Both authors brought up the issue of language as a stumbling block in the participation of non-mainstream groups in the mainstream of intelligentsia. As someone who's grown up surrounded by academics (I'd say a good 1/3 of my family, extended and otherwise, are professors), this is not something that I ever realized was a problem, as academic-speak comes almost more naturally to me than that Spanish I took for four or five years.

As someone who would probably be considered a member of both oppressed groups that we are considering this week (as a woman, and as a "racial minority"), I have to wonder what the solution to the problem of the dominant academic language being sourced from a different "culture" would look like. As Bell Hooks discusses it, it makes perfect sense--black youth choose not (or perhaps cannot) to participate as heavily in what might be considered "high culture" or "academic" cultural pursuits simply because these activities, as we perceive them in the wider Western culture, simply have no bearing on their cultural experience... they are not framed in a "language" or set of conceptual building blocks which they can consider their own, and therefore a language they feel they cannot adequately express themselves in.

I have to say there is one thing I didn't particularly like about the readings for this week. This "thing" is that these articles open up whole other cans of worms than what we, as a class focusing specifically on authorship, are able to deal with.

There are so many side issues dealing with, for example, what exactly is feminism? why does it exist? what about the continuing issues of racism as a hegemonic imbalance of power, as Bell Hooks deals with? I find it problematic that (despite the fact that I, as someone who personally finds these issues relevant and therefore has some background in these things) we're given these readings and left to just take at the author's word that these issues are real, and exist exactly as they are described.

The part of Machessault's article that I found really interesting was the fact that even though it is true that the concept introduced of the "murder" of author as caused by women assuming the role of author represents a further expression of patriarchal oppression, it also works as a means of empowerment.

Clearly, if what Marchessault says is true, the women who are authors are powerless... the very fact that their ideas are considered so diffuse and lacking in authority that their presence in the role of "author" destroys the validity of the author as an exalted persona. Nonetheless, this continuation of the denial of power to women as a whole ironically allows for the playing field between the genders to be evened somewhat, as men authors are also denied the power of an exalted author persona once the author is "killed".

So I don't know if we're really allowed to use these blogs for this, but it says "thoughts about the course (discussions)" on the syllabus, so I suppose I'll give it a try and hope that I don't get shot down.

I admit that I am kind of apprehensive about this whole blog thing. It's not that I've never had to post reading responses before, it's just that I've never had to post so often about such a vague assortment of things (since it's not supposed to be solely about our readings, am I right?), and while I understand that this is meant to foster discussion in the absence of the real discussion we would be having if our class met more than once a week, I have to admit that I'm afraid that this is just not going to happen.

I found Barthes' idea of the reader as Author fascinating.

I'd never considered before what role the reader has in the authorship of a work, but in considering Barthes' article I find that everything makes perfect sense. Why is it that thousands of parents every year demand to have certain classic books banned from their childrens' schools even after generations of children have read them and not been (so far as I know) permanently scarred by the experience? It's not that these parents hare having a fundamental disconnect between the text and reality (though I'd probably prefer to argue they do), it's that the meaning they author and knit to the text is simply different, and somehow more threatening, than the meaning that everyone else understands the text to have.

The thing that I couldn't stop thinking about as I muddled my way through these readings was not so much about the abstract idea of whether the culturally mythical author transcends himself or his work transcends him, but rather about how any of this applies to cultural "works" and media today. One of the common threads shared by the three authors in their articles was that as we are hurtling forward through time, our culture is tending toward an ever-expanding definition of what constitutes "author," and that in that expansion, some element of "authorness" is being lost.

In my opinion, these references to draughtsmen or the struggle of photographers to gain recognition are interesting historical notes, but it seems like we have a much more urgent invasion of authorship to focus on--one that is more relevant to the moment we're in. This invasion is the inclusion of large companies--of entire industries themselves-- as "author bodies". I understand that the line between what could constitute a "cultural" work versus an "industrial" one is tenuous, but it simply does not seem right to me that whatever the status of the work itself that "The author of a computer program written while in the service of an employer has no rights whatsoever over the work; the employer becomes the author" (Nesbit 257) even if the employer has nothing to do with the work that is produced.