Writing Machines is the course website for English 170L at Pomona College in Claremont, California.
pacing
Submitted by marmalade on 6 November 2006 - 3:06pm.
Okay, so this could be kind of weird, but it was something I was thinking about this morning in the airport...
Lance Armstrong ran the NYC marathon in just under three hours. The man is not a marthoner--he's a cyclist, obviously--and he hadn't really trained for this race at all (his longest run was 16 miles--most people do between 20 and 22 miles to prepare). But he pulled off an awesome time. (Well, if I had run that I would have retired.) Anyway in the NYTimes special "local only" section, one of his pacers, Joan Benoit (Samuelson) basically claims that he wouldn't have been able to finish without her help.
The issue of pacers is pretty contentious. Roger Bannister used them to run a sub-four minute mile back in the fifties--and the track world wanted to disown him. They didn't feel that he was really running it--it didn't represent his own work. Pacers have been banned recently from several major competitions--the Boston Marathon being one of them, and the idea is to ban them from NY next year. And, to paraphrase the reasoning, it's because what they represent is a collaborative race--it's not the work of just one person. Did Lance's 2:58:59 represent his work or that of Benoit's? Both? How much goes to each? The question is raised as to whom can rightfully claim the accomplishment--who is responsible/laudable for that time?
Here comes my point: I feel that this reflects somehow in the collaborative narratives we've been looking at, works designed to or which end up mushrooming beyond the authors control. When Shelley Jackson's "words" make their own narratives and spawn their own stories and communities, can Jackson take credit for that creative out-pouring? Jackson might be the instigator, but (given that we will in all likelihood never read the text) can we claim that she is the author of the "Skin" that we were discussing in class? Weren't we talking more about the people that collaborated with her--i.e. that are helping her to her finish line? And so (once again) how much credit does Jackson deserve for the project?
None of this is to say that Jackson is a sub-par author or that Lance Armstrong is a sub-par athlete. It's just to question the idea of what accomplishment means. And to comfort myself for not breaking three hours ;)
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that's a really cool and
that's a really cool and interesting analogy, marmalade. it almost makes me feel like elite runners "cheat" when they use pacers, but i hope that doesn't devalue lance's accomplishments but it's something that made me ponder.
in terms of shelley jackson's work, i think it's totally inevitable that her people/"words" spawn lives of their own that are distinct from jackson's intended meaning. i mean, what's to stop them from spawning new meaning? in the footnotes section of her website, there was one footnote which explains that the word "floating" means dead bodies to a certain person who had a certain experience with that word. her tattoo, then, seems to take on this new context and meaning, distinct from jackson's intentions.
i really like this idea of the individual's ownership of their own tattoos and the idea that the participants can articulate their own meaning. i was initially uncomfortable with jackson's colonization of others' bodies, and this branching of new meanings seems to be a way for individuals to reclaim their identities and to assert their own control over their own bodies instead of being jackson's tool/word.
Yeah, I totally agree that
Yeah, I totally agree that this is a really empowering thing for Jackson's words. I just wonder what it says about her as an author... If all of the "work" that we will ever see are these people (these embodied words), and the meanings that these people establish for their words are independent and self-oriented--totally bereft of whatever meaning Jackson had inititally distilled into them--can we really call her the "author" of the work as we know it?
I mean, maybe this is the perfect example of a text gone feral. And in that case, who's to take credit/responsibility for it?
Not sure. Maybe I'm just thinking about this too much!