A Confusing Contemplation on the Ethics of Authorship

As we've been reading, the implications of our understanding and construction of the Author are far-reaching and potentially severe. Jaszi (who has a sweet DJ name) examines just a few of these implications in his discussion of Jeff Koons and his legal battles and offers an ironic view of Foucault's observation that the author arose in part as a way to punish author-criminals--the irony being that authors are now being punished for taking/borrowing from authors (that is the justification by prosecutors, i.e. publishers, anyway). Like Koons, other writers/Authors/authors have run into similar problems; but unlike Koons, I know more about others' stories.

In the 1960s, Lenny Bruce started to combine an interest in free-flow, improv jazz--something he'd picked up from the Beat poets--with observational, stand-up comedy. Comedy, as most of you know, tends to exploit audiences' fears and taboos for the sake of eliciting laughter. This has just been how comedy has worked for a long time. Bruce didn't invent that aspect of comedy--see Rabelais, Chaucer, etc. hundreds of years before; or the recent discovery of what many are calling the world's oldest Yo Mama joke (it involves her sexual activities and it comes from Babylon 1500 B.C.).

However, because Bruce's setups were longer and more complex than the older style of insults or setup-punchline, and because he fused those older comedic tropes of sexuality, death, and the body with profane language, he was labeled a "sick" comic, arrested multiple times, charged with obscenity and indecency, and spent most of his later years as a broke alcoholic in and out of court.

George Carlin, considered a Bruce protege, also had his nights in jail and days in court--and a response to one of his acts made its way to the Supreme Court and ultimately established the primetime family hour, i.e. no sex, profanity, etc. when kids might be watching/listening.

Another writer, Salman Rushdie, went into hiding in the late-1980s because a death sentence was issued by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in response to one of his novels, The Satanic Verses.

A few years ago, an Indian politician offered an $11 million bounty on the Danish cartoonist who depicted Muhammad in a position he didn't appreciate.

A few weeks ago, American media reported the deaths of Marie Colvin and Remi Ochlik, two journalists covering the violence in Syria.

I could go on, but the point I'm trying to make is that writing and Authorship are very corporeal--as LeFevre (still and also a sweet name) has pointed out, describing writing as a social act. It does not merely take place in the textual record. And I think that this needs to be taken into account when we examine and redefine our constructs of postmodern authorship. So, my question is this: If writers live to write; brave death, injury, and exile to write; and sometimes experience death, injury, and exile because of what they write, how should this be considered when we define postmodern authorship? Do these dangers change how we view the Author-text connection, or how we assign the benefits of authorship (including ownership) to those who write or author?