Author Individuality Under Attack

1) On the spectrum between humanism and materialism; author and subject, where do you fall and why?

I fall in the middle, leaning toward humanism

The reasons, however sentimental, are these: In the spectrum the extreme humanist side is a worship of man, which is not warranted. At the extreme of materialism, the individual has no place in the world, equally unwarranted and repugnant. I would like to believe that there is some human agency in writing, but that we are not gods.

Becker and Benjamin seem to entrench themselves solidly in the soil of materialism saying in effect that the individual is dead, Benjamin saying that the individual cannot be autonomous but must put himself in some system (220), and Becker saying that the artist cannot create in a vacuum, but needs many other hands (768). Intheir framework of socialism, I can see teir point, but teycouod not account for the great number ofpubications tere are today by free authors not entrenched in any system (I ignore the pulishers, editors, typesetters, and so forth).

2) How do the readings for this week carve out a middle space between humanism and structuralism, Hitchcock and "Hitchcock" so to speak?

There seems to be a way in which the individual can still function as an individual in the system. The Kompare article was most instructive on this, in that different groups of people do get credit for their work. HOW much they receive depends on what they do and how much they do it, but while it looks like a beehive, the workers are not absorbed into one mass.


How do the current readings connect to Tomashevskij?

He would say that there are many ways to obtain authorship, even concocting biographies to do so, that he would not have difficulties with the multi-author contingencies for television production.


Becker would shrug and say that the individuality has no place, and would also agree that television production follows necessary lines of intense collaboration similar to art (768)

Benjamin would state that assigning credit perpetuates the illusion of individuality. At the same time, with so many people involved in the production of a show, he might seem to show grudging acceptance to the notion that television is part of the way into his idea that the producers must create more producers (233). Yet if he considers the logistical nature of theatre and radio to be “means against the producers” (234) he might also look at television with a jaundiced eye. As for Foucault, he would consider anything to do with the individual author as irrelevant, but that if anything should be saved from the irrelevant author’s works it should be only that which will further production (220)