Cherry 민지
Re: Focault's What is an Author and Barthes' Death of the Author #freedoms2017 What is the significance of the author's death in art education praxis? (Other than its implicating Ranciere and the perpetuation of the notion of authorship in academia vis-a-vis constant footnoting and referencing of the likes of him as being a clear demonstration of what Foucault posits is "author as principle of thrift in the proliferation of meaning" (Foucault in Aesthetics, Method, and Epistemology translation of "what is an author") which in turn makes real and palpable the inaccessibility and elitism of academic discourse that often have to do with people on the outside such as "urban youth" (code word for colored students by [white]* people on the outside afraid to talk about race) and artists, activists, and politicians. [*I'm referring to internalized 'whiteness' as well.. evident in the language choices of even POC academics.] There are a lot of fun things to pull from both articles and I will do so in the next weeks to come as I intend to reread the two articles to better articulate/respond to all that came up. But immediately, I am able to talk about what struck me most, which is the gap between philosophy/theory and real-life context and application. I value the "death of author" concept for its exaltation of The Idea. It's not the who, the self-made person, the romanticized artist, the stand-alone, the immortalized hero / tragic figure, that is important, but the words, the ideas they signify in and of themselves. When applying "death of author" concept to even our bodies/birth , ie the author of my body being two parents (or a sperm and egg), it may do two things: 1) decontextualize our bodies from its ancestral origins. 2) rupture the notion of exclusive nuclear family (structurally enforced by capitalism) and provide potential for an embrace of a specie-al-family, or even inter-special family. The Body, to me, is an Idea, as it was God's when God first thought human and created human. Bodies are living embodiments of ideas, just as words are, and when the Body lacks an author (specific mom, dad), the Body then begins to represent itself as itself (as with words without author). And what that Body is as an idea is anybody's guess, but the most prevalent Idea of Body (given the most popular world religions) is the Body as Holy, Body as Dirt, Body as Idea of God, Body as Image of God. In this respect, Body without author(s) become God. If we begin to view our Bodies as such, Body is embodiment of Love (for God is Love) and this postulates the notion of universal compassion, which ruptures the modern notion of nuclear family in all its competitiveness, preferential status, compartmentalization, etc (for nuclear family unit rose in within the capitalist economic model that promotes survival of the fittest). The flip-side of Body as God is Body-with-no-God, or godlessness. This is effectively the same as number 1, in that body-without-author de-contextualizes our bodies from its ancestral origins. This decontextualization of our bodies in this age of post-colonial diaspora is violent. In the same way to kill the author when it comes to recognizing voices of POC, womyn, LGBTQi, immigrants, non-colonial language speaking worlds and other marginalized peoples is violence. "death of author" is an ideology useful for metaphorical application and to propose as end goal in the revolution, particularly in America where "independence" means having a giant Ego, which enacts forms of violence we do unto others and ourselves. The romanticization of the writer in isolation and artist alone in suffering is not inspiring but dangerous in an era where communication, collaboration, and sharing resources are the only ways to build resistance. The "death of author" renders the current status and position of 'writer' and 'artist' obsolete and makes possible for everyone to act a writer and artist. Killing the author makes possible greater interconnectivity on the basis of ideas alone, and because no Author means no principle authority thrifting the proliferation of meaning. However, in practice we're not there yet. Making visible marginalized communities and their stories relies on the existing principles of authorship. What ultimately looks like a fair practice towards social justice in Education and otherwise TO ME is selectively murdering certain authors AND SIMULTANEOUSLY selectively making visible certain authors. This means: a) making typical canonical white-male "authors" of literature and philosophy invisible by emphasizing the idea content of their writing. This does not mean excluding or ignoring white man's contributions but instead of emphasizing importance of the who, emphasizing whatever important idea is being extrapolated for understanding and analysis. b) reading and re-contextualizing these ideas as re-imagined and responded-to by victims of the British empire. EXAMPLE: The Japanese took western philosophy and ran with it. By that I mean in less than 100 years, Japan transformed itself COMPLETELY into a formidable enemy of Western imperial forces, and her intellectuals accomplished phenomenal work: not only was everything possible translated from german, french, italian, etc to learn from, but much was contributed in addition to and because of this exchange. How come no one is reading the perspectives of the colonized on colonizer's ideas? My favorite is Keiji Nishitani's Religion and Nothingness , an original piece that incorporates / responds to western ideas/concepts of nihilism, existentialism, religion, etc. c) exploring non-white* authors. (non-white here means anything beyond the scope of white, hetero-patriarchal, capitalist privilege).
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