Emerging Politics of Authorship: Recovering Collectivity, Negotiating the Risk

This article examines authorship as a socially embedded process by challenging Western notions of the autonomous creative genius. It considers social interactions between various agents in the field of literary production which in turn recovers the collective nature of modern authorship. Far from le...

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Main Author: Andrea Pisac
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: University of Zadar 2011-12-01
Series:[sic]
Online Access:http://www.sic-journal.org/ArticleView.aspx?aid=122
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author Andrea Pisac
author_facet Andrea Pisac
author_sort Andrea Pisac
collection DOAJ
description This article examines authorship as a socially embedded process by challenging Western notions of the autonomous creative genius. It considers social interactions between various agents in the field of literary production which in turn recovers the collective nature of modern authorship. Far from leaving it unexamined, it further contextualises authorial collectivity and its role in the emerging model of authorship. Questions and arguments raised in this article are informed by the ethnographic data collected during my doctoral research focusing on the reception of post-1990s ex-Yugoslav literature on the UK book market. Such ethnographic approach to literary translations – i.e. the micro-level analysis of social interactions that ‘create’ literature – demonstrated how the author is ‘created’ in the communication of two literary systems through linguistic translation as well as re-translations of symbolic and social capitals. My research was concerned with analysing the ‘backstage’ of the publishing industry – informal networks and international literary geopolitics – which all contributed to debunking the myth of the autonomous creative genius. However, instead of retracing my steps, this article outlines new avenues and questions that such analysis has opened up. One such question is how new technologies are (re)constructing and (re)positioning the role of the author.
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spelling doaj-art-49f12d96fbf340728e2372d3077ecbcc2025-08-20T03:16:31ZengUniversity of Zadar[sic]1847-77552011-12-012110.15291/sic/1.2.lc.1122Emerging Politics of Authorship: Recovering Collectivity, Negotiating the RiskAndrea PisacThis article examines authorship as a socially embedded process by challenging Western notions of the autonomous creative genius. It considers social interactions between various agents in the field of literary production which in turn recovers the collective nature of modern authorship. Far from leaving it unexamined, it further contextualises authorial collectivity and its role in the emerging model of authorship. Questions and arguments raised in this article are informed by the ethnographic data collected during my doctoral research focusing on the reception of post-1990s ex-Yugoslav literature on the UK book market. Such ethnographic approach to literary translations – i.e. the micro-level analysis of social interactions that ‘create’ literature – demonstrated how the author is ‘created’ in the communication of two literary systems through linguistic translation as well as re-translations of symbolic and social capitals. My research was concerned with analysing the ‘backstage’ of the publishing industry – informal networks and international literary geopolitics – which all contributed to debunking the myth of the autonomous creative genius. However, instead of retracing my steps, this article outlines new avenues and questions that such analysis has opened up. One such question is how new technologies are (re)constructing and (re)positioning the role of the author.http://www.sic-journal.org/ArticleView.aspx?aid=122
spellingShingle Andrea Pisac
Emerging Politics of Authorship: Recovering Collectivity, Negotiating the Risk
[sic]
title Emerging Politics of Authorship: Recovering Collectivity, Negotiating the Risk
title_full Emerging Politics of Authorship: Recovering Collectivity, Negotiating the Risk
title_fullStr Emerging Politics of Authorship: Recovering Collectivity, Negotiating the Risk
title_full_unstemmed Emerging Politics of Authorship: Recovering Collectivity, Negotiating the Risk
title_short Emerging Politics of Authorship: Recovering Collectivity, Negotiating the Risk
title_sort emerging politics of authorship recovering collectivity negotiating the risk
url http://www.sic-journal.org/ArticleView.aspx?aid=122
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