathy moreso than history or race, I think anyone can write about anything if they are talented enough. Anonimity is not the answer though, it is tougher criticism on books that suck but are respected because we feel that the author has had a tough life.

Or maybe I should try publishing a book about being a Mexican who survived the Peso crisis...

[zuludelta]

I think you might be conflating two tangentially-related arguments Gremlin (by which I mean there is no intrinsic link between the authorship-anonymity granted by the internet and the dissolution of authorial authority).

The seeming dissolution of authorial authority (at least as it's been traditionally defined) as it pertains to web-published material (and the concomitant authorial freedom it grants to some) is more a by-product of the the non-linear method of the transmission of data the internet (and in particular, the hypertext feature) affords than anonymity (although I'll grant that anonymity on the web helps the process along).

Authorial authority descends from a single-channel, one-way, linear data structure: the author/authority transmits information to the receiver/reader. It is from this "superior" position in the data hierarchy that the author derives his/her/its status as an authority. How that position is gained varies depending on the situation. In social contexts, it might be a matter of formal education, qualified experience, economic standing, race, or sheer happenstance. In a more formal and technical context, the "author" (be it human or an inorganic data source) is an "authority" because it possesses information elements the receiver/reader requires but does not possess, or it could be that the data channel between the two only flows one way or perhaps the reciever does not have complementary transmitter properties embedded in it, and/or the transmitter does not have the capability for data reception.

The current incarnation of the web, however, is moving further and further away from that linear model (the names "world wide web" and "internet" themselves belie the non-linear nature of data propagation we are apt to see online). Authorial authorship is becoming less practically relevant in the face of hypertext (the availability of on-demand information). Instead of data transmission proceeding from one authoritative source to a single receiver, we have the potential for the primary source serving as a platform from which multiple external sources can broadcast. In such a model, the "authority" of the primary source is much less important than the validity of the data provided by the external sources. Also, the primary source is no longer just a transmitter, but also functions as a receiver as well, and so do the external sources it is connected to and so on and so forth. What you have is a "holistic" information system that functions at all levels as receiver and transmitter simultaneously, an incestuous arrangement if you will, but ultimately one more responsive to real world needs.

This shift is reflected in the way internet search engine algorithms have evolved over the years. It used to be that search engines like Google and AltaVista simply scanned the meta tags and embedded text in webpages to determine their relevancy to users' search queries. But developers soon realized that this was largely inefficient and leads to some pretty poor search results. So now, the better search engines out there take into account how many times a particular page is referred to ("hypertexted") by other pages in determining relevancy, and it is from this relationship that the internet (or at least Google and modern research databases and search engines) accord "authority" (not authorial authority, but a brand-spanking new type of authority somebody with a PhD needs to come up with a name for).

And just to demonstrate (and so I don't need to make the case that I'm an authorial authority in the traditional sense), here are some neat links that might help you in case you wish to explore the topic further in future papers:
http://reviews.media-culture.org.au/features/ejournal/authority.html
http://www.cultsock.ndirect.co.uk/MUHome/cshtml/media/internet3.html
http://www.isoc.org/inet97/proceedings/G3/G3_1.HTM

[Gremlin]

Bumping this, because I'm extending the paper instead of writing a new one for the final. Also, I'm using this thread and the ones Zulu gave me as sources. I'll post my finalized paper (edited for the kiddies) when I'm done in a couple hours. Just for kicks and giggles.

EDIT: On second thought...that would be a terrible idea, because the UW has a terrifyingly thorough anti-plagarism system, and I don't think I'd be able to definitively prove my paper was indeed mine, and not copied off of some random gaming forum I found online. So...I WON'T post it.

[zuludelta]

I'm flattered you'd even consider using this thread as a source. Hope my rambling in this thread doesn't lead your paper astray 

[Gremlin]

I'm flattered you'd even consider using this thread as a source. Hope my rambling in this thread doesn't lead your paper astray 

You kidding? That's how I write normally. Your thoughts fit right in.