Temptation, trash and
trust:
the authorship and
authority of digital texts
Siân Bayne
University of Edinburgh
“This Grave contains all
that was mortal, of a
Young English Poet, who
on his Death Bed, in the
Bitterness of his heart, at
the Malicious Power of his
enemies, desired these
words to be Engraven on
his Tomb Stone: Here lies
One Whose Name was writ
in Water.”
themes
- the changing quality of authorship
- the distancing of author from text
- through textual mutability
- through the shift to the reader
- collective, marginal, anonymous
- the perceptions of teachers and learners
content
- digital forms
- the ‘author function’
- the ‘analogue’ and ‘digital’
author
- learners, teachers and
digital text
Some digital forms
- hypertexts and wikis
- discussion boards and email
- bots, blogs and webfeeds
Hypertexts and wikis
Hypertext: “the paradigm of the digital author”
(Poster, 2001)
“If [the texts of the digital age] have no readily identifiable
author(s), who will receive the research points?”
(‘This is a test’, 1999)
“In this assignment, we have decided to espouse the wiki
way… We cannot guarantee that the references we provide
are the ones that link to the real author of the material
borrowed… So it goes with wikis that content sharing is
more valued than accurate authorship.”
(Paterson and Lange, 2005)
Discussion boards and email
“The information transmitted is the property of
the University of Paisley and is intended only for
the person or entity to which it is addressed….
Any review, retransmission, dissemination and
other use of…this information by persons or
entities other than the intended recipient is
prohibited. If you received this in error, please
contact the sender immediately and delete the
material from any computer.”
(personal communication)
Bots, blogs and webfeeds
“‘And how are we this evening?’ my
evil twin wheezed at someone.
‘Hunky dory?’ (I have never used
those words in my life. This was a
shocking thing to see, even coming
out of my clone’s mouth.)
‘All life nominal?’ this ‘quittner’
poseur queried, nonsensically.
At another point, my clone said: ‘1
n33d warezzz.’” (Quittner, 1995)
Foucault: the author function
- the author as a “function of discourse”
- a “classificatory function” permitting us
to “group together a certain number of
texts”
(Foucault, 1977)
- author function operates ideologically
to “impede the free circulation, the
free manipulation, the free
composition, decomposition, and
recomposition of fiction”
(Foucault, 1977)
- certain texts are “endowed
with the author function”
- novels, text books,
monographs, poems
- others are not
- private letters,
public notices, graffiti,
adverts, emails
“All discourses, whatever their status, form, value, and
whatever the treatment to which they will be
subjected, would then develop in the anonymity of a
murmur. We would no longer hear the questions that
have been rehashed for so long: ‘Who really spoke? Is it
really he and not someone else? With what authenticity
or originality? And what part of his deepest self did he
express in his discourse?’
“Instead, there would be other questions, like these:
‘What are the modes of existence of this discourse?
Where has it been used, how can it circulate, and who
can appropriate it for himself? What are the places in it
where there is room for possible subjects? Who can
assume these various subject-functions?’
“And behind all these questions, we would hear hardly
anything but the stirring of an indifference: ‘What
difference does it make who is speaking?’”
(Foucault, 1977)
Poster: analogue and digital authors
- author function
- print technology
- ‘analogue’ author
- post-author ‘utopia’
- digital, networked text
- ‘digital’ author
Learners, teachers and
digitally-authored text
- subversive
- untrustworthy
- outside
- trust
- trash
- temptation
Trust
I never know what’s authentic off the net you know
what I mean because although it could be to do with
the subject, how real is that? Who put it on? There’s
sometimes if there’s no author or nothing, I could be
using it and the information could be false. So I tend to
be wary.
You trust a book more?
Yeah.
Why?
Just because the author’s there, it’s been written by a
specific author, it tells you in the book, it tells you in
the front. It’s been published so therefore it’s real. For
instance I mean, it was a site it was for Japanese and
the rubbish that was on about all the different concepts
and they weren’t true they were completely the
opposite from what the books were. And we had been
warned against it but I could see why when I went into
it, so I’m quite doubtful of using it for information
unless it’s got an author or is a government body or a
uni or you know an educational building kind of thing. I
tend not to use it I must admit.
Heather
If you had to choose a medium you felt happiest using
as a teacher or a learner, what would it be?
Books.
Can you say why?
Because, it’s so difficult to answer, because um, you
know where you are. You know I suppose because it’s
got levels of authority doesn’t it, a book, it’s got sort of
the publisher and the printer and the reviewer and and
the author, so you have sort of levels of authority like
you can tell if the book’s worth reading by the
publisher even, that kind of thing. And, just because of
the breadth of what you can get in books on certain
subjects, you just can’t get anywhere else without
doing empirical research. And I suppose I would trust
my own empirical research much more than I would
trust a book but em I don’t have time [laughs] to
research everything! Yeah so yeah, a book.
Diane
Trash
And d’you trust what you find on there? D’you think it’s
reliable information?
Uh yeah, I’m very trusting so I generally trust it, I know
I probably shouldn’t, but I’ve tended to sort of become
more aware at university that you have to look at web
sites where it’s coming from, what site it’s coming from
the article or document or whatever, where it’s come
from and sort of know whether if it’s come from a
trashy little site, it could be just one person’s opinion
whereas if it came from say like Guardian Unlimited
then it’s much more prestigious and respected. So.
Marina
I don’t trust the accuracy and the um respectability if
you like of material published online. I know that there
is some refereed stuff particularly journals that are
made available online and that kind of thing which are
useful, but when people are just publishing their ideas
up, or publishing undergraduate or postgrad essays then
I think that has to be treated with caution.
Lisa
Temptation
You have to be smart about going on the internet
what’s education and what’s just trash, ‘cos not
everything on the internet is educational. So you have
to be careful.
Have you had any experiences of that?
O sure you know, you go in there and you type in the
keyword and uh things will come up that are
educational, things will come up that are government
based, which is still educational obviously, but then
you’ve got your, your just BS web pages say that I
could’ve gone on there and say ‘I’m going to make up
an internet page and put all my papers in there’ and
though it may be educational what I’m saying may not
always be true.
So you have to be really careful what you use, yeah,
you know there’s loads of web pages where they may
look educational but once you go into them you see
them and they’re not, you just have to back away, and
maybe they’re tempting to use them ‘cos they may say
certain things that you want to say, but you just like
stay away from them. It’s like, candy when you’re on a
diet! [laughs]
Nancy
And the information’s not reliable you know, I mean
you can go to a web site, you just trust this web site it
could be any idiot, it could be like, I could’ve done it!
You know it’s that whole I could’ve sat there and just
made it all up, like, and whereas like you wouldn’t get
that in the library, it’s all checked and verified.
Alec
Conclusions
an ‘analogue’ paradigm concerned with:
– the inauthenticity of the digital text
– the anonymity or ambiguity of its author
– the disappearance of its legitimating institutions
yet also with ‘digital’ questions:
–
–
–
–
–
the patterns of circulation
the forms of digital text
who can appropriate it
its places of use
the position of the subject in relation to it
authorial absence
– rubbish, trash, bullshit
authorial presence
- accuracy, respectability,
authority, authenticity,
truth, prestige
“What difference does it make who is speaking?”
“I just think it’s not really as brilliant as it’s made out
to be, there’s so much out there that you don’t know
whether it’s actually true or who wrote it or am I ever
going to find it again?”
Des