I found the discussion about the Franklin group most illumiknating-especially as I have just started working with such a group and have yet to figure out this group's dynamics.
It appears that of all the group members-Doug has the most "ownership" over his material and is the least receptive to change in his writing. It's really interesting to figure out just what it is that Doug wants from the group. He plots his fiction so far in advance that they cannot be changed without subtantially changing the story. I found his defense of his use of shopping malls in his story to be particularly defensive. Soes Doug juts want affirmation of his writing skill by the group? Is he just looking for acknowledgeent of his writing ability?
I find it curious that Fay, who has the most writing experience, needs the group the most. This may be because she thrives from genuine contributuions from others for her work. Despite her published track record, it appears that she has less individual "ownership" of her texts.
I have to say that I have benefited greatly from contributions from writing groups. For instance, I once set a lovemaking scene in a cave. I guess I just got carried away with the image of two people entering unknown territory. Someone in my writing group pointed out to me that "doing it" in a cave was a pretty horrible idea and genuinely yucky. I chucked the cave and my intimate scene was much better. (Just so you know, the couple ending up "engaging each other" on a picnic blanket on the grass, or is that T.M.I.?).
I hope I'm not going too far off topic here, but reading about the adventures of the Franklin Writing Group has really led me to question my won motives in seeking out a writing group. Am I like Doug and looking for people to acknowledge how great I am? Or, am I more like a Fay and genuinely need the give and take of such groups.
Here's my question for you all-should writing groups have the disparate Dougs and Fay's or should they be more homogeneous in their composition? Which would work better for you as a writer? (assuming you do some writing).
This is the course blog for ENGL 758 at North Dakota State University, taught by Dr. Amy Rupiper Taggart. Students in this seminar explore topics such as collaboration, translation, adaptation, plagiarism, copyright (and left), remix, cultural commons, and other authorship inflected issues.
Tuesday, September 28, 2004
Tuesday, September 21, 2004
Ripping Yarns
The second half of the collaboarative effort by Lansford and Ede gives an overview of the concept of authorship.
To briefly recap our heroines' strange adventures ................when he had last left Lansford and Ede-they were presenting their survey research (!?) on the world of everyday writing in which collaborative authorship is the norm.
Our tale now picks up with our intrepid adventuress' reacpping the history of authorship.
Much of this is material our class (Gosh we're smart!!) has already gone over, in which we have learned that single authorship is a relaqtively new concept..medieval and even renaissance authors did not consider themselves tortured geniuses living alone in a garret.
I would really like to focus on one of the more interesting chapters, to me, in these authors' writing on authorship-This is Carpenter's taxnomy of writing (93-95). Carpenter deconstructs (must be one of those darn post-modernists) writing into five essential categories: writing up, down, in, out and over. Writing down is essentially transcription-writing up-is the creation of new semantic material--Writing out is filling out a skeletal report, such as when notes from a meeting are "filled out." Writing in, is supplying missing data from something already written "down"-writing over is the act of compiling, revising, or abridging.
Here's why I find this so fascinating-we have whole bodies of knowledge that fall into one of these other categories and yet they are ascribed to being writing up, as if to privelige them. Let me illustrate with a point if I might. Hegel did not publish his "own" philosophical works. In fact, one of the reasons why Hegel may be such a tough row to hoe is because his students compiled "his" works from their notes. In other words, what we have is not what Hegel wrote up-but what his students wroted down, in out and over. Yet, the work is ascribed to being an act of writing up-is this done by devoted acolytes in service of theirm aster. If so, might we not have material ascribed to Hegel that is actually written up-by a group of his students?
I also liked the section in the last chapter on the differences between cooperative and collaboarative learning. Coooperative learning in cooperative learning (p. 117). Individuals become experts and then lead in some aspects of the cooperative enterprise, which is then largely pursued individualistically. It is mostly positivistic. Collaborative learning as I understand it, carries the collectivist aspect through to the end-did I totally miss the boat on this-or is this what it actually is? Cooperative learning, it would appear still priveliges the concept of single authorship.
My question in this is, given that grading is still considered an individual achievement-how do we foster collaborative learning-the system would still seem to be rigged towards individual authorship.
To briefly recap our heroines' strange adventures ................when he had last left Lansford and Ede-they were presenting their survey research (!?) on the world of everyday writing in which collaborative authorship is the norm.
Our tale now picks up with our intrepid adventuress' reacpping the history of authorship.
Much of this is material our class (Gosh we're smart!!) has already gone over, in which we have learned that single authorship is a relaqtively new concept..medieval and even renaissance authors did not consider themselves tortured geniuses living alone in a garret.
I would really like to focus on one of the more interesting chapters, to me, in these authors' writing on authorship-This is Carpenter's taxnomy of writing (93-95). Carpenter deconstructs (must be one of those darn post-modernists) writing into five essential categories: writing up, down, in, out and over. Writing down is essentially transcription-writing up-is the creation of new semantic material--Writing out is filling out a skeletal report, such as when notes from a meeting are "filled out." Writing in, is supplying missing data from something already written "down"-writing over is the act of compiling, revising, or abridging.
Here's why I find this so fascinating-we have whole bodies of knowledge that fall into one of these other categories and yet they are ascribed to being writing up, as if to privelige them. Let me illustrate with a point if I might. Hegel did not publish his "own" philosophical works. In fact, one of the reasons why Hegel may be such a tough row to hoe is because his students compiled "his" works from their notes. In other words, what we have is not what Hegel wrote up-but what his students wroted down, in out and over. Yet, the work is ascribed to being an act of writing up-is this done by devoted acolytes in service of theirm aster. If so, might we not have material ascribed to Hegel that is actually written up-by a group of his students?
I also liked the section in the last chapter on the differences between cooperative and collaboarative learning. Coooperative learning in cooperative learning (p. 117). Individuals become experts and then lead in some aspects of the cooperative enterprise, which is then largely pursued individualistically. It is mostly positivistic. Collaborative learning as I understand it, carries the collectivist aspect through to the end-did I totally miss the boat on this-or is this what it actually is? Cooperative learning, it would appear still priveliges the concept of single authorship.
My question in this is, given that grading is still considered an individual achievement-how do we foster collaborative learning-the system would still seem to be rigged towards individual authorship.
Monday, September 13, 2004
Musings on Singular Texts/Plural Authors
Lunsford and Ede's Singular texts, plural authors is their rigourous investigation into what they see is really the norm in most writing-that collaboration-rather than single authorship is what happens in most types of writing. What was interesting for me is their cases of writing that we don't normally think of as "writing." In other words, it seems that a lot of us largely hild to the romantic notion of writing. That it is an angst-ridden solitary venture. Writing is what literate people do in the course of their lives, and what this book illustrates is that collaboration is the norm in the normal everyday acts of writing. Important work is done in this type of writing. One of the cases that is highlighted (pp.32-35) is the work of chemist George Irving, who as a person whop works on government-funded projects, has important writing to do. I thought it was interesting (on p. 32) that he looked upon his role of team leader as "a master of ceremonies." It was his job to keep the show rolling. Even in this prosaic writing, the authors of the study show that people like Irving take pride in creativity " Irving reported a strong interest in language and communication (p. 35)." This shows that pride in using language well doesn't just extrend to creative wriers. But yet, these writiers, are very pragmatic about what they do. Dick Miller is a writer and the head of a sanitary district. His collaborative efforts are all very focused and pragmatic, " Miller and his staff write a variety of documents: reprts for their gverning board, letters, memos, speeches-whatever is necessary to get the job done and to maintain good realtions with the public (p.36.)" These collaborators are very purposeful communicators. To pick up on Mary's question-I reiterate what I said last week-I am aware that communities of creative writers "collaboarate" in the workshop environm,ent and yet retain single authorship. By the by-I don't write for Judy, I write for my own research agenda. This whole idea of collaboration brought to the fore a question-I acknowledge the importance of collaborative riting-and yet, I am a writer of very solitary habits-is there a way to reconcile this?
Musings on Singular Texts/Plural Authors
Lunsford and Ede's Singular texts, plural authors is their rigourous investigation into what they see is really the norm in most writing-that collaboration-rather than single authorship is what happens in most types of writing. What was interesting for me is their cases of writing that we don't normally think of as "writing." In other words, it seems that a lot of us largely hild to the romantic notion of writing. That it is an angst-ridden solitary venture. Writing is what literate people do in the course of their lives, and what this book illustrates is that collaboration is the norm in the normal everyday acts of writing. Important work is done in this type of writing. One of the cases that is highlighted (pp.32-35) is the work of chemist George Irving, who as a person whop works on government-funded projects, has important writing to do. I thought it was interesting (on p. 32) that he looked upon his role of team leader as "a master of ceremonies." It was his job to keep the show rolling. Even in this prosaic writing, the authors of the study show that people like Irving take pride in creativity " Irving reported a strong interest in language and communication (p. 35)." This shows that pride in using language well doesn't just extrend to creative wriers. But yet, these writiers, are very pragmatic about what they do. Dick Miller is a writer and the head of a sanitary district. His collaborative efforts are all very focused and pragmatic, " Miller and his staff write a variety of documents: reprts for their gverning board, letters, memos, speeches-whatever is necessary to get the job done and to maintain good realtions with the public (p.36.)" These collaborators are very purposeful communicators. To pick up on Mary's question-I reiterate what I said last week-I am aware that communities of creative writers "collaboarate" in the workshop environm,ent and yet retain single authorship. By the by-I don't write for Judy, I write for my own research agenda. This whole idea of collaboration brought to the fore a question-I acknowledge the importance of collaborative riting-and yet, I am a writer of very solitary habits-is there a way to reconcile this?
Monday, September 06, 2004
Musings on the latest batch
Well-I'm going to begin with the Gere chapter-because it's the most interesting to me-because of stuff I've read about copyleft and what not. Our saga of the story of authorship pick up in this chapter from the early modern-era and how authorship was firmly established at that point to the Americas, where according to our author. "... by the 1870s, the concept of intellectual property was firmly established in the United States, and the construction of authorhsip had been effected that literary criticism lavished considerable attention on the background and intentions of authors, and authors became more powerful advocates for their own rights "(p.383). What this sounds like to me, is that authorship had become fully commodified in 19th century capitalist America. Some media critics like Sut Jhally talk about "commondity fetishism" and what it sounds like to me, is that once authorship had become a commodity, that commodity was given exalted status. For an example of commodity fetishism, think about people and their favorite "brands" of water. It's all H-2-0, but now that it's become commodified, the only step left was to elevate the status of certain brands of water. So, authorship by this time, had become a commodified and elevated brand. In comes the 19th century mania for self-improvement in America and the establishment of mutual education societies. The societies that were composed of women, tended to subvert this branding ofauthorship with "communcal rather than individual ownership of texts, texts both used and produced by the club" (p. 387). They bought texts in common for common usage and they produced texts that were meant to be used by the club and this carried over to the production of texts by club members. they prodcued texts that were designed for common ownership and use by the club. Fascinating. The obvious question is, didthis happen because even the middle-class women who belonged to these societies were marinalized by their status as women and so produced common texts as a form of coomon resistance, or, is thier something inherent to "ownership" and commodification and gender in capitalist society?
Thomas takes us back to pre-capitalist Renaissance europe and a phenomenan called the Commonplace Book. These were blank books in which people copied and it appears, felt free to re-interpret poems thatthey copied. We don't even know who the "authors" of these commonplace books are, as "Most of the time, these poems were transcribed without attribution; sometimes even the comiler of the commonplace book remained anonymous"(p.401). The commonplace that have been collected show a remarkable re-maing of texts. One of thos e commonpalce books that is talked about in this chapter is one that was kept by a cleric named John Lilliat, who even though he obviously regarded texts as sacred, re-wrote some of these to. One such instance was of him re-writing a Psalm to compose a prophecy of what he felt would happen to his England. So, he remembered the psalm-but remaded it also. That is why, in the pre-authorship era, Thomas says "Commonplace books are also about the intimate connection between remembering and re-marking a text-about that is, a practice of reading contingent upon re-writing"(p.410). Think about how we re-mark our own memories as we remember them. The only difference, is that with the commonpalce book, men of letters, remembered sources that were near and dear to them by re-marking them. My question of this is, can we think of any examples in contemporary society in which we remember our texts by re-marking them? An obvious one to me, is people who have used digital technology to "create" muscial works that are already "remembered" in records.
I guess in some ways, the Beaumont and or Flectcher article was least interesting to me, mostly because it seemed to wallow in somewhat obscure, at least for me, literary criticism. It does seem to apply to the discussion we had in class of Shakespeare's "authorship" of the plays even though we know that in Renaissance times, authorhsip of plays was a collaboration of the company, it was ssure to be a practice that carried forth into the early modern world of Shakespeare. It seems that the point that Mastern is tryingto make is that once plays from these eras become literature, "criticism has read them primarily as written communciation between writers and readers (p.366)" So, once they obtained a status beyond perfromance, they demanded an author. Wherethis goes into the title of the piece is Mastern's criticism of the bibliographic criticism (and that ain't navel gazing among literary scholars folks, I don't know what is!!) that insists in determining of a particluar set of plays were the sole product of BEaumont, or Fletcher, and how the two are parsed out by intense criticism and reconstrcution and how this type of criticism relies "implicitly on the assumption that texts are the products of a single and sovereign authorial consciousness" (p.371). The recognition of collaboration requires a recognition that canonical texts are socially constructed. To somewhat visit our Q's from last week-What does it matter if Shakespeare didn't write Shakespeare?
Jaszi's article-the bookend to the one we reviewed last week-takes a look at how critiques of authroship have developed. There is the purely cultural approach taken by Focualt which challenged the "naturalness" of authorhsip by packing it into its cultural context. Then Jaszi, gives us Kaplan, who appears to opearte from a more brute political economy model which critiques authorship based on politcal, legal and economic concepts. He then cites Woodmansee's (how's THAT for academic logrolling) attempts to wed the two concepts in the 1980s. Jaszi then starts taking us down the road of his own scholarship on authorhsip. He takes us through the Feist case, which we covered a little bit in class last week. It then goes extensively into the Koons case in which Koons took the content of a published photo-altered it somewhat and made a sculpture of it. The photgrapher sued. The photographer won, becasue of the "substantial similarity" of the works and the fact that it was not, according to the judge in the case, parody, which is protected. This decsision says Jaszi, discourages, "appropriational artists" (my term) whose methods "entail reworking pre-existing materials, while rewarding those whose 'dedication to 'originality' qualifies them as truie 'authors' in the Romantic sense" (p.48). In looking at these notions, Jaszi concludes that the "ideology of Romantic 'authorship' however, has greater potential to mislead than to guide decision-makers who will shape the legal regime" as we head into the era of inteernt and all th collaboration and appropriation that takes place there. So, what do you all think? I"ve known some people who specialize in "appropriated art" is it a slug at outmoded notions of capitalism, or should we protect authors, when it may appear the author is a dying breed?
Thomas takes us back to pre-capitalist Renaissance europe and a phenomenan called the Commonplace Book. These were blank books in which people copied and it appears, felt free to re-interpret poems thatthey copied. We don't even know who the "authors" of these commonplace books are, as "Most of the time, these poems were transcribed without attribution; sometimes even the comiler of the commonplace book remained anonymous"(p.401). The commonplace that have been collected show a remarkable re-maing of texts. One of thos e commonpalce books that is talked about in this chapter is one that was kept by a cleric named John Lilliat, who even though he obviously regarded texts as sacred, re-wrote some of these to. One such instance was of him re-writing a Psalm to compose a prophecy of what he felt would happen to his England. So, he remembered the psalm-but remaded it also. That is why, in the pre-authorship era, Thomas says "Commonplace books are also about the intimate connection between remembering and re-marking a text-about that is, a practice of reading contingent upon re-writing"(p.410). Think about how we re-mark our own memories as we remember them. The only difference, is that with the commonpalce book, men of letters, remembered sources that were near and dear to them by re-marking them. My question of this is, can we think of any examples in contemporary society in which we remember our texts by re-marking them? An obvious one to me, is people who have used digital technology to "create" muscial works that are already "remembered" in records.
I guess in some ways, the Beaumont and or Flectcher article was least interesting to me, mostly because it seemed to wallow in somewhat obscure, at least for me, literary criticism. It does seem to apply to the discussion we had in class of Shakespeare's "authorship" of the plays even though we know that in Renaissance times, authorhsip of plays was a collaboration of the company, it was ssure to be a practice that carried forth into the early modern world of Shakespeare. It seems that the point that Mastern is tryingto make is that once plays from these eras become literature, "criticism has read them primarily as written communciation between writers and readers (p.366)" So, once they obtained a status beyond perfromance, they demanded an author. Wherethis goes into the title of the piece is Mastern's criticism of the bibliographic criticism (and that ain't navel gazing among literary scholars folks, I don't know what is!!) that insists in determining of a particluar set of plays were the sole product of BEaumont, or Fletcher, and how the two are parsed out by intense criticism and reconstrcution and how this type of criticism relies "implicitly on the assumption that texts are the products of a single and sovereign authorial consciousness" (p.371). The recognition of collaboration requires a recognition that canonical texts are socially constructed. To somewhat visit our Q's from last week-What does it matter if Shakespeare didn't write Shakespeare?
Jaszi's article-the bookend to the one we reviewed last week-takes a look at how critiques of authroship have developed. There is the purely cultural approach taken by Focualt which challenged the "naturalness" of authorhsip by packing it into its cultural context. Then Jaszi, gives us Kaplan, who appears to opearte from a more brute political economy model which critiques authorship based on politcal, legal and economic concepts. He then cites Woodmansee's (how's THAT for academic logrolling) attempts to wed the two concepts in the 1980s. Jaszi then starts taking us down the road of his own scholarship on authorhsip. He takes us through the Feist case, which we covered a little bit in class last week. It then goes extensively into the Koons case in which Koons took the content of a published photo-altered it somewhat and made a sculpture of it. The photgrapher sued. The photographer won, becasue of the "substantial similarity" of the works and the fact that it was not, according to the judge in the case, parody, which is protected. This decsision says Jaszi, discourages, "appropriational artists" (my term) whose methods "entail reworking pre-existing materials, while rewarding those whose 'dedication to 'originality' qualifies them as truie 'authors' in the Romantic sense" (p.48). In looking at these notions, Jaszi concludes that the "ideology of Romantic 'authorship' however, has greater potential to mislead than to guide decision-makers who will shape the legal regime" as we head into the era of inteernt and all th collaboration and appropriation that takes place there. So, what do you all think? I"ve known some people who specialize in "appropriated art" is it a slug at outmoded notions of capitalism, or should we protect authors, when it may appear the author is a dying breed?