yes it is a reference to Foucault, and obviously a “hack” of the author-function. The disowning-function has obviously no pretense of being systematic, it is more of a lens, a heuristic device than something that should be seen in dialectical contrast to the author-function.

It is important to note that even though Foucault addresses bourgeois authorship he never really discusses the relationship between authors and publishers, the contract, and the political economy of the signature. What matters for him is that the name of the author serves to stabilize the otherwise uncontrollable proliferation of discourse by creating some unities that help literary critics (as well as the government) to tame the text, trace it to someone, find a grounding origin. In actual fact, the need of attributing a text or a statement to a person is not much a cultural need (it never was until the eighteenth century) but a need of the modern publishing industry. This industry has to rely on the alibi of protecting an author’s rights in order to create artificial scarcities around a product (the book) whose marginal costs tend in fact to zero.

Now, to answer your question. For me the alternative to the current authorial system is a post-capitalist (more than post-humanist) system, one in which the production of knowledge (as well as any other form of production) is decoupled from exchange value and the money-form. I do not write because I need to get paid but because I like it and because it contributes to a pool of common knowledge from which I constantly draw. (This may apply also to non-strictly cognitive activities). From this angle, whether what I contribute is read by 10 or 1 million people is absolutely irrelevant as everything contributes to the commons, which needs to be protected from private appropriation. Michel Bauwens talks about the importance of protecting the commons of “produsing communities” in this post http://www.re-public.gr/en/?p=261. Hope this helps answering at least some of your questions.

ciao,
Marco

No doubt my questions will reveal that I’ve just started reading this blog. I hope you can bring me up to speed. It’s a provocative post…

A couple of points of clarification: I’m afraid I don’t understand how the disowning-function transcends the author function (I’m assuming this is a reference to Foucault?). Doesn’t it ultimately re-inscribe it by itself being a well-established function — witness attributions to AS? Perhaps I’m missing something?

Also, there seems to be a tension — at least if we think the ideas expressed in the post via the attention economy — around the idea that best-selling authors receive a greater piece of the pie (which you seem to be intimating is a bad thing?) and that social network economies massage “hot” messages through multiple iterations that score them attention/cred…even if it happens inside out, as in the case of the KC reference. Both depend on market share…it’s Social Darwinism through and through.

So my question is: What’s the alternative to the existing authorial system and how does it attend to flesh-and-blood authors? There’s no doubt that media plays a huge role in how “stuff” is disseminated and received. But someone has to do the work… How might a post-humanist approach to authorship accommodate this “reality”?

Hope this makes sense? Thoughts?

xomox