"You're such a Kohl et al!" Ha sorry I just couldn't resist...dumb dumb dumb I know.
The articles by Johnson-Eilola and Kohl et al were a great pairing; one dealing with where text comes from and how it is received, perceived, and integrated, while the other deals with "a freely expandable collection of interlinked 'Web' pages" (Kohl et al 2). But in accordance to Johnson-Eilola, "we live in a time of contradiction and contingency" so we delight in this delicious parable of articles. It's funny to think about the history of certain discourses, certain words, and certain influences; what reserved collection of thoughts did I have to phrase that, and this, (and these) words? Much like one of the first articles we read for this class dealing with the originality of text, and how there really is no original text, the Johnson-Eilola article delves and then expounds on that issue. Writing an "original" piece seems to be an insurmountable task to writers living in the world we do today, moreover, academic writing is in such a rubric that the chance for a truly "original piece is nearly non-existent. For me, music seems to be in the same category of being hard-pressed to create a piece that is truly original. You hear so many people saying that with five or ten chords you can play nearly any song on the guitar; unearthing the question if music and writing can be more closely linked than they all ready are? Is there five or ten steps that each writer can use to write almost any piece of discourse? Can altering those steps bring the ability to the writer to create vastly different sounding discourses? I pose that question to all of you: What steps in writing would take the place of chords to a guitar to music? Here is a video of singer/songwriter David Gray talking about his writing process for his acclaimed music.
I really like your questions about what is "original" work and what isn't. Is any work ever genuinely original? Hasn't all work, even unintentionally, originated from some collective unconscious? Your post made me think about our class discussion about the death of the author. If no work is ever "original," I don't believe an author can ever die. Their work can live on forever and be reciprocated and expanded upon by other authors. This is really interesting to think about, especially in its relation to music.
ReplyDeleteDepends on what your definition of an author is. Is it the person who created the original piece, and only that? Could we say that a person is still an 'author' after their work has been re-worked and edited to the point that it bears little resemblance to the original?
ReplyDeleteThis problem came up for me in our intertextuality readings earlier this semester in addition to the current ones. As a writer, I don't want the 'death of the author'. After all, we write things, don't we? So what does that make us if we can't be authors? For me, although texts are by nature derivative, that doesn't mean that they also cannot be creative, innovative, and completely new. Every person has a unique style that creates a document that will be different, even when using the same information as another person.
Five steps to create any discourse... hmm... let's see.... maybe: invention, arrangement, style, memory, delivery. Oh snap! That was rhetorics right there. (I'm still not sure how memory fits in writing, though)
ReplyDeletehaha killed it!
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