Andrea Lunsford, Rebecca Rickly, Michael Salvo, and Susan West
“What Matters Who Writes? What Matters Who Responds?”
http://english.ttu.edu/kairos/1.1/features/lunsford/title.html
Block2:
At the conclusion of his essay, “What is an Author?” Foucault pauses, in fact, to ponder some questions very much like those with which I have begun, suggesting that “who really spoke?” is more or less beside the point–that it doesn’t matter who really spoke. Instead, Foucault suggests, we should be asking very different questions: “What are the modes of existence of this discourse? Where has it been used, how can it circulate, and who can appropriate it. . . ” (160).
Block4:
how much of this essay am “I” writing? How much is Lisa writing with me? How much is Becky? Michael? How much of this essay comes from the words and work of Foucault and others? How much comes from my taking on the role assigned to me: keynote speaker? How much comes from the language of the academy, the conventions of academic discourse that lead me to stay “on topic” instead of veering off to tell you about my most current worries and fears and sadnesses?…
the electronic revolution presents massive challenges to received notions of autonomous, free-willed, stable, uniquely creative “authors” and equally autonomous, free-willed, stable, uniquely creative “readers” or “responders.” Indeed, in cyberspace, reader/responder and author/writer often merge, voices collapse and multiply, often belonging to no single source–or even to a person, and familiar notions of textuality and especially of where meaning resides are all called into question. In many ways, the traditional labels of “reader,” “writer,” and “text” don’t even name useful distinctions anymore. In a long and fascinating essay in the current issue of Wired, for example, Esther Dyson argues that value will no longer reside in content (text) or in the producer of the content (author) or even in the user of the content (reader)–but in the relationships surrounding and nurturing the movement of content through networks of users and producers (182-84).
This text is rich in ideas, especially about ownership and authorship. I don’t think I’ll use it for my 511 paper, but I might use it for my 595 paper – and possibly that Wired article Lunsford mentions.
