Karlyn Campbell's essay Agency: Promiscuous and Protean is loaded with a lot of the issues we raised today about agency: who has agency, what are the roles of the agents of writer, reader, and text, who has authority, and more. There's a lot in Campbell that still needs to be unpacked (50 minutes isn't very long to discuss all of these heavy texts!), and a lot that I haven't really processed fully yet. One of these issues that I still have some questions about is the issue of who is 'allowed' to be an author, and who decides that allowance.
On page 3 of her essay, Campbell states that "agency is constrained by externals, by the community that confers identities related to gender, race, class, and the like on its members and by doing so determines not only what is considered to be 'true,' but also who can speak and with what force" (3). She then complicates this notion by introducing Louis Althusser's concept of interpellation, a process in which the individual is created as the subject through dominant ideologies. Through interpellation, then, the individual is constructed to a certain extent by the society in which she lives- whether or not she chooses to be. So, our agency is limited/shaped by the categories we are assigned by our category-obsessed culture. This relates well to Gilbert and Gubar's article about female authors, as these authors are interpellated as females, giving rise to a whole set of assumptions based on how our culture understands the very category of 'woman' (which in itself is problematic on multiple levels!). So, Campbell can help to answer several of our questions:
-Can you choose to be constructed?
--I think that you can choose to be constructed in the sense that you, as a reader, can choose to fictionalize yourself as the author's intended audience, or not. BUT- you are ALWAYS constructed at least to a certain extent just by being a member of society.
-Who can be an author?
--According to Campbell, it is the community who 'decides' the LEGITIMACY of an author- whether or not their text is considered to be 'true,' and the legitimacy of the speaker herself. BUT, this cannot be universal, because even speakers/writers who are seem as ILLEGITIMATE authors can break through these presuppositions and create meaningful text that provoke the community to evolve its notions of legitimacy. This can be seen in the work of such historically disenfranchised groups as women and minority writers who have broken through the socially imposed boundaries containing them.
These are just a few of my thoughts on Campbell... Id love to hear what others think about these issues, as they are definitely complex and multi-layered.
In Campbell's "Agency: Promiscuity and Protean" the question of "Who can be an author" is addressed in quite some depth. As Blair mentions above, the legitimacy of the writer or author is decided by the audience, or community. However, within the question of "Who can be an author" there lie many other issues in relation to Agent/cy.
ReplyDeleteWhen we compared the Gilber and Gubar and Campbell texts on Friday, we concluded that agency is a paradox due to the fact that agencies can be assigned to both the reader (or Campbell's audience) and the writer. With this in mind, and as Blair points out, the audience assigning writers with legitimacy is not the sole deciding factor in answering the question of "Who can be an author." As seen from the Gilbert and Gubar essay, "illegitimate" writers such as Dickinson themselves have agency in overcoming the anxiety of authorship in their writing. Thus, the audience is not the sole factor in determining who can be an author.
Coming back to the original question and considering the past essays we have encountered, Agent/cy can and must be approached from a variety of different angles. In discussing "Who can be an author" one must consider that agency relies on its interpreters. While this question is a beneficial one to ponder, it is also important to remember that an author can be decided and defined in a variety of ways and through multiple different scopes. Both the audience and the writer have the ability to decide agency in relation to authorship.
Blair and Dan, what a useful exchange.
ReplyDeleteYes, this reinforces the idea that "authorship" can be, and has been, determined by several factors. Some of those factors are concrete and pragmatic, like social conventions, taboos, expectations, material needs, etc. Some of them are more abstract, like our 21st-century thoughts (as we look back at these texts) on who we think *can* be the author and why.
So in other words, "authorship" isn't a wholly stable term either!
Oh, darn.
:)
-Prof. Graban