Vaidnayathan Weekly thought paper

Here is my thought paper from last week...

Charlotte Tschider
02/24/05
Thoughts #4

The presence and poignancy of the Napster debate has forced us as researchers to view copyright in a whole new light. From a rhetorical standpoint, our views on copyright have less to do with “rights” and more to do with audience “anticipation.” The government seems captivated by whether something is “right” or “wrong,” as Jeff noted this week, the “natural right” to the Author’s “work,” but this offers a standard that gathers dust in an active online, collaborative environment. What means more here is not the Author’s right, but the Audience’s.

Having lived through the Napster debate, using Napster myself as well as Kazaa, Morpheus, and others, the restrictions seem to have approached the problem from the wrong side. Students today (especially students that I teach) seem to think that there is no such thing as “property,” that only something physical (tangible medium) can be “stolen.” Presenting someone else’s work (including a human experience, for storytelling, or a joke) as one’s own seems less transgressive; because that experience could just as well be the work of another (again speaking to this idea of speech as community-generated), it is permissible. Music file-sharing does not go this far: files are still associated with their artists; artists receive renewed appreciation, lauding, and marketing in other ways. Instead of improving marketing tactics (as Logie has noted, the Eminem CD with enclosed DVD), the recording industry has seemed hell-bent on 1) improving the technology of restriction (improving the steel of the jails so the ‘convicts’ cannot break out), 2) Threatening by punishment or following through on punishment (deterring little Jimmy with his 30 downloaded Big-Bird songs from downloading more or fining 70-year-old Gertrude), and 3) Sabotage (uploading ‘ghost songs’ to mislead and frustrate downloaders).

Vaidhyanathan mentions these while quoting Peter Jaszi’s issues of “pseudo-copyright,” “paracopyright,” and “metacopyright.” Pseudo-copyright relates to data protection efforts (deterrence, shut-downs of centralized data-sharing), paracopyright to“technical locks,” and metacopyright to “contractual rights surrender.” I question why at this point the DMCA requires preventing and punishing, instead of establishing it as a reality (not a crime), especially when the only “people” who suffer—who are pictured as ‘poor, starving, artists’ instead of the multi-billion dollar recording companies—are really corporations unwilling to “let go” of an eclipsed technology and reinvent a marketing scheme. This strikes me as not much different than printing presses of late, 16th-century England turning out cheap copies and subsequent laws reinforced by a monarchical power structure, solely to protect particular businesse). In a capitalistic society, it should be appropriate to invent according to market demand, instead of attempting to change/repress the market. The audience exists, regardless, in spite of, and because of the speakers (in this case, artists, corporations, and other people where that particular communication begins), but it remains an autonomous group, a group which interprets and acts as it will. “Protection” of “property” here does not do the job; Vaidhyanathan does not go as far as I’d like—even “thin” protection exists in an environment where corporations virtually own and certainly control works.

Copyright Criminals

Here is another video worth taking a look at-- Copyright Criminals: This is a Sampling Sport

It is a ten minute documentary that features, among other people, Siva.

An introduction to the internet

As we turn the corner in the class from classic notions of authorship into digital environments, I feel it important to point at this short quicktime video that explains all the issues we're facing.

It is well worth the three minutes or so, because I think it pretty much illustrates the current state of virtual affairs in comparison to the real world constructs which the internet challenges.

response to Acker

Acker, writing in 1990, managed to write a parable foretelling the millennial rip, mix and burn argument. This is a story about mash ups (and can be extended to subgenres like bastard pop). This is a story about approaches to an information commons. This is a story about derivative works. This is a story about freedom of speech. This is a story calling for the abolition of intellectual property as we know it. This is a story that touches on every pulse of the copyfight.

The question I have is: Where does this story get us? The extreme copyleft viewpoint is seductive, and it has fueled a necessary revolution. However, I’ve come to think it is also largely self-defeating. Stories like this lead us into polarized discourse wherein two diametrically opposed camps develop symbiotic opposition, feeding off of each other’s discourse and further distancing everyone involved. There is no middle ground in the arena, and that leaves no room for resolution, as Capitol’s plight demonstrates. It also situates the participants in a smackdown environment where somebody eventually has to lose -- and that somebody is usually going to be the little person, the one with less hegemonic power.

Both Lessig and Vaidhyanathan have previously fostered this sort of oppositional discourse to varying degrees, and both have recently called for a more moderate approach, one where some sort of actual, fruitful communication can take place. For a bunch of professional argumentarians, we fail (and flail) in our rhetoric. Our rhetoric is what keeps us from being taken seriously in the courtroom, as demonstrated by Lessig himself in his postmortem of Eldred v. Ashcroft. It keeps us from being able to have a rational conversation with the ardent copyrightists, who are themselves not exactly conciliatory. However, they direct their discourse much better than we do, and the A&M v. Napster decision was proof of that. The copyfight movement desperately needs a Lakoff, and in the meantime we need to keep an eye on ourselves. We need to ask ourselves how we can build a conversation about intellectual property that takes into account the demands of the economy, of our capitalist system, and the originator’s need to eat as well as the need for derivative works and more moderate laws. A number of the more prominent copyfighters are beginning to lean this way - William Fisher III’s recent book comes to mind. We grassroots folks are the real, daily, voices of this movement, though. We’re the ones whose civil disobedience brought us this far, and we have a responsibliity at this point not only to that, but also to bringing the discourse around to a point where the real work of change can be done.

mp3s aren’t relevant, dahling

OK, so I totally pilfered Jill Walker’s post title. She’s written a great post on the new Norwegian laws on downloading, which say that one can only rip media for relevant formats. This means that one might circumvent the protection on a CD in order play on a car CD player, which is relevant technology. Ripping a CD to convert it to an mp3 would be illegal, since mp3s are not relevant to CD technology.

Be sure to read all the way through so you hit the link to the article about the communist youths dressing up as iPods to protest the law. Which, um, makes the communists advertisements for Apple, doesn’t it?

Summation of my points, today's discussion

In reference to the argument that the feminist approach is not unique, necessarily, I offer a few points (and some I probably didn't) I mentioned in class. Ecriture feministe:

• Offers an opportunity for a female writer to not only write her experience as an extension and affirmation of the body but experience her writing experience as a rediscovery of the body through writing
• Writes about women for women, to do for other women what they cannot for themselves (emancipatory function of writing)
• Acknowledges the existence of "male" impregnable forces (such as the 'genius') and resist these (as dis or counter-logos) yet do not affirm their power by participating in their activity (writing to a 'male' power or validating these powers through writing serves as a creation of woman for her own 'containment')
• Replaces the concept of a universal "state of being" to a relative "being," the experience of the writer and her writing
• Serves a larger emancipatory function in not only freeing other women, but after breaking the male impregnable, refuses the sheer existence of male forces, leading to silencing of stratifying and exclusionary forces

As I mentioned in my thought paper, what makes feminist concepts of authorship different is the aim. Instead of internalizing the muses, waiting for inspiration from above, feminist is very present, at once of what she knows and also of what other women know to be experiential. Further, this differs from other concepts of authoring "what one knows," (the presence of the author as solitary in his creative genius) in its unselfishness. Instead of writing to the purpose of "this is," an aggressive transposition of the world's state, ecriture feminine does not concern itself with truth, correctness, or reliability of the information (whether or not she correctly embodied the 1920s flapper). It offers the ability to just be without anticipation of critique against an impenetrable genius standard.

I relate to this distinction myself. The place where Cixous mentions the female experience of writing in secret, writing only in part, not fully, in anticipation of fault, inefficiency, or lack of creativity. When held against a higher standard, we (in my mind, men and women) fall at the feet of genius. We resist writing in full force, as the looming male power (in this sense, publishing companies or educational institutions) may deem our writing (if we put all our effort into it) inappropriate or inconsequential. Instead of risk not only our writing but ourselves, we write half-heartedly or choose not to write at all, further perpetuating our female experience.

These seemingly unique feminist tenets strike a chord with me. Do they with you? Where are the limitations in this feminist interpretation?

Feb 08 thought paper

The Death of the Author or the Rejection of authors?

Charlotte Tschider
02/08/2005
RIPI

After reading our assignments for this week, one must consider the presence of literary form and example. Is it possible that the writing itself is just a combination of previous forms and concepts (which are, in turn, built upon those preceding, i.e. ______ is _____, which is ______, and that all goes back to Homer), or is the unique, artistic aspect of writing (which demands artificer for artifact, a necessary association) a superceding or rejection of form all-together?
In Barthes’ Death of the Author, he asserts that “writing is the destruction of every voice, of every point of origin. Writing is that neutral, composite, oblique space where our subject slips away, the negative where all identity is lost, starting with the very identity of the body writing.” In this option, the author slips away, allowing the only focus to fall on the reader, not necessarily to the point of reader-response criticism, but only to allow that “losing” the author rejects singular meaning, a “right” vs. “wrong” interpretation of reading. Later, Barthes, drawing on Vernant states that “thus is revealed the total existence of writing: a text is made of multiple writings, drawn from many cultures and entering into mutual relations of dialogue, parody, contestation, but there is on e place where this multiplicity is focused and that place is the reader, not, as was hiterto said, the author.” The reader here (as the author turns to scriptor, a mere utility for the thoughts, feelings, and multiplicity of the audience) bears the responsibility of asserting meaning, understanding duplicity (as in the Greek tragedies), and gaining from it a reflection of past experience. The scriptor here is only the tool of the audience, the art which is displayed informing life, not imitating it. In this sense, the romantic sense of the Author simply religating in the gifts and inspiration of the gods/God/muses falls away and leaves the audience/society in a dominant position.
I have to wonder how different this really is from other readings demonstrating the author as secondary (as Jeff has noted) to the only true Author, a heavenly being/s of some kind, informing the author and using him as a mouthpiece. Isn’t this just a shift in power? It seems as if society in general and the immediate audience are working in symphony to make the text itself not a mere reflection of previous writing/social values but rather to infuse their own feelings, values, understandings, and comprehension to ascribe meaning and relevance. This relates (I think dramatically) to rhetoric. In terms of the Aristotelian enthymeme, for example, the enthymeme requires audience belief/value/opinion to provide one aspect of the audience. The speaker (or scriptor in the text’s case) simply sets up the framework; the audience provides the persuasive/relevant aspect. In this case, the audience really becomes artistic, becomes creator, just as the reader becomes creator (of meaning) for the scriptor. Here, it seems that authorship and rhetoric go hand-in-hand, a reemergence of audience as Author, ascriber of meaning.

Feb 15 thought paper

Charlotte Tschider
02/15/2005
Thought paper

The “Laugh of the Medusa” demonstrates to me the connection between body and language, writing and gender, an important connection for the feminist movement. In Cixous reminds us of, in a sense, a Barthesian interpretation of self-making, though the weight here settles on the inventiveness of the female. Instead of reducing her meaning/importance, she reinforces it on the world.

Cixous first couples the body and writing in terms of secrecy:

Writing is for you, you are for you; your body is yours, take it. I know why you haven’t written. . . Because writing is at once high, too great for you, it’s reserved for the great—that is, for “great men”; and it’s “silly.” Besides, you’ve written a little, but in secret. And you punished yourself for writing, because you didn’t go all the way; or because you wrote, irresistibly, as when we would masturbate in secret, not to go further, but to attenuate the tension a bit. . . (Cixous 1525)

This self-creation and representation of the body through writing demonstrates the connection we’ve been reading thus far: the connection between the writing and the author or scriptor as inter-connected. No longer is the author the inspiration for the writing, nor is the novel interpretation solely from the author or from a higher being, the author/scriptor now is re-created through the writing as an act, the performative sense of “doing” into being.

However, the feminist interpretation of body/writing as one ends. The author here reinforces a powerful role: the woman is woman because she writes of woman and in a feminine way. As Cixous explains on 1528, “There always remains in woman that force which produces/is produced by the other—in particular, the other woman. In her, matrix, cradler. . . There is hidden and always ready in woman the source; the locus for the other.” In writing of woman, it not only empowers the writer but empowers the other woman, the woman with no voice. Power here holds an integral role in feminist interpretations of author—when the “great” author has at once been the “looming, great man,” singular in nature, and standing as an inpenetrable tower, the woman feels at once as if she is in the shadow. Feminist ecriture offers an opportunity for women to step out of the shadow, and by denying the existence of such a tower, rise to new heights themselves. Here, however, the author, while creating self and others through writing, still maintains and reinforces her powerful existence in life/body.

Feminism here allows the man and the woman to combine their sexualities through their writing, by becoming “bisexual.” At this point, it allows women to writing in a masculine way, men in a feminine way, and both as a combination. Here, writing still has gender, but combines it in such a way that the power structure is evened. No longer is the lower looming, but rather, writers are allowed the chance to interpret and explain both, intertwining writing. However, until that point, the woman must continue to write what she knows. Though the man can write the feminine, he alone does not even the power field; only the woman, in writing herself and other women can do this.

Romantic Authorship

I wrote a fairly extensive post on my blog regarding the relationship between Author, Text and World. It concerns W.B. Yeats perceptions of Blake and Shelley, which I am interested in on several levels. The point pertinent to this class is that the argument of Fichte cited by Woodmansee would have been abhorrent to Shelley.

I plan to write another post when I get the chance about "Death of the Author" and John Keats. The romantics, I think, were the first postmodernists.

Situation and Context, rewritten

I suppose this title doesn't necessarily bring to bear what I may talk about in this post (and I've always believed the title entry box should fall after the body entry, per HCI/usability/cognitive design/composition pedagogy, but I digress), but I thought I'd start with Krista and our discussion of situation and context in terms of distinction.

It seems that a rather crude distinction can be made in terms of paraphrasing attribution, "Logie says that the author has not changed over time," direct attribution, "Logie said that 'the author has not changed since Quintilian,'" and indirect attribution "according to many 19th century authors, the author and the text were inextricably connected" and outside "conditions" within an individual speech act. In all kinds of communication, it seems, that there are strings (using 'links' as a buzz word here doesn't get us where we want to be) connecting previous speech acts and positing future speech acts (anticipation).

Ex: In my novel, I have channeled, for example, Hemingway, Wittgenstein, Gorgias, and Anna Nicole Smith, and 19th century society as writing influences, characters, and representing cultural values. If I was writing poetry, the connection between Wittgenstein and myself would be very indirect. Maybe Wittegenstein's ideas shaped the way I express myself, but it is still my expression. Conversely, if I write a novel, I may use Anna Nicole Smith as a character, and amongst her drug-induced hazes, she will probably stand out as a "Anna Nicole Smith"-like character. The values and attitudes I introduce, for example, from a 1901 uneducated young male factory worker, as such might be recognizable. Here, the author seems to take the backseat to society or social characters driving. Though other areas of the novel might be wholly artistic, much like the poem, the novel allows a higher level of attributory existence.

In a research paper or philosophical work, the relationship between texts seems more direct and much farther on the end of attributory. I think that situation represents this "tension" between texts or between the novel and its attributory characters. In this sense, I think we can demarcate situation as existing as the attributory environment, whereas the "context" offers not only heteroglossia (voices, including several speech acts and actions) but also the general environment of interactions and feel for the author (kairos).

Switching gears, I thought I might wax philosophical on Derrida. I wonder if "time stamping" or "snap-shotting" a text's existence really does offer a structuralist interpretation, per se. Would we see Gorgias delivering his "Encomium to Helen" (of course, assuming this particular speech was not delivered according to a textual script) as structural? Whereas we assume the fixity of the text, it seems that authorial influence, situational influence, and contextual influence (what I think we can all lump into 'kairos') influencing the author in writing the text leaves its mark on the text at the moment the pen leaves the paper, so to speak. I think that this mediation between the presence of the Author and the existence of the Text, not this picture of, for example, the newest "ann rice" Novel [note intentional downplaying of the author] floating in a vacuum, but rather Ann Rice's signature splashed across the dust cover, novel swimming in a contained box of its own time-captured context, the Artifact of the artificer/s.

I don't think it's surprising here, as I've already mentioned kairos, to make a sweeping connection from Gorgias to Derrida. Because of kairos as a constant, ever-changing "time and due measure" (according to Kinneavy), it seems that the speech act itself (the encomium in total) also exists in its own time-captured context box. As Krista mentions in an earlier post, Gorgias' "Encomium" could clearly be recognized as Gorgias' encomium, and Gorgias probably saw himself as the original author. Regardless, individuals repeated his encomium, not necessarily word-for-word, but potentially with similar rhetorical forms or ear ticklers to make it recognizable or reminiscent of Gorgias' "Encomium."

Though this conception seems more readily accepted in oral cultures (the speech itself, as being a figment of a well-honed yet imperfect memory, changes each time its told), how does Gorgias personally giving the speech differ from a personal signature on a book? Are both and/or all structuralist? Does Ong's secondary orality fit in here somewhere? Let me know what you think...