Abstract
The purpose of this paper is to examine the concept of authorship with a focus on three defining moments: the late 1960s, the early 1990s, and our current moment. We will employ a comparative and interdisciplinary approach to emphasize the hybrid nature of the term as it intersects various fields. Authorship theories still generally work under a semiotic or poststructuralist model. Consequently, our argument is that a materialist and, hence, post-semiotic understanding of the economic and social relationships of the author necessarily require conceptual frameworks that help decipher the elements or, better yet, the ecology (i.e. the coexistence and interdependent functioning) of technological mediation and ideological refraction. Approaching the question of authorship today, in a global and digital world, requires moving beyond the post-semiotic mindset or the structuralist/poststructuralist frameworks of Jacques Derrida, Roland Barthes, and S. Burke, who were mainly concerned either with the death of the author, the decentralization of meaning, or, conversely, the ethics of localized authorship. In the digital age, however, where media, communication, and production are increasingly collaborative, fluid, and distributed, authorship takes on new dimensions. Our paper examines, therefore, how authorship navigates the tensions between cultural, social, economic, and political extremes. It further explains how a contemporary conceptualization of authorship undermines both data-driven neoliberal logics and new versions of fascism through its siding with both post-Lacanian conceptualizations of subjectivity and the decolonizing tactics of the queer/intersectional left. Finally, the paper situates the logistics of global authorship within the framework of world-systems analysis.
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
KEYWORDS
Post-authorship, World-apparatus, Authorial Commodities, Algorithmic Author
