tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5145200404704322540.post1056869720500441414..comments2023-10-11T06:50:10.494-04:00Comments on The Glass-Bottom Blog: The Lit-Crit Defense of GodZedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10623092831367861959noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5145200404704322540.post-43982450157052847662009-05-20T14:21:58.622-04:002009-05-20T14:21:58.622-04:00I should add that I believe this is what Fish is d...I should add that I believe this is what Fish is doing because he made some very similar arguments during the Sokal affair.Zedhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10623092831367861959noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5145200404704322540.post-19335347080760285382009-05-20T14:05:21.157-04:002009-05-20T14:05:21.157-04:00Authorship is a "theory-laden" concept that's even...Authorship is a "theory-laden" concept that's even meaningful only in a model of creation in which authors are important; i.e. in which the author "causes" the book to happen. (One doesn't credit typesetters with "creating" books. However, when evaluating a 17th cent edition the identity of the typesetter might matter. Similarly if you think the Zeitgeist creates books, the author still potentially matters for some scholarly purposes.) This argument translates to something analogous re science and god; the laws of nature are information about typesetting, which have little to do with the "true" causation of events. My sense is that Fish is tacitly invoking Kuhn's notion of paradigm shifts, along the lines above, to connect Barthes to Eagleton.Zedhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10623092831367861959noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5145200404704322540.post-35560593784875811822009-05-19T23:54:07.839-04:002009-05-19T23:54:07.839-04:00that the idea of the individual author is a myth t...<I>that the idea of the individual author is a myth that emerges alongside the valorization of property and property rights so central to Enlightenment thought?</I>My understanding of the basic attitude (of the two mentioned; not Fish) diverges here; it is not the <I>idea</I> of the author, per se, that matters, so much as the importance of that idea. (And the Enlightenment valorization, etc., could lead to an exaggerated importance). Moreover, the claim may be more along the lines of a basic interrogation as to the importance of identifying a particular poem (not necessarily arriving at the conclusion "none"). Of course this observation would not be unique to "post-structuralists" but I do not think many would make the claim that this to be the case (but likely could make a case that its political ramifications this time are different).zbshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14795831846754083167noreply@blogger.com