Authors-- They're Important IF You Want Them to Be??

Although I agree that audiences can create their own meanings out of texts, the grand declaration of "The Death of the Author" is the pinnacle of hypocracy and hubris. It does seem that for someone to declare the death of anything, they're assuming a right to pronounce this moratorium over the views of all others.

As mentioned in the Maire ni Fhlathuin reading this week, a construction of the author can be made through his/her texts. I agree with this assertion and so it doesn't come to any surprise to me that marginalized groups are saying "HEY! Not so fast! Let US decide what's dead or not!"

However, whenever we start discussing texts in terms of Black Studies, Women's Studies, Queer Studies, I find myself bristling as it feels to me that the only way for some people to have their work discussed at all is if they place their work within the context of other texts whose authors share a limited commonality. That to me, isn't a well-informed way to categorize texts.

As stated in our assignment this week: "There is often the added assumption that readers can glimpse more than just the 'creative genius' at work, but that they can also read larger categories such as race, gender, ethnicity, sexuality etc as emanating from these works." Maybe so, but I don't think that's necessarily true.

Whenever I've had a man ask me "Why do women do that? " (whatever "that" is), I usually can't answer the question because "that" is usually something not all women do. I've had a British friend tell me that "The British do A and don't do B." Well, I've got a lot of British friends and I know from experience that her statements don't fit the behaviors of all and so I conclude she can't possibly speak for all British citizens. Her comments usually mean that "SHE does A and doesn't do B."

A writer who happens to be an African-American male may write a particular text not primarily because he's a person of color, but maybe because he's a particular individual. Does Bill Cosby speak for all Afr-Am people? Does Al Sharpton? Jesse Jackson? Chris Rock?

To infer that a reason an author writes a particular work in a particular way is because they are x, y or z leaves me with a feeling of claustrophobia. To delineate the merit or study of work by the background, sexuality or race of its author I think further marginalizes people, since it would appear we're not studying the work within a more centralized discourse.

To think that the reason I write any particular type of text is merely because of my race, nationality, gender, or sexual preference only tells part of the story. I write what I write because I am who I am-- which is all of the above AND more!

I say, forget the delineations! All authors are individuals with individual backgrounds, individual perspectives and individual experiences and their work should be read from that perspective and with that assumption.

Me? Write something like that?!

For class this week, we were tasked with reading some samples of and ultimately writing a piece of slash fan fiction ourselves.

Now whereas, I think having us author work is a great touch to this course, I'm not exactly sure why we were forced to pick slash as opposed to any other choice. If the idea was to get us to try something new, posting any type of fan fiction would have been a new experience to me, but alas we had to write SLASH fiction (a term that sounds a little disturbing)-- which incorporates a "queering" (to whatever degree) of established characters.

According to Michel de Certeau (in Jenkins' accounting of "Textual Poachers"), there is an "ongoing struggle for possession of the text and for control over its meanings." The struggle is between the textual producers, "instituionally sanctioned interpreters" and those "multiple voices of fandom, who produce and share meanings from their own perspectives.

This exercise was to get us to participate in this struggle over text and possibly to get us to identify more closely to the "fandom" that wishes to not sit passively with a text, but to become active participants in the creativity surrounding that text.

I think writers of slash fan fiction have a reason or at least an inner desire to do it, but I'm just doing it because of this class assignment. It doesn't feel comfortable to me as I don't like altering others' characters. So to make this easier, I decided to choose characters from "This is Spinal Tap," as I think the "queering" idea already exists within the original story.

So, I came up with the beginning of what could become a longer piece, but due to time constraints and other commitments (and most importantly, becuase I didn't think it was necessary), I've stopped at two pages. Approaching this with some scriptwriting experience, I think it reads more like a script (without the proper formatting) and I'm not really a fiction writer in the long-form prose sense.

I think what I found to be even odder than writing and posting this piece was that within 24 hours, I had received a comment from someone saying they were looking forward to the next installment.

I feel really strange.