Authorship

From this week's topic of authorship, we step away form the analysis of the text and tie in the role of the author as well. A lot of the time, we as readers or critics, take a text and give it a level of credibility, not just based on the structure of a text's discourse, but mainly because of the connection of the author. The author is the source of creativity and central meaning that we may find within a text. In Focault's What Is an Author, he states, "criticism should concern itself with the structures of a work, which are studied for their intrinsic and internal relationships"(1262). This statement displays a sense of turning away from the author and not seeing the author as the "genius" behind the formation of a text. This thought process is challenging the power of the author and the idealism that they hold the tie between reality and a text. He then brings up the point that while we are trying to break this connection between a text and the author, can the text now still be considered a work without that connection: "If an individual is not an author, what are we to make of those things he has written or said...is this not properly a work?" These two conflicting theories contribute the the controversy behind the concept of the author. We attempt to separate ourselves from the author to just be able to focus on the text, but there's always that temptation pulling us back because of social habit of tying the two together. When we go to the movies and we see that the director is Steven Spielberg, we are already giving the text a sense of credibility because we know his work, so we assume it will be a great movie. Even as we watch the movie, our previous notions might inhibit our own personal judgments of the movie. John Cassavetes and the Role of the Author mentions this as well in his analysis of movies. In this blog, the director is seen as the author of the movie or piece he has created. Here we are examining the relationship between representation and reality. The director has a vision and takes us back to how the author connect reality with what is placed and expressed within a text. An authorship analysis of a film would focus on acknowledging how the director has attributed to the film in an artistic way. To find and identify these qualities we are then forced to refer back to the author's previous works, recognizing notable patterns. Continuing this constant connection between a text and its author.