Week+6+Discussion+Questions

__Chapter 8 Author__

1. On page 111, Pease states that due to a fundamental division in the cultural realm, “the author seemed an effect of the critic’s interpretation rather than the cause of the work.” Accordingly, authority seems to shift from producer (author) to the recipient (literary critic). In times of Media 2.0 and blogging, in how far is this development, say, ‘radicalised’?  2. In the scenarios in which an "auctor" or "genius" held a deferential position in meaning-making, how is it at all possible that these interpretive paragons could have been so separated from the cultural influences affecting authors and readers? If they were so highly regarded, what happened when they changed their minds?

3. In the seemingly hierarchical identification, why is the literary critic able to create meaning within works of culture/politics/author as opposed to the author? Wouldnt their meaning just be another authorial one to disregard? in short, what makes the critic so great?

4. Jean Baudrillard identifies a concept of "simulacra." To put it simply, this is a copy without an original, or a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy...etc. The idea is that the original is SO original that it doesn't even exist in its purest form anymore. Instead, it is a copy of a copy... that gets modified slightly over time. Think of it in terms of taking a picture of an event. That event was the original and real. The color picture was the first copy. The color picture is copied into a black and white form onto paper. That is the second copy. That black and white copy was copied and was now lighter shades of gray. That is the third copy. Eventually, the copy fades and no one remembers the original, real event: only the interpretation represented by the gray, faded copy of the picture. New ideas can then be formed from that copy. Keeping this in mind, is the AUTHOR ever authoring a real, original idea? Is what the author creates based on his/her own original thoughts or is it some form of simulacra from ideas that were already 'out there' [and now they are unintentionally recreating these ideas?]

__Chapter 10 Intention__

1. In most cases, there is usually SOME form of intent by the author when he/she is writing. There is a reason why the author wanted to write the piece. If the piece is written well, then most readers will probably understand the overall intent even if they are simply interpreting it through their own subjectivity and experience. When an author is writing, do you think that there are other intentions that he/she might have, subconsciously, that appear in their writing even though they had no conscious intent of having those intentions represented?

2. If Hirsch’s idea of ‘objective interpretation’, which refers to reconstructing the speaker’s subjectivity, aims at achieving the most probable, instead of any possible, interpretation of a text, is this concept still of any use when dealing with probability that can never be confirmed to be ‘true’? Further, think about the discussion we had about texts with ambiguous meanings and their place in the literary canon. Couldn’t this also be useful when discussing intention, for intention is not necessarily single-directional?  3. How does Patterson's idea that "much of the anti-intentionalism of the past four decades had its origin in local circumstances" work in regards to our previous discussions of subjectivity, difference, and agency?

4. What does Patterson mean by "regulation" and "deregulation" in a literary or critical sense?

5. Is it possible for ART to be accidental? what does accident have on intention? would reader(audience) interpretation count as accidental in the artists processes?