I've been wondering all semester why I'm so "schizophrenic" about my ideas of authorship. On the one hand, I'm convinced by the criticism of the romanticized individual author and understand the role we all play in authoring knowledge. I'm a new convert to public domain advocacy, for goodness sake. On the other hand, I still feel the tugs of an individual author inside of me (i.e., writing my own final paper rather than collaborating with a fellow student or feeling the pangs of envy when a dean's name goes on a grant proposal I primarily have written).
In addition to recognizing that the individual notion of author is a cultural phenomenon that is easy to succumb to, this week's readings also made me realize that my own education may have had a hand in the "brainwash." After reading Ede and Lunsford as well as Herrington, I'm realizing that this class is the first class I've ever encountered that embraced the collaborative author. Otherwise, I've been learning within institutions that reward individual authorship and from faculty who often must play the single-author game to maintain their status. It's a trite epiphany, I know, but one that at least helps assuage my guilt when the single-author in me rears its ugly head.
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