class: title, smokescreen, shelf, no-footer background-image: url(aaron-burden-y02jEX_B0O0-unsplash.jpg) # The Politics of Authorship ### Part 1: Barthes v. Foucault<br>September 14, 2022 ---  --- ## Review: Hall's Three "Decoding Positions" 1. **Dominant / Hegemonic**: The "Preferred Reading" or interpretation. 2. **Negotiated**: A Negotiated Reading Accepting some of preferred reading, rejecting or ignoring other parts 3. **Oppositional / Counter-Hegemonic**: A “Globally Contrary” or Oppositional Reading --- ## Hegemonic / Hegemony Stuart Hall adopts this term from Italian philosopher Antonio Gramsci -- * Dominant ideologies offered and experienced as _"common sense"_ -- * Dominant ideologies are locked in struggle with other "counter-hegemonic" forces so their dominance is never guaranteed. -- * Culture as a "whole way of ~~life~~ struggle." --- class: title # So what? -- ## and do you agree? --- class: col-2 title <br /><br /> **"The Death of the Author"**<br />Roland Barthes, 1967  **"What is an Author?"**<br />Michel Foucault, 1967 --- class: center # Shared Assumption <br><small>“The author is a modern figure, a product of our society insofar as . . . it discovered the prestige of the individual . . . The _explanation_ of a work is always sought in the man or woman who produced it.” [Barthes, "The Death of the Author." (142-143)]</small> --- class: img-caption  **"The Death of the Author"**<br>Roland Barthes, 1967 --- # Barthes' critique of originality >"**The text** [image? artwork?] **is a tissue of quotations drawn from the innumerable centres of culture . . . the writer** [artist? marketing exec? influencer?] **can only imitate a gesture that is always anterior, never original. His** [sic] **only power is to mix writings** [signs?], **to counter the ones with the others.**" ><cite>— Barthes, "The Death of the Author." (146)</cite> --- class: roomy >“To give a text an Author is to impose a limit on that text, to furnish it with a final signified, to close the writing. Such a conception suits criticism very well, the latter then allotting itself the important task of discovering the Author (or its hypostases: society, history, psyche, liberty) beneath the work: when the Author has been found, the text is 'explained' – victory to the critic.” ><cite>— Barthes, "The Death of the Author." (147)</cite> --- class: img-right-full  <br><br><br><br> <q>every text is eternally written here and now.</q> <q>the true place of the writing . . . is reading</q> <q>...a text's unity lies not in its origin but in its destination.</q> --- class: title # Polysemy and the "readerly" image --- class: img-right-full  <br><br><br><br><br><br> **"What is an Author?"**<br> Michel Foucault, 1967 --- class: roomy, center > "The author is therefore the ideological figure by which one marks the manner in which we fear the proliferation of meaning." ><cite>— Foucault, "What is an Author?" (222)</cite> --- class: title ### What kinds of discourse do we attribute to an <span style="text-decoration:underline;">A</span>uthor? --- ### Foucault's Response to / Critique of Barthes >“It is not enough . . . to repeat the empty affirmation that the author has disappeared. . . Instead, we must locate the space left empty by the author's disappearance, follow the distribution of gaps and breaches, and watch for the openings its disappearance uncovers.” > — <cite>Foucault, "What Is An Author?" (209)</cite> --- class: title ## Foucault: _Author Function_ --- # Author Function: _Four Characteristics_ -- 1. Linked to the **juridical** and **institutional** system that encompasses, determines, and articulates the universe of discourses.<br><br> -- 1. Does not affect all discourses in the same way at all times and in all types of civilizations<br><br> -- 1. Defined by _specific and complex operations_.<br><br> -- 1. It does not refer simply to a real individual, since it can give rise simultaneously to different selves, to several subjects – _positions_ that can be occupied by different classes of individuals. --- class: roomy, col-3 # Juridical and Institutional System  <span style="margin-left:30%;"></span>  --- class: center ...does not affect all discourses in the same way.    --- class: img-right-full # The Author's Name  serves “a classificatory function. Such a name permits one to group together a certain number of texts, define them, differentiate them from and contrast them to others.” (Foucault, 210) --- class: fullbleed      --- class: roomy The <q>author-function</q> is the result of a <q>complex operation</q> that <q>constructs a certain being of reason we call ‘author.’</q> _The author can neutralize contradictions across different texts._ --- class: fullbleed     --- class: img-caption  <small>Certain Authors as "founders of discursivity" (217):<br />Plato, Freud, Marx . . .</small> -- <small>and Foucault!</small> --- class: roomy <br><br><br> > In short, it is a matter of depriving the subject . . . of its role as originator, and of analyzing the subject as a variable and complex function of discourse. ><cite>— Foucault, "What is an Author?" (221)</cite> --- # For Friday * Review Foucault & Barthes * Complete Quiz #2 before 11:59 PM <hr /> # For Monday Read: * Selection from Karl Marx’s [early writings (1844) on “estranged labor”](https://sakai.duke.edu/access/content/group/VMS-202D-001-F22/Readings/marx-EstrangedLabour.pdf) * Graeber, David. (2013). “[On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs: A Work Rant](https://sakai.duke.edu/access/content/group/VMS-202D-001-F22/Readings/graeber2013.pdf).” *Strike! Magazine,* Issue 3 “The Summer of …”