Theory! Authors! Aliens!

1. Theory! Authors! Aliens!

2. Theory=? • Abstract • Concepts • Where opinions come from

3. RITUALS

5. Why use it? • intervening in otherwise inaccessible debates and discourses

6. Where do we learn opinions?

7. Why is School Important? • Science • Math • Writing • Reading

8. What is an Author? • “author” can be a verb as well as a noun, and that even the noun names a social action • how someone who authors becomes an author (or how “author” changes from a verb to a noun) is intimately tied to the question of canonicity • Eg. James Joyce vs Stephen King- which one will most likely be studied at university?

9. Where is Authorship everyday? • Constitution • Patent Laws • Journalism • Court Cases-> “Interpreting the Law & intentions of its creators”

10. Author/Authority • authorship is tied intimately to authority

11. Do meanings or readings cancel Each other out? Who is the author here?

12. Assumptions: • Even if we don’t know a thing about a text’s author, the notion that a piece has an author—that someone, somewhere originally had this experience, thought this thing committed it to writing—allows the soothing conclusion that it means something, even if we don’t quite know what • : If its author were here, he or she could tell us what the text means, and even if we have no access to the author, the very fact that a work has an “author” behind it seems to guarantee meaningfulness

13. Once the author’s privilege has been debunked, meaning is then no longer found but rather produced • question we ask of the text is no longer “what did the author really mean?” but rather “how does this text produce meanings?”

14. Occupy WallStreet • First reactions to it & now. What did you think then and now? • What methods did they use to communicate & convey message? • Think about to typical definition of author. Does it apply here? Why or Why not? • Foucault postulated that “in every society the production of discourse is at once controlled, selected, organized and distributed according to a certain number of procedures, whose role is to avert its powers and its dangers” (216). So how exactly is discourse “powerful,” and how might it possibly be construed as “dangerous”? How is that seen in Occupy? Or the coverage of Occupy? • How do labels like “political” or “unpatriotic” or “emotional,” when attached to discourse, serve to contain its effects? What labels were given to Occupy? Which do you think serve? • What ultimately did authorship do to authority in Occupy? How does this effect change?