The life of a scriptor

This was in progress when I had to leave for class, but it represents a chunk of my reflections on my final project thus far. As marmalade observed in her presentation today, there is something really different about creating than theorizing. Likewise, the experience of working on a collaborative art project has been eye-opening for me in terms of understanding how much power there is in creating or reading a text. There is a real power in being able to decide meaning. In writing, it is that (somewhat terrifying) moment when all possibilities are open. In reading it is having the text open in front of you and the beginning of an interpretation in mind.

What I had not appreciated was how radically power shifts away from the author once the reader is involved. The literary traces of this are in J.M. Coetzee's Foe, and one critical mention in Roland Barthes' "Death of the Author". Really and truly, I am written out of the creation of my project. I am a camera, a pen and a set of hands that is getting very facile moving between Flickr and Blogger. I am actually looking forward to the final paper because it is there that I get to analyze all of what has happened. I become the writer, and I become powerful again.

In considering my experience, I wonder what role these intermediate blog posts serve (besides a last-ditch effort to raise my grade). I think it is a kind of clinging to control of the project, insofar as I can comment on it if not contribute to it. I'll admit that it was satisfying to speak in class today, but I did feel like I was speaking too soon, going beyond my role.

Also, I'm wondering what the blog becomes with this in mind. The blog is intended to be a dynamic medium, evolving until the author decides to stop investing in it. While it is out in the world as my project or a conventional text is, the author does not have to release agency in order to do this. While I have imposed inaction on myself, the reality of a print text is that it has to be finalized in order to be reproduced and distributed. This closing of the text necessitates the end of an author's influence on the meaning of the text, which is now in the hands of reader, culture, reviewer, etc. Electronic media allows for an author to remain involved in a public text, evolving it, editing it or removing it from circulation. To use Barthes' terms, does this make an blog a "work" rather than a "text?"