It is only partly true that I never know where to begin or even what to say when responding to anything written by Barthes or Foucault. And quite obviously this statement needs to be explained right away. My problem isn’t really that I have nothing to say (quite the contrary), but, instead, that what I have to say is so often derogatory. Generally speaking, my reaction to anything produced by either of them is to observe that they seem to be doing little more than playing semantic and linguistic games in order to disguise the reality that, yes, children, the Emperor is in fact naked. These are not the sorts of comments that tend to endear me to my colleagues, particularly those with poststructuralist interests.
In any case, since I can’t say that my opinions have really changed all that much (unless we want to consider an intensification or sharpening a change), I’m not going to deal with them here – plenty of opportunity for that in class, should anyone be interested. Instead, I prefer to concentrate on Martha Woodmansee, whose scholarship and rigor and freedom from ideological pronouncements is rather refreshing when compared to what I’m afraid I can’t refrain from calling the intellectual posturing of Barthes and Foucault.
Woodmansee’s article is a fine and detailed historical account of the parallel developments in European (and specifically German) conceptions of authorship and copyright. Beginning (almost) with the genuinely useful statement that “the author in its modern sense is a relatively recent invention” (426 in our online edition), she proceeds to delineate both premodern and early modern legal conceptions of authorship as well as the whys and hows by which they gradually – in the German states through the course of the eighteenth century – evolved into the idea of the Author which Barthes and Foucault (not incidentally) are so assiduously trying to kill (don’t ask me why – I’ve never been able to figure out exactly what their problem is with what Foucault rather snottily keeps referring to as “the author function,” especially considering the inescapably monolithic status both have achieved as Authors of their respective Works – but I digress).
The history Woodmansee lays out provides invaluable context for our discussion of the complexities of the authorship/copyright issue in our own time: if the idea of the Author is so comparatively recent, then it follows that the notion of legal protection of authorial ownership of texts is even more recent (and yes, I am aware that I am totally avoiding the question of how precisely we define the idea of "text"). I would add that it is important to recognize that what Woodmansee describes are parallel developments: as the concept of authorial ownership of what Fichte called the “form” of ideas – the particular expression of thoughts and ideas which belongs solely to the individual creator – gradually takes hold, so develop legal protections safeguarding the rights of those creators over the dissemination of their expressions, or of the concrete textual forms of which they are identified as authors. Thus Fichte seems to advocate a concept of authorship not unlike that which we articulated in class last week: one of the key elements allowing a creator to exert some ownership over her ideas is the specific expression or form of those ideas that she alone has been responsible for constructing (and by the by, the use of the feminine pronoun here raises some interesting wrinkles that I'd like to address some time -- namely, how from the seventeenth century onward the participation of women in the creation of texts both through writing and publishing them helped evolve the modern concept of authorship, which I would think raises for feminist critics all sorts of interesting implications re: Foucault and Barthes).
As you’ve probably guessed, I have no particular problem with what for us is a traditional notion of authorship, nor do I question the right of individual authors to control who uses their creations, or how. And as a theater artist I also don't question the right of directors and actors and designers to be identified as authors of their own work, even when that work involves what may conventionally be seen as an infringement of the original author's work (good actors and directors understand that on some level they must rewrite the texts they choose to interpret). In my view, to return to the particular bugaboo with which I began this discussion, Barthes and Foucault, in railing against the tyranny of the Author, have only succeeded in replacing it with the tyranny of the Critic. Woodmansee at least provides solid historical reasons for why we conceive of authorship in the way we do. After all, whatever else they may be, texts are products of the human brain, expressions of human thought, human choice, and human will. Perhaps, as Foucault seems to suggest in one of his more lucid moments, our goal should not be to destroy the idea of the author, but to explore our own changing notions about just who the author is and what exactly it is that she does. This strikes me as far more useful than proclaiming the death of the author, especially considering the extent to which the reports of that death have been so greatly exaggerated.
Marmaduke Explained is pretty much like it sounds. The author, Joe Mathlete, offers pithy explanations for the comic semi-regularly. The latest one is really great.
