Is the author the locus of meaning as implied by Descartes famous quote? I think not, because to be the primary and true source of the meaning of a text, would imply that the self is singular and constant. The “I” who writes these words now is no longer the “I” of this time yesterday before the lecture and the additional readings were read. The self is a fluid entity created from experience and time, because my body exists on a linear plane of existence I can no longer be the same person that I was yesterday, or last year or ten years previous, I am made by the accumulation of my experiences. My sense of self is also defined by the interaction between my body and my mind. Nine years ago, I was an obese person, and I viewed the world from the discourses, both internal and external about what an obese person is and how they should be in the world. Today I am writing as a person of healthy weight, I have learnt to change my internal dialogue, I have changed the way that I interact with the world, and the world has changed its discourse about how I should be treated. In this way, Damasio’s notion of bodily experience and reflective self, creating a “core self,” a fluid and changeable self seems appropriate to my understanding of subjectivity.
Also crucial to my understanding of my creative self Freud’s notion of consciousness and unconsciousness, as a my conscious mind is able to collect and collate texts and information from the world, but it is my unconscious mind, that sorts and orders these experiences into a cohesive and new text. My conscious mind can regurgitate “facts” but it is the unconscious, the part of me which I have no active control over which is able to create a new text from pre-existent facts. The most important thing to remember, which is why I refute the notion of author as centre of meaning, is that I do not create a text in a vacuum.
To be a “Scriptor” of a text rather than an “Author” who can be held up as the giver of meaning, is to place the text at the centre, the text and the texts which feed the meaning it has more validity, and more importance than the subsequent views of the “Author” whose name graces the by line. To be an “Author” is to place the views and experiences of the personality of the writer above the written text. The desire to locate the meaning and triggers of the text within the experience and attitudes of the body which existed in a temporal reality is done in an effort to limit the power of a text. Dangerous ideas, which can be ascribed to an “Author” who has a temporal body, are much easier to contain than ideas created by a “Scriptor”, whose insists upon that the primacy of the text and the importance of the reader creating meaning through not only the words in that text, but their knowledge of other texts and ideas. As the “Author” of this text, I may be forced to renounce it, defend it, or explain it. As a “Scriptor,” I am presenting you the reader with a text which can never have any orthodoxy, as no two readers will bring the same subjectivity to it. As a “Scriptor,” I am free in a way that the “Author” self never can be: The text, not I, is where meaning is held.
Also crucial to my understanding of my creative self Freud’s notion of consciousness and unconsciousness, as a my conscious mind is able to collect and collate texts and information from the world, but it is my unconscious mind, that sorts and orders these experiences into a cohesive and new text. My conscious mind can regurgitate “facts” but it is the unconscious, the part of me which I have no active control over which is able to create a new text from pre-existent facts. The most important thing to remember, which is why I refute the notion of author as centre of meaning, is that I do not create a text in a vacuum.
To be a “Scriptor” of a text rather than an “Author” who can be held up as the giver of meaning, is to place the text at the centre, the text and the texts which feed the meaning it has more validity, and more importance than the subsequent views of the “Author” whose name graces the by line. To be an “Author” is to place the views and experiences of the personality of the writer above the written text. The desire to locate the meaning and triggers of the text within the experience and attitudes of the body which existed in a temporal reality is done in an effort to limit the power of a text. Dangerous ideas, which can be ascribed to an “Author” who has a temporal body, are much easier to contain than ideas created by a “Scriptor”, whose insists upon that the primacy of the text and the importance of the reader creating meaning through not only the words in that text, but their knowledge of other texts and ideas. As the “Author” of this text, I may be forced to renounce it, defend it, or explain it. As a “Scriptor,” I am presenting you the reader with a text which can never have any orthodoxy, as no two readers will bring the same subjectivity to it. As a “Scriptor,” I am free in a way that the “Author” self never can be: The text, not I, is where meaning is held.