{"id":6798,"date":"2009-08-25T22:19:58","date_gmt":"2009-08-26T03:19:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/?p=6798"},"modified":"2009-08-26T09:26:43","modified_gmt":"2009-08-26T14:26:43","slug":"what-is-an-author","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/2009\/08\/what-is-an-author\/","title":{"rendered":"What Is an Author?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"MV5BMjEyNTcyMTUwNV5BMl5BanBnXkFtZTYwNTc4ODQ2__V1__CR0,0,311,311_SS90_\"I greatly enjoyed last week\u2019s exchange among colleagues Bruce Boyden, Ed Fallone, and Gordon Hylton regarding literary sequels and the general purposes of copyright law. It is my impression that most blog posts do not purport to be \u201cscholarly,\u201d but the posts by Boyden, Fallone, and Hylton had the length and<\/em> depth necessary for that characterization.\u00a0 I hated to see the exchange end.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The exchange rekindled for me the intellectual question of how to best understand what an \u201cauthor\u201d is.\u00a0 The notion of an \u201cauthor\u201d in modern western culture is a weighty one, carrying with it some sense of origination.\u00a0 It connotes more than \u201cwriter,\u201d which is a less prestigious characterization that goes primarily to a particular activity.\u00a0 We customarily assume \u201cauthors\u201d are intense and even tortured souls heroically working alone.\u00a0 We also sometimes assume that their chief incentive must and should be monetary enrichment.\u00a0 These assumptions grow out of dominant ideological prescriptions related to, respectively, autonomous individualism and the bourgeois market economy.<\/p>\n

I think it is better to conceive of an \u201cauthor\u201d as socially constituted.\u00a0 <\/p>\n

This is obviously the case when two or more people write a work together or when manuscript reviewers, editors, or critics play major roles in the composition of a work.\u00a0 In addition, according to cultural studies commentator Lucien Goldmann, we should recognize the manner in which a purported \u201cauthor\u201d belongs to a \u201ccollective subject.\u201d\u00a0 The \u201cauthor\u201d in this conceptualization not only consciously collaborates but also functions in a fundamentally trans-individual way.\u00a0 He or she works in a set of social relations and draws on established forms, reigning sentiments, and anticipated responses.\u00a0<\/p>\n

If we appreciate the way an \u201cauthor\u201d is socially constituted, we might actually enrich the experience of authorship.\u00a0 As Ed Fallone reminded us in one his posts from last week, the rampant commodification of our era often has the effect of alienating a person from the fruits of his or her labor.\u00a0 This is as true for a person who writes a novel (or a sequel . . .) as it is for somebody building a birdcage.\u00a0 Indeed, many \u201cauthors\u201d eventually become so alienated that they disavow their works or even urge the destruction of their unpublished manuscripts.\u00a0 Recognizing the truly social in individual authorship can help protect the beauty, integrity, and empowerment of creative labor.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I greatly enjoyed last week\u2019s exchange among colleagues Bruce Boyden, Ed Fallone, and Gordon Hylton regarding literary sequels and the general purposes of copyright law. It is my impression that most blog posts do not purport to be \u201cscholarly,\u201d but the posts by Boyden, Fallone, and Hylton had the length and depth necessary for that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ocean_post_layout":"","ocean_both_sidebars_style":"","ocean_both_sidebars_content_width":0,"ocean_both_sidebars_sidebars_width":0,"ocean_sidebar":"","ocean_second_sidebar":"","ocean_disable_margins":"enable","ocean_add_body_class":"","ocean_shortcode_before_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_after_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_before_header":"","ocean_shortcode_after_header":"","ocean_has_shortcode":"","ocean_shortcode_after_title":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_bottom":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_bottom":"","ocean_display_top_bar":"default","ocean_display_header":"default","ocean_header_style":"","ocean_center_header_left_menu":"","ocean_custom_header_template":"","ocean_custom_logo":0,"ocean_custom_retina_logo":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_height":0,"ocean_header_custom_menu":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_family":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_subset":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_size":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_unit":"px","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_line_height":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_unit":"","ocean_menu_typo_spacing":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_unit":"","ocean_menu_link_color":"","ocean_menu_link_color_hover":"","ocean_menu_link_color_active":"","ocean_menu_link_background":"","ocean_menu_link_hover_background":"","ocean_menu_link_active_background":"","ocean_menu_social_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_links_color":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_color":"","ocean_disable_title":"default","ocean_disable_heading":"default","ocean_post_title":"","ocean_post_subheading":"","ocean_post_title_style":"","ocean_post_title_background_color":"","ocean_post_title_background":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_image_position":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_attachment":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_repeat":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_size":"","ocean_post_title_height":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay":0.5,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay_color":"","ocean_disable_breadcrumbs":"default","ocean_breadcrumbs_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_separator_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_hover_color":"","ocean_display_footer_widgets":"default","ocean_display_footer_bottom":"default","ocean_custom_footer_template":"","ocean_post_oembed":"","ocean_post_self_hosted_media":"","ocean_post_video_embed":"","ocean_link_format":"","ocean_link_format_target":"self","ocean_quote_format":"","ocean_quote_format_link":"post","ocean_gallery_link_images":"on","ocean_gallery_id":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6798","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-popular-culture-and-law","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6798","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6798"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6798\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6798"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6798"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6798"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}