Representation in Self Portraiture This is a blog to keep track of my dissertation research and to help develop ideas in an organised manner.

 Photography + Aesthetics - Peter Wollen

p9
"Most discussions of photography centres around the commonplace fact that it provides information about the appearance of objects and events in the world."
2 related preoccupations:
     -What is the connection between art and information? How can photography be an art if it is tied to the automatic production of informtation?
   
     -What is the connection between knowledge and information? How can photography produce knowledge if it is tied to the registration of momentary appearances?

"This is a problem whether you beleive that knowledge reflects an essence behind or within appearances or whether you believe it to be a necessary displacement from appearances to a distinct order of discourse, symbolic rather than imaginary or ironic."

     -What is the connection between knowledge and art?

This article shall hold this question in suspense, assumes the answer will be derived by discussion of the first two questions.

p10
painting responded to photography by embracing a Kantian perspective.
Pictorialist photographer disputes

p16
"Underlying problem was ow to establish a distinct identity for photography without blurring the line with painting, etching or other established media, on the one hand, and on the other, without falling back into photography of record."

 p20
"One of the most interesting of theses in Susan Sontag's book ON Photography is her description of how recent American photography has displayed a surrealist taste for the obsolete, marginal and bizarre."

p22-23
"Benjamin of course, was searching for a way in which photography might produce knowledge as well as become an art."










Simon Johnson
www.thephilosophicalphotographer.co.uk

Article:

Artists mythologies and media genius, madness and art history, in: Screen XXI/3, 1980, pp. 57–96

Crucial questions have not been posed about how art history works to exclude from its fields of discourse history, class, ideology, to produce an ideological, 'pure' space for something called 'art', p57

This article is prim- arily an account of the dominance of the ideologies of art history across a wide and extended field of cultural discourse, sites of cultural consumption and areas of cultural practice. p58
I shall concentrate on the central constructions of art and the artist produced by art history and secured by its hegemonic role throughout this network. The prime area of attention is the figure of the artist. p58
This core, against which all attempts to investigate modes and systems of representation and historical conditions of production (ie a social history of art) break, is signified by the most typical discursive forms of art historical research and writing - the mono- graph (a study of the artist's life and work), and the catalogue raisonne (the collection of the complete oeuvre of the artist whose coherence as an individual creator is produced by assembling all of his or (rarely) her work in an expressive totality) p58
But there is more to this than collecting diverse fragments in order to unite them by a designated author, a category problematised and analys- ed by Foucault... p58

The subject constructed from the art work is then posited as the exclusive source of meaning — ie, of 'art', and the effect of this is to remove 'art' from historical or textual analysis by representing it solely as the 'expression' of the creative personality of the artist. p58-59
The construction of an artistic subject for art is accomplished through current discursive structures - the biogra- phic, which focuses exclusively on the individual, and the narrative, which produces coherent, linear, causal sequences through which an artistic subject is realised. p59
The material for my argument comes from a detailed case-study of a nineteenth century Dutch painter, Vincent Van Gogh... p59
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 VG is the well-known and popular artist. No other Western European painter is so universally familiar. More reproductions are sold of his work than any other artist of any country, school or period. Exhibitions of his work draw large crowds throughout the world from New York to Korea. He is the subject of innumerable books, films (like Lust for Life (1956)), novels, television documentaries and so on. A large museum is now dedicated to VG — the Rijksmuseum Vincent Van Gogh in Amster- dam - and displays a permanent exhibition of his paintings and drawings while also selling books, postcards, calendars, slides and other memorabila to tourists from all over the world. VG repro- ductions adorn school corridors and dentists' waiting rooms. An exhibition in 1979 at a museum in Groningen in the Netherlands documented a movement in the 1940s and 1950s for the improve- ment and modernisation of taste and decoration in working class homes. Reproductions of VG's paintings were conspicuous on the
walls of these model homes. p59
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highlight how important VG is, and how much has been written / said about him. ADD IN.

Closer reading of the variety of texts through which this figure 'Van Gogh' is constructed produces a more complex signification. Around his life and work what appears to be a particular form of discourse has developed - a special way of discussing the artist and his works which is presented as if it were only a response to, a reflection of, his exceptional special individuality, his genius. p60

Van Gogh, easier and well known than most photographers, accessible to more people, all the choices and everything, impossible to know. This is why i chose him.

Include Johari window example more in the problems facing this chapter.

Fritz Novotny, published a study on 'The Popularity of Van Gogh'4 in which he attempted to refute the idea that Van Gogh's renown was falsely based on a fascination with his unhappy life. Novotny's article opens by quoting a 1947 radio broadcast in which it was argued that VG's popularity was spurious. It resulted from the over-exploitation of the human interest of his biography, the dramatic events of his life, Ms suicide, 'sentimental factors' and 'curiosity about his abnormali- ties'. p60-61

Novotny constructs from the careful analysis of VG's paintings and drawings an artistic subject, the personality of the painter. The distinction I perceive between Novotny and those he is criticising is one between the subjectivity of an individual express- ing itself in painting and the subjectivity of a painter revealed through the paintings. The distinction may seem slight but the emphasis is crucial.because what is at issue is the notion of an unhappy man who paints and, on the other hand, an artist into whose 'artistness' all other facets and circumstances of his living are subsumed. Novotny wrote in order to challenge the tendency to mistake Van Gogh's personal biography for an artistic biography. And it is the production of that exclusively artistic subject that is the main project of art historical practice. p62

The multi- plicity of readings of VG's paintings from different class and cultural positions are subsumed into a notion of his' accessibility sustained by the construction of art as a visual experience of a self exposed in paint on canvas. p64
If VG is produced as the paradigm of the artist, that place is supported by the assimilation of VG to another historical repre- sentation, the correspondence of 'madness' and 'art' - the myth of the mad genius. All aspects of VG's life story and the stylistic features of the work culminating in VG's self-multilation and suicide has provided material to be reworked into a complex but familiar image of the madness of the artist - 'sensitive, tormented, yet incredibly brilliant* as an advertisement for a limited edition of gold medals struck with reproductions of VG's most famous paintings in a Sunday Times Colour Supplement aptly restated it. p64

The question presents itself: Why do we need VG as mad genius? p65
Some have argued that the madness attri- buted to the artist is a means of displacing the threat of rupture of discourse produced by artistic practices. I find this suspiciously romantic: it is already part of the myth of mad genius. For the present I want to suggest that the discourse on madness and art operates to sever art and artist from history and to render both unavailable to those without the specialised knowledge of its processes which art history claims for itself. p65

In so far as we intended to provide an historical study of paintings and drawings in the form of a pictorial essay, a special distinction was drawn for our book by the publishers between 'the man' and his 'art*. But his familiar identity as the mad genius was placed as a kind of frame within which our alternative approach could be situated and contained. p68

II    Van Gogh and the Pathological Syndrome On July 29 1890 a Dutch painter named Vincent Van Gogh died from self-inflicted gunshot wounds. This event has determined the constructions of the artistic subject 'Van Gogh'. It is both the climax to and necessary closure of the narratives from which VG is produced. The suicide is taken to be an artificially significant event in terms of the artist who was both its agent and of whom it provides the explanation. p69

So in the case of VG, unspecified illness becomes doubly secured as artistic madness. It is treated not only as a facet of his artistness but a confirmation of it. p70

A substantial area of the VG literature addresses VG from a. psychiatric 'perspective' - what Hammacher labelled the 'patho- logical syndrome'. p70
There are two main ten- dencies in the literature on the pathological syndrome. The first is an attempt to diagnose VG's mental illness by conflating periodic fits with his uninterrupted activity as a painter to secure the image of the mad genius, and the second reveals a desire to cor- relate the interpretation of his art with a specific psychosis. p70
v important!!!
 Jaspers deduced that VG was schizophrenic. His diagnosis was based in part on the limited number of paintings he had seen but predominantly on translations of VG's letters. In order to confirm his diagnosis Jaspers called for the preparation of a comprehensive catalogue raisonne" of the paintings and drawings of VG. He would then have a sound chronological framework which would enable him to chart the development of the psychosis. p70

Jaspers links sickness with increased productivity, liberation, and imagination. Psychosis is connected with a particular kind of creativity - creativity perceived as a departure from the adult conscious norm, from civilised restraint, into the liberation of the unconscious - paralleling the child/ the dream, the myth. It is both asocial and primitive. p71
v important! 

Teleological inevitabil- ity marks Minkowska's readings and so in the search for evidence to support her diagnosis she looked to the pattern of his work, concluding thus her discussion of what she took to be his last painting:
Without doubt, in this his final work, the artist had given striking symbolic expression to opposing, inner forces. In our own prosaic manner we can say that these two movements, one of elevation and one of fall, form the structural basis of the epileptic manifes- tations, just as the two polarities form the base of the epileptoid condition.* p72

Such texts can both be criticised for the inadequacy and lack of rigour in diagnoses as well as for the invocation of mythic notions about the artist. But what is most striking and relevant for my purposes is the correspondence between the psychiatric analysis of an artist and the typical modes of art history. The premises may differ but the effects are not dissimilar - a chronological and in some cases teleological approach, the reading of paintings for the signs of the artist, the production of the artistic subject from the traces of his work, the unification of all experiences and products of an historical individual. Van Gogh, as the seamless unity of the artist. p73

Such arguments and alternative readings, however, are not
sufficient to refute the construction of Van Gogh as mad artist, precisely because the base of that construction is neither clinical pathology nor readings of historical evidence. The pathological syndrome is both a support for and arises within the dominant narrative and psychobiographical structures of the literature we call art history. p76

remembr to reread bits such as ways of seeing.

 In the majority of studies of VG general discussion of his crises of fits is subsumed into an exclusive concentration on the two most dramatic incidents, posed as revealing self-mutilations. In one, a small section of an ear lobe (not the whole ear) was sliced at the height of a crisis in December 1888. The other is the quiet and determined suicide which has been constructed from the act of shooting himself in the stomach in July 1890. p76
 
 Conclusion p96
That art history can be analysed as a practice of 'interpretative criticism', a hegemonic practice, the site of the production of bourgeois ideas about art and artist, p96






Simon Johnson www.thephilosophicalphotographer.co.uk

I wish to apply the notion of the Wisdom of the crowds to this reader-response criticism to be able to come to a synthesis together to be able to answer our question.
Accurary of the rrepresentation is determined by the reader, and many readers lead to a truth.

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Introduction xi
I
Fall of 1906 Francis Galton
fat ox - weight-judging competition pxi-xiii
"Galton wrote later: "The result seems more creditable to the trustworthiness of a democratic judgment than might have been expected." That was, to say the least, an understatement." p xiii

Remember I can link this and extrapolate this from matters of fact, such as this
to politics, members of parliament, the LAW, jury
to then art and matters of opinion which is not a far strettch from law.

II
under the right circumstances, groups are remarkably intelligent p xiii
"groups do not need to be dominated by exceptionally intelligent people in order to be smart. Even if most of the people within a group are not especially well-informed or rational, it can still reach a collectively wise decision." pxiii-xiv

ensure I can put, I am basing my main source of knowledge from this particular book
calls it wisdom of crowds
-same reason how Google can give correct webpage searching billions
 -why its so hard to bet on NFL games
-polls
-tells us why stock market works (can stop working)
-collective intelligence allows us to get milk at 2am
-why people pay their taxes
-help coach little league
-essential to good science
-"it has the potential to make a profound difference in the way companies do business" p xiv

this book is about the world as it is, also as it might be

"As sociologists Jack B. Soll and Richard Larrick put it, we feel the need to "chase the expert." The argument of this book is that chasing the expert is a mistake," p xv

After we kill the author, and then if we leave the author as it is, they are both problematic. we need to reach some sort of compromise as either extreme does not appear to be correct and so this is why we must lead down the literary criticism theory ADD THIS IN

III
CRITICISMS
the stupidity of groups
would be seen that the crowd wasn't very wise at all, wouldn't it?
"In the popular imagination, groups tend to make people either dumb or crazy or both." p xv
"Thomas Carlyle put it succinctly: "I do not believe in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance." pxvi
"Le Bon lambasted juries, which "deliver verdicts of which each individual juror would disapprove." Parliaments, he argued, adopt laws that each of their memebers would normally reject. In fact, if you assembled smart people who were specialists in a host of different fields and asked them to "make decisions affecting matters of general interest," the decisions they would reach would be no better, on the whole, than those "adopted by a gathering of imbeciles." " p xvi

IN THIS BOOK
he folows Le Bons lead, to give broad definitions for "group" and "crowd"
the crowd are good at problem solving and smart

Gustav Le Bons had things backwards
big enough + diverse enough crowd....
" "make decisions affecting matters of general interest," that groups decisions will, over time, be "intellectually [superior] to the isolated individual," no matter how smart of well informed he is." pxvii

IV
Concentrates on three kinds of problems
-cognition problems, those that have definite solutions. (who will win the super bowl)
-coordination problems, members of group to coord behavior, market for fair prices, drivers in heavy traffic, students looking for party
- cooperation problems, getting self-interested, distrustful people to work together... paying taxes, pollution, reasonable pay e.g

STRUCTURE OF THIS BOOK
first half = theory, leavened by practical examples.
chapter for each problem 1 2 3
chapters for conditions crowd needs to be wise:
 diversity
  independence
   decentralisation
1st half - begins with wisdom of crowds, explores 3 conditions that make it possible, cord then cooperation.
2nd half - CASE STUDIES
how the collective intelligence flourishes or flounders
  does this not sound like collective unconscious, Jung?
groups work well under certain circumstances
"Diversity and independence are important because the best collective decisions are the product of disagreement and contest, not consensus or compromise." pxix
best way for a group to be smart is for each of its members to think and act as independently as possible.

V
started with a simple problem - weight of an Ox
end with a complex problem - locate a lost submarine
 - Baye's theorem is a way of calculating how new information about an event changes your preexisiting expectations of how likely the event was. pxxi
5 months later, the ship was found 220 yards from where the group said it was
"even though no one in the group knew any of these things, the group as a whole knew them all." pxxi

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1. The Wisdom of Crowds - p1



I
 Who wants to be a millionaire? if stuck - 3 solutions.
the crowd option was correct 91% of the time/

experiments by American socialogists + psychologists 1920-mid1950s
1) Hazel Knight asked classto estimate room temperature = 72.4, actual = 72 p4
2) Kate H. Gordon asked 200 students rank items by weight, group = 94% accurate p5
3) jelly beans, Jack Treynor, jar = 850, average = 871, 1of56 guesses was closer. p5

two lessons learned from these:
 1) most, people weren't working together/talking on the problem
      (sometimes interacting can change things, for better or worse) this can be the case in judging artistic work, well sometimes you need to be able to converse with art, but retaining your own personal opinion.
2) the group guess is not better than that of EVERY single person in the group
    so sometimes people will outperform the group, but not same person every time.

II
space shuttle Challenger blew up, 1986 p6-7
stock market stopped, traded out other stocks of challengers builders
seemed to have labelled Morton Thiokol as the cause of the challenger disaster
Maloney and  Mulherin point out there was no public comments singling out Thiokol p7
Six months later, truth was revealed, the stock was correct.
possible was due to luck...
That day, it was just buyers and sellers trying to figure out what happened and getting it right." p8
many bits of information came together to find something close to the truth.

Market was smart that day - satisfied the 4 conditions that characterise wise crowds:
1) diversity of opinion (some private information)
2) independence (not determined by other peoples opinions
3) decentralisation (draw on local knowledge)
4) aggregation (mechanism for private judgements into collective decision)
p10

mathematically, errors ultimately cancel themselves out with large groups
 "Each person's guess has two components: information and error. Subtract the error and you are left with the information." p10

Now, still possible a groups decision will still be bad...
could say we've been programmed to be collectively smart (not running example)

III
 How does it perform when the answer is seemingly unknowable? hasn't happened yet?
Robert Walker's career depends on this... gambling/betting
sets the line where people bet on A, or B, needs a line in the middle to profit.

IV
Internet and Googles performance p15
Google is built on the wisdom of crowds p16
seems to be a nice talking piece, real world for me to go off of.
relies on page ranking , casts things as important if they rank higher, voting system

V
IEM Iowa electric markets project, 1988
   designed to predict the outcomes of elections. p17

IN THIS CHAPTER WE HAVE p22
looked at different ways to tap into what a group knows, stock, votes, computer algorithns, future contracts...
These are all attempts to tap into the widsom of the crowd, and that's the reason why they work
the key is not perfecting the method but satisfying the conditions, diversity, independence and decentralisation - that a group needs to be smart
As we'll see in the next chaptes that's the hardest and the most interesting part of the story
What makes a crowd smart, obviously this will be relevent to me and how to determine a good photograph representation.... I think I will assume some kind of self-correcting system to be in place.

 I may just stick to the theory passages as opposed to the case studies as they may not be completely releveant to what Iw ant to say, evidence for this may become self-evident without referring to too many texts etc

2. The difference difference makes:
waggle dances, the bay of pigs, and the value of diversity

I
1899 Ransom E. Olds - cars, cheap enough for people to buy? p23
after fire, turns out to have produced the first mass produced car

all new technologies follow this pattern, the winners and the losers are decided, which will folourish and which will disappear p26

CULTURAL INTERCONNECTION

example of Bees, Thomas seeley, author of the wisdom of the hive. p26
when a scout bee comes back with a good source he found, does the waggle dance!
finding sources of nectar different from the other examples we had, because the "set of possible solutions was already, in a sense, determined." p27
"In the case of problems like finding the most nectar-rich flower patches, though, the task is more complicated. It becomes a twofold process. First, uncover the possible alternatives. Then decide among them." p27

first process, smart thing is to send out as many scouts
"what makes a system sucessful is its ability to generate lots of losers and then to recognise them as such and kill them off. Sometimes the messiest approach is the wisest." p29

II
Not enough. Crowd has to distinguish good from the bad.
diversity helps - adds perspectives
small groups more important

Scott Page - computer simulated problem solving agents demonstrates positive affects of diversity p30
groups of smart and lesser were better than just the smart groups
"Adding a few people who know less, but have different skills, actually improves the group's performance." p30
smarter people are too much alike
"As March wrote, "[The] effect does not come from the superior knowledge of the averge new recruit. Recruits are, on average, less knowledgeable than the individuals they replace. The gains come from their diversity." p31

III

p32 example of chess, imprinted on memory of professional
examples of experts being wrong p33
"Shanteau recounts a series of studies that have found experts' judgments to be neither consistent with the judgments of others experts in the field nor internally consistent." p33
 overconfidence
suvery found physicians, nurses, lawyers, etc all beleive they know more than they do p34
Armstrongs -seer-sucker theory
" "No matter how much evidence exists that seers do not exist, suckers will pay for the existence of seers." " p34
"why do we cling so tightly to the idea that the right expert will save us? And why do we ignore the fact that simply averaging a group's estimates will produce a very good result? " p35
Richard Larrick and Jack B. Soll suggest the answer is we have bad intuitions about averaging. p35
-assumption that true intelligence resides only in individuals
"trying to find smart people will not lead you astray. Trying to find the smartest person will." p36

IV
positive case for diversity
-expands a groups possible soltuons + allows to conceptualise problems in numerous ways
negative
-makes it easier to make decisions based on facts, rather than infleunce, authority, or group allegiance. p36
when decision makers are too much alike, they easily fall prey to groupthink.
become cohesive more easily
more dependent on the group + insulated from outside opinions
So this is why diversity is important, don't want them all to think the same thing

Bay of Pigs Invasion p37
-1200 men could take over all of Cuba
"When the pressure to conform is at work, a person changes his opinion not because he actually beleives something different but because it's easier to change his opinion than to challenge the group." p38

Soloman Asch experiement p38
3 lines same size as a line on card
 confederate involved too.
   more people just went along with the group
more than 70% changed their opinion at least once

"Ultimately, diversity contributes not just by adding different perspectives to the group but also by making it easier for individuals to say what they really think. As we'll see in the next chapter independence of opinion is both a crucial ingredient in collectively wise decisions and one of the hardest things to keep intact. Because diversity helps preserve that independence, it's hard to have a collectively wise group without it." p39 concluding.

  ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

3. Monkey see, monkey do: imitations, information cascades, and independence

I p40
William Beebe - Guyana jungle
ants moving in a huge circle 1200 feet circumference. took ant 2.5hours
scientists call a circular mill, "follow the ant in front of you" when got lost.
Ant colony, no one ant knows anything, yet the colony itself managed to find food, get work done and reproduce itself.
so far in this book "I've assumed that human beings can be independent decision makers. Independence doesn't mean isolation, but it does mean relative freedom from the influence from others." p41
Ox example illustrates this, all the independent guesses helped get the correct answer.

Important for two reasons: p41
1) keeps mistakes people make from becoming correlated.
    errors won't wreck the group's collective judgement.
2) independent indivuduals more likely to have new information, rather than same data everyone is familar with.

"the smartest groups, then, are made up of people with diverse perspectives who are able to stay independent of each other." p41

-Independence doesn't imply rationality or impartiality... can still be biased and irrational, as long as you're independent won;t make the group and dumber p41

We are autonomous beings but we are also social beings p42
we want to learn from each other
"sociologists and social-network theorists, by contrast, describe people as embedded in particular social contexts, and see influence as inescapable." p42
Surowiecki suggests the more influence they have one each other, more personal contact, less likely decisions will be wise. will believe the same things, more mistakes. p42
could become individually smarter  but collectively dumber.

THE QUESTION BECOMES:
can people make collectively intelligent decisions even when they are in constant, erratic interaction with each other? p42-43

 II p43
Social psychologists
  Stanley Milgram, Leonard Bickman and Lawrence Berkowitz
1 person staring up at the sky for 60seconds
then 5 people staring up
= 4 times as many people stopped to look as well
--- at first appears to be people easily conform
illustrated something else... " social proof "
"which is the tendency to assume that if lots of people are doing something or beleive something, there must be a good reason why." p43
    this means they're looking up at the sky, not to conform but because there must be a good reason that so many people are looking up at the sky.
THE CROWD BECOMES MORE INFLUENTIAL AS IT GETS BIGGER
"if too many people adopt that strategy, it stops being sensible and the group stops being smart" p43-44

NFL example I don't understand.
 imitating managers (doesnt matter)

III
herders, follow the herd because that's where it's safest p50
plank road example - p53

problem starts when people's decisions are nit made all at once but rather in sequence... p53
everyone can make the wrong choice because the first people make the wrong decisions
Do cascades exist? p55
not always a bad thing, some of the best technological innovations are because of informational cascade. p55
Seller's screw cascade - successful
cascades are different, not collective decisions fro diverse opinions

disatrous information cascade example, telecommunications business when internet was new and the figure was an increase at 1000% per year, this figure was kept unchecked and so billions was invested and subsequently lost. p57

IV
should we stop listening to other people??
let others guide us, easier.
example, should I take an umbrella? look on werather, look outside.. EASY
imitation
-each person can't know everything p58

Herbert Simon speculated humans genetically predisposed to be imitation machines p59
example of monkeys
how was the crowd wise?
"The wisdom was in the decision to imitate Imo" p59
inteliigent imitation

V p63
best to make decisions simultaneously, as opposed to one after another.
marble example p63-5

"One key to successful group decisions is getting people to pay much less attention to what everyone else is saying." p65

4. Putting the pieces together: The cia, linux, and the art of decentralisation. p66

I
can relate wisdome oft he crowds back to examples already used, such as the missle guy in chapter 4
Donovan, US intelligence agency
split into many different things, cia, fbi, all same broad goal,keep the US safe from attack p67
Until September 2001, flaws of this system was overlooked p68
pearl harbour all over again, could have been prevented.
criticises the US failures in preventing 4 major terrorist attacks 1993-2001
"decentralisation had led the United States astray. Centralisation would put things right." p69

II
Internet, most visible decentralized system in the world
"The idea of the wisdom of the crowds also takes decentralisation as a given and a good, since it implies that if you set a crowd of self-interested, independent people to work in a decentralised way on the same problem, instead of trying to direct their efforts from the top down, their collective solution is likely to be better than any other solution you could come up with." p70

Why did these people fail then? Was decentralisation really the problem?
NEED to answer a simpler question first
What do we mean by decentralisation?
flocks of birds, free market economies, peer to peer computer networks...?
couple of things that do matter:
specialisation - of labour, interest, attention p71
   seems to make people more productive and efficient. increases scope and the diversity of the opinions and information in the system.

essential for 'tacit' knowledge, can't be easily conveyed to others, may be too specific.
"Decentralisation's great strength is that it encourages independence and specialisation on the one hand while still allowing people to coordinate their activities and solve difficult problems on the other." p71
----> great weakness, no guarantee valuable info will get through the whole system
"need to find the right balance between the two imperatives: making indivudual knowledge globally and collectively useful (as we know it can be), while still allowing it to remain resolutely specific and local." p72

III
1991 hacker Linus Torvalds, created own version of UNIX --- LINUX p72
releaased source code, allowed people to contact him with bugs
much like the bee
you cna let a thousand flowers bloom and then pick the one that smells the sweetest

IV p74
who picks the sweetest smelling one??
ideally, the crowd.
aggregation - important to the success of decentralisation
Iraqi war 2003 example

V p77
problem wasn't decentralisation, it was the kind of decentralisation US was using
missing not just aggregating information, but judgments. p78
"centralisation is not the answer. But aggregation is." p78

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5. Shall we dance?: coordination in a complex world

I p84
William H. Whyte 1969, author of The organisation man, grant to begin: "Street Life Project'
 - I remember reading about this.
"In crowds, walking "there is a collective genius at play here" p85
different from the NFL or Google problem
   coordination problems are ubiquitous.
"What defines a coordination problem is that to solve it, a person has to think not only about what he believes the right answer is but also about what other people think the right answer is. And that's because what each person does affects and depends on what everyone else will do, and vice versa." p85-86

obvious way of controlling peoples actions is
 authority
 coercion

"How can people voluntarily - that is, without anyone telling them what to do - make their actions fit together in an efficient and orderly way?" p86

"When it comes to coordination problems, independent decision making (that is, decision making which doesn't take the opinions of others into account) is pointless - since what I'm willing to do depends on what I think you're going to do, and vice versa. As a result, there's no guarantee that groups will come up with smart solutions. What's striking, though, is just how often they do." p86

II
bar example, problem if it's crowded, no-one has a good time p86-87
-assume everyone else thinks the same
  problem, everyone may go, or everyone won't go...
have to strike a balance so they right number of people go.

"When Francis Galton's fairgoers made their guesses about the ox's weight, they were trying to evaluate a reality that existed outside the group. When Arthur's computer agents made their guesses about El Farol, though, they were trying to evaluate a reality that their own decisions would help construct. Given those circumstances, getting even the average attendance right seem miraculous." p90

III
Thomas C. Schelling - asks students in New York where would you meet? p90-91
 then added the problem of not knowing the time to meet.
chose Noon.
examples of self-cordination, such as ticking a box, top left [√]
Schelling points
"Schelling wrote, "People can often concert their intentions and expectations with others if each knows that the other is trying to do the same" " p91

IV
culture also enables coordination - different way
simple convention: first come first serve.
 in relation to seats... may give up a seat for elderly person on bus, less likely to do so in cinema. p93-94

surprising to actually ask people to give up their seat - without reason
intruder in a queue

V
Convention
prices paid for things

VI
flock of starlings move purposefully
group behaviour, follows simple rules, allows this superorganism being to happen

VII p103
example of student market, converging on one price.

in the words of Smith "As indivuduals, they don't know where they're going. But as part of a market, they're suddenly able to get there, and fast." p107

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

6. Scoiety does exist: taxes , tipping, television and trust p108

I
Italy football, referee's call, conspiracy? or just bad decision p108-109
two teams, not just competing, they're working together, to be entertaining.
"they need to be able to trust those around them, because in the absence of trust the pursuit of myopic self-interest is the only strategy that makes sense. How does this happen? And does it make a difference when it does?" p111

II
examples suggesting fairness, and punishing greediness/selfishness

III p116

IV p119
Quackers, honesty seems to pay

V p126
"they do create a problem: the more people trust, the easier they are for others to exploit."

VI p128

"co-operation, on both a small and a large scale, permeates any healthy society. It's not simply the obvious examples, like contributing to charities or voting or marching on picket lines, all of which are examples of collective action that people participate in. It's also the subtler examples, like those workers who, by all rights, could shirk their responsibilities without being punished (because the costs of monitoring them would be too high) and yet do not, or those customers who leave tips for waitresses in restaurants in distant cities. We can anatomize  these acts and explain what gives rise to them. But there is something irreducible at their heart, and it marks the difference between society on the one hand and just a bunch of people living together on the other." p142

---------------------------------













remember at the end of this I have the choice, or the opportunity to discuss how social media will work in the way that I have forumalted it... such as a facebook picture.... I doubt I will even need to do this but it is a possiblity if the word count would permit me... perhaps 1000words rto allow for this?
I doubt I have time, however.

Simon Johnson www.thephilosophicalphotographer.co.uk

Modern Criticism and Theory
A reader
edited by David Lodge
p. in the US by Longman New York
1988
0-582-49460-5

11 Wolfgang Iser p211

b. 1926, 'reception theory'\
phenomenological criticism, Iser is less mystical and more scientific

intermediacy - the way in which 'gaps' or 'blanks' in literary texts stimulate the reader to construct meanings which would not otherwise come into existence." p211

The reading process: a phenomenological approach p212
I

"The phenomenological theory of art lays full stress on the idea that, in considering a literary work, one must take into account not only the actual text but also, and in equal measure, the actions involved in responding to that text." p212
need both
"The work is more than the text, for the text only takes on life when it is realised..." p212
"The convergence of text and reader brings the literary work into existence, and this convergence can never be precisely pinpointed, but must always remain virtual, as it is not to be identified either with the reality of the text or with the individual disposition of the reader." p212

"If the reader were given the whole story, and there were nothing left for him to do, then his imagination would never enter the field, the result would be the boredom which inevitably arises when everything is laid out cut and dried before us." p213
must engage the reader

II

How to describe this process
Phenomenological analysis recommends itself
worthwhile psychological observations

needs the reader's imagination p214
creates expectations p214

"expectations are scarcely ever fulfilled in truly literary texts. p215

"Thus, the reader, in establishing these interrelations between past, present and future, actually causes the text to reveal its potential multiplicity of connections. These connections are the product of the reader's mind working on the raw material of the text, though they are not the text itself - for this consists just of sentences, statements, information, etc." p215

reader experiences reflect readers own disposition
"Thus we have the apparently paradoxical situation in which the reader is forced to reveal aspects of himself in order to experience a reality which is different from his own." p217-218

III
"impressions that arise as a result of this process will vary from individual to individual but only within the limits imposed by the written as opposed to the unwritten text. In the same way, two people gazing at the night sky may both be looking at the same collection of stars, but one will see the image of a plough, and the other will make out a dipper. The 'stars' in a literary text are fixed; the lines that join them are variable." p218
WONDERFUL quote to use!!!
imagination isn't as much about what characters look like etc... however, still imagine past present/narrative etc

IV

gestalt
already discussed anticipation + retrospection
  must add grouping
" 'In the reading of images, as in the hearing of speech, it is always hard to distinguish what is given to us from what we supplement in the process of projection which is triggered off by recognition... 12' " p219  

 V
three important aspects - reader and text
-the process of anticipation and retrospection
-consequence unfolding of the text as a living event
-resultant impression of lifelikeness

identification, with something outside of ourselves

"Herein lies the dialectical structure of reading. The need to decipher gives us the chance to formulate out own deciphering capacity - i.e., we bring to the fore an element of our being of which we are not directly conscious.....
These are the ways in which reading literature gives us the chance to formulate the unformulated." p227



Helpful Summary:
http://essaycemetery.blogspot.co.uk/2012/08/the-reading-process-phenomenological.html

Phenomenology, in Husserl's conception, is primarily concerned with the systematic reflection on and analysis of the structures of consciousness, and the phenomena which appear in acts of consciousness
Such reflection was to take place from a highly modified "first person" viewpoint, studying phenomena not as they appear to "my" consciousness, but to any consciousness whatsoever. Husserl believed that phenomenology could thus provide a firm basis for all human knowledge, including scientific knowledge, and could establish philosophy as a "rigorous science" of measurable perception.

Mainly for: Reader-Response Theory, (FOR death and resurection of the author)

Readers and Reading
edited and introduced by Andrew Bennett
p. in U.S by Longman Publishing, New York
1995
0-582-21290-1

Reader-response criticism p3

Best known + influential attempt to describe readers + reading in recent years is called
reader-response criticism or reader-orientated criticism

critics
-Stanley Fish
-Wolfgang Iser
-Norman Holland
-Michael Riffaterre

high point was around 1980 because of 2 important collections of essays.
"The simplest way to approach RRC may be to think about the question of the location of textual meaning."
"The central question for RRC in this respect is: 'Who makes meaning?' or 'Where is meaning made?' p3

Stanley Fish asks - 'Is the reader or the text the source of meaning?'
So the answer to this can be reduced to three major variants.

Norman Holland + David Bleich
-perspective of American Ego psychology
response patter of the individual reader - 'identity theme'

Michael Riffaterre
-structuralist approach
text directs, coerces or compels reading
--It is above all the text itself that controls the production of meaning

Wolfgang Iser
-negotiate between text and reader

"RRC do agree, however, that it is the task of reading theory to decide on the location of authority for interpretation." p4

 has come under attack - social, political, historical + economic contexts ... Schweickart, Koestenbaum, tendency of RRC to designate a universal reader seems to ignore differences by women, gay or lesbian readers / other ethnic minorities...

during 1980s + early 1990s reading theory developed in two directions...
"The first direction has been towards the recognition that readers are historically or socially contructed, rather than abstract and eternal essences. This has necessitated a recognition of the politics and history of reading: once it is established that readers are different, that no single identity can be demanded of or imposed on readers, then questions of social, economic, gender and ethnic differences become inescapable in reading theory." p4
now, globalisation, easy to have global opinions on one thing. GOOD quality opinions. MANY opinions... this is given to us by wisdom of the crowd applied to THIS.
The second direction has involved a problematisation of the very concept of 'reading' and the 'reader', a recognition not only that readers are different from one another, but that any individual reader is multiple, and that any reading is determined by difference.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

1 Interaction between Text and Reader* p20
  Wolfgang Iser
        
The implied reader (1974)
The act of reading (1978)
most influential works to emerge from classic RRC of the 1970s

"brief account of his phenomenological theoru of the way in which reading is interactive, occuring between text and reader." p20
"the text is 'actualised' by the reader to become a 'virtual' aesthetic work."
"At the heart of Iser's model  of reading is the idea that texts produce uncertainties or gaps in readers' comprehension, and that these gaps spur the reader to produce connections which 'complete' the text. 'Whenever the reader bridges the gaps', Iser declares, 'communication begins.' " p20
This sounds very much like photography and the way things have to be in it.
a text is incomplete without the readers input
I need to incorporate that this can be applied to photography
also remember to state that this is more generalised view of reader-response which seems most applicable to me, I don't really need to strictly apply it to photography by the concept of it to save the author in line with the viewer saves the interpretation of accuracy down to them. REMEMBER to determine accuracy one may need the original person to refer to, accuracy entails two things to compare!!!!

#useful critical overviews of Iser's work
chapter 6, for a consideration of Iser's place in reader-response criticism more generally

"Central to the reading of every literary work is the interaction between its structure and recipient. This is why the phenomenological theory of art has emphatically drawn attention to the fact that the study of a literary work should concern not only the actual text but also, and in equal measure, the actions involved in responding to that text." p20-21
"From this we may conclude that the literary work has two poles, which we might call the artistic and the aesthetic: the artistic pole is the author's text, and the aesthetic is the realization accomplished by the reader." p21   
"As the reader passes through the various perspectives offered by the text, and relates the different views and patterns to one another, he sets the work in motion, and so sets himself in motion, too." p21
uses the term virtual a lot...
"its actualisation is clearly the result of an interaction between the two, and so exclusive concentration on either the author's techniques or the reader's psychology will tell us little about the reading process itself." p21
"This is not to deny the vital importance of each of these two poles - it is simply that if one loses sight of the relationship, one loses sight of the virtual work. p21

There is no common code to ensure accurate communication.
one may arise in the process....?

 "R. D. Laing writes: 'I may not actually be able to see myself as others see me, but I am constantly supposing them to be seeing me in particular ways, and I am constantly acting in the light of the actual or supposed attitudes, opinions, needs, and so on the other has in respect of me.' 3" p21-22
"Now, the views that others have of me cannot be called 'pure' perception; they are the result of interpretation." p22
"In his book, The Politics of Experience, Laing pursues this line of thought by saying: 'your experience of me is invisible to me and my experience of you is invisible to you.'" p22
he calls it a no-thing
"Contact therefore depends upon our continually filling in a central gap in our experience." p22

difference between reading and all forms of social interaction - face to face
" A text cannot adapt itself to each reader it comes into contact with." p22

"The reader, however, can never learn from the text how accurate or inaccurate are his views of it." p22
"What is missing from the apparently trivial scenes, the gaps arising out of the dialogue" p23
"What is concealed spurs the reader into action, but this action is also controlled by what is revealed; the explicit in its turn is transformed when the implicit has been brought to light." p23

negation

"What is concealed spurs the reader into action, but this action is also controlled by what is revealed; the explicit in its turn is transformed when the implicit has been brought to light." p24

narrative can still be given by photographs in sequence, also, text can accompany photographs which can be interpreted the same way here.

"in order to become fully aware of the implication, we must bear in mind that a narrative text, for instance, is composed of a variety of perspectives, which outline the author's view and also provide access to what the reader is meant to visualise." p25
4main perspectives in narration
narrator
characters
plot
fictitious reader

how blanks function
"Two points need to be emphasised: (1) we have described the structure of the blank in an abstract, somewhat idealised way in order to explain the pivot on which the interaction between text and reader turns; (2) the blank has different structural qualities, which appear to dovetail." p29

now in a position in which to better say what is meant by 'reader participation' in the text 

"by Piaget: 'In a word, the subject is there and alive, because the basic quality of each structure is the structuring process itself'13" p30
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

2 Reader-Response Criticism* p32
  Vincent B. Leitch
         YES, main source for dissertation.

historical survey of the ideas, influence and implications of the RRC in the US 1970s 1980s

XXXXXX tend to depoliticize reading by eliding questions of the social and the historical
contrast
feminism of XXXXXX + MArxism of XXXXX
provide alternatives to the essentialising, ahistorical theories of classic RRC
also
'structuralists'
Michael Riffaterre, Gerald Prince, Jonathan Culler, Robert Scholes
would avoid the subjectivity or essentialism of descriptions produced by the RRC, reading is determined not only by textual but also by cultural constraints. The achievement of such theorists allows for theorisation of reading in terms of its connection with deep structures in society.

"It argued against the text-centered criticism of formalism, advocating instead a reader orientated approach." p33

Have a feeling this sounds too advanced for me to take it in properly, I really only require an overview, a generalisation to talk about in my essay.





Simon Johnson www.thephilosophicalphotographer.co.uk

Overview/Summary before I read the book
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wisdom_of_Crowds

The Wisdom of Crowds: Why the Many Are Smarter Than the Few and How Collective Wisdom Shapes Business, Economies, Societies and Nations
published 2004
James Surowiecki

presents numerous case studies to support arguements

Surowiecki breaks down the advantages he sees in disorganized decisions into three main types
Cognition
   Thinking and information Processing
Coordination
Cooperation

 Not all crowds (groups) are wise.
Same as what I said, there needs to be some sort of standard to decide which crowd has the gratest influence and knowledge to determine something, still it would be a greater possibility of accuracy given there is more people and the result would be dependent upon the given value of the knowledge that is present, and always there could be additional facts presented after the fact which would change the overall meaning.
He gives 4 criteria

-diversity of opinion
-independence
-decentralisation
-aggregation

list of problems facing the wisdom of the crowd
-imitation, I can think of most easily, once we hear someone else's interpretation it is much easier to just accept that, it imposes itself on us rather than we can then have a unique point of view.

CRITICISM
The Wisdom of Crowds concept by definition requires a known truth or absolute in order to work; the lottery has no such previously existent absolute outcome.
 I can easily overcome this... it is a majority interpretation I am meaning for, not the average of what everyone is saying, the same concept still applies I feel. Tweaked slightly

FURTHER CRITICISMS...
However, Tammet points out the potential for problems in systems which have less well defined means of pooling knowledge: Subject matter experts can be overruled and even wrongly punished by less knowledgeable persons in systems like Wikipedia, citing a case of this on Wikipedia. Furthermore, Tammet mentions the assessment of the accuracy of Wikipedia as described in a study mentioned in Nature in 2005, outlining several flaws in the study's methodology which included that the study made no distinction between minor errors and large errors.

Simon Johnson www.thephilosophicalphotographer.co.uk

Final thing to help my dissertation come to its conclusion.

The wisdom of the crowd is the process of taking into account the collective opinion of a group of individuals rather than a single expert to answer a question.

 An intuitive and often-cited explanation for this phenomenon is that there is idiosyncratic noise associated with each individual judgment, and taking the average over a large number of responses will go some way toward canceling the effect of this noise
 ----Yi, S. K. M., Steyvers, M., Lee, M. D. and Dry, M. J. (April 2012). "The Wisdom of the Crowd in Combinatorial Problems".
    proof such as wikipedia, yahoo answers, relies on viewers opinion

This is how the world works in the justice world
The process, in the business world at least, was written about in detail by James Surowiecki in his book The Wisdom of Crowds

Research within cognitive science has sought to model the relationship between wisdom of the crowd effects and individual cognition. 

First appeared when a large group of people try and guess a set amount such as the number of marbles in a jar, the mean number will be closer to the true amount than any other estimation, so the crowd is smarter than the individual.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wisdom_of_Crowds:_Why_the_Many_Are_Smarter_Than_the_Few_and_How_Collective_Wisdom_Shapes_Business,_Economies,_Societies_and_Nations
 Surowiecki, James
 THE BOOK

Other social processes such as Redditt and Digg rely on this process too

 PROBLEM: affirms supperiority over the minority... What if many people were judging something which had no knowledge of it... e.g. Judging conceptual art when they have no concept of abstract art movement, and postmodernism...surely it would benefit from wisdom from the expert crowd.. also this is how we work in the world we live in, world leaders make decisions over the way the country is run, elected members.

 Scott E Page introduced the diversity prediction theorem: "The squared error of the collective prediction equals the average squared error minus the predictive diversity". Therefore, when the diversity in a group is large, the error of the crowd is small.
 Scott E. (2007). The Difference: How the Power of Diversity Creates Better Groups, Firms, Schools, and Societies. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. 

Crowds tend to work best when there is a correct answer to the question being posed, such as a question about geography or mathematics
http://www.randomhouse.com/features/wisdomofcrowds/Q&A.html

The wisdom of the crowd effect is easily undermined. Social influence can cause the average of the crowd answers to be wildly inaccurate, while the geometric mean and the median are far more robust
http://www.pnas.org/content/108/22/9020.full.pdf+html


CONCLUDING:  IMPORTANT
Since interpretations don't really have a 'right' or 'wrong' answer there will be a general accepted interpretation given all the information available... That way, there doesn't need to be any specific reliance on factual information about the representation. The accuracy of a representation can be down the the wisdom of the crowd... or does this again make our question irrelevant?
The accuracy of the representation would appear to be an invalid or irrelevant question, the nature of the photographer inherently biased will affect things and so in how things are it is the reader who is the determinate factor and so they would surmise given all available information 'This is what this photo means in relation to this author, and the evidence for which is this, and so the accepted interpretation is accepted by many, but OF COURSE will still be open to furtherment or advancement given any additional information and things will always be open to debate in the academic world. Nothing will ever be set in stone.



 


Simon Johnson www.thephilosophicalphotographer.co.uk

 May want to quickly point out the Archetypal Criticism, by carl Jung which obviously ties in well.

Reader Response.

Decent website of sources: http://www.kristisiegel.com/theory.htm#reception

Perhaps I don't need to decide which of the reader-responsers to choose because I can suggest that that is something for another dissertion to evaluate or go into but then suggest either way it needs to depend (with reference to my question again) that it is dependent of a greater context of people

 they all have their merits
I. A. Richards 

Louise Rosenblatt - Transactional analysis

Stanley Fish - Interpretive communities

Wolfgang Iser - Implied reader

Hans-Robert Jauss - Horizons of expectations

    
 Reader response criticism starts with what formalist literary criticism called the "affective fallacy" — that the response of the reader is relevant to understanding a text

 There are different approaches within this school of critical theory, however; some look at the work from the individual reader's point of view, while others focus on how groups or communities view the text. For these schools of criticism, it's what the text does to the reader that's important, and not necessarily the work itself, the author's intent, or the social, political, or cultural context in which it was written.
The label "reader-oriented criticism" has become popular since the reader's experiences and expectations often change as time passes. In addition, a reader may approach the text with different points of view, or lenses. That is, the reader may be able to see the value in his or her own personal response while also analyzing the text based on another critical approach.

Rosenblatt argued that, while the reader is guided by the ideas and words that the author laid out, it is ultimately each individual reader's experience in reading the work that actually gives it meaning. Since each person brings unique knowledge and beliefs to the reading transaction, the text will mean different things to different people. It is that meaning — the reader's meaning — that should be assessed, as opposed to solely looking at the author's text in a vacuum.

[x]Other critics focus on how the reader's mind relates to the text, in what is known as Psychological Reader Response Criticism. The reader is seen as a psychological subject who can be studied based on his or her unconscious drives brought to the surface by his or her reaction to a text. Reading the text can become almost a therapeutic experience for the reader, as the connections that he or she makes reveal truths about his or her personality.
Psychological Reader Response Criticism in many ways fueled another similar theory — Subjective Reader Response Criticism — which takes the personal, psychological component even further. In this theory, the reader’s interpretation of a text is thought to be deeply influenced by personal and psychological needs first, rather than being guided by the text. Each reading is thought to bring psychological symptoms to the surface, from which the reader can find his or her own unconscious motives.

Other schools of reader response criticism look not at the reader as an individual, but as a theoretical reader. The "implied reader," for example, an idea introduced by Wolfgang Iser, is the reader who is required for the text — the reader who the author imagines when writing, and who he or she is writing for. This reader is guided by the text, which contains gaps meant for the reader to fill, explaining and making connections within the text. The reader ultimately creates meaning based not only on what is in the text, but what the text has provoked inside him or her. Theorist Stanley Fish introduced what he called the "informed reader," who brings prior, shared knowledge to the experience of reading. 

Social Reader Response Criticism focuses on "interpretive communities" — groups that have shared beliefs and values — and how these groups use particular strategies that affect both the text and their reading behaviors. It is the group that then determines what an acceptable interpretation of the text is, with the meaning being whatever the group says that it is. A book club or a group of college students for example, based on their own cultural and group beliefs, will generally agree on the ultimate meaning on a text.
As an extension of the social theory, these like-minded groups can also approach and view the text from different lenses. If the group finds certain elements to be more significant than others, it might examine the text from this particular viewpoint, or lens.

Arguments Against Reader Response Criticism Generally
It is often argued that reader response criticism allows for any interpretation of a text to be considered valid, and can devalue the content of the text as a result. Others argue that the text is being ignored completely or that it is impossible to properly interpret a text without taking into consideration the culture or era in which it is written. In addition, a larger complaint is that these theories do not allow for the reader’s knowledge and experience to be expanded by the text at all.


 I need some literature / books to refer to i think





Simon Johnson www.thephilosophicalphotographer.co.uk

Wilson, A. (2004)
Foucault on the ‘question of the author’: a critical exegesis.
The Modern Language Review, 99 (2). pp. 339-363

Perhaps it would be best to talk around the ideas of Barthes and Foucault rather than take a completely divergent strategy.

Seems after the death was proclaimed in 1960s, revived in 1990s
1992 - Sean Burkes The Death and Return of the Author
   reveals a range of strengths and troubles in their arguments  (barthes, foucault, derrida)
 Sean Burke rephrased Foucaults 'What is an Author to 'What (and who) is an author?'

"As we shall see in due course, this reformulation prove to be apt indeed; and I hope to show that a straegy akin to Burke's yields still further fruits when applied anew to 'What is an Author?' p339

 1. Foucault's 'What is an Author?' and its Contexts p340

context for Foucault's paper was Barthes essay The Death of the Author.

Barthes developed a little history of writing and authorship, fell into three phases:
-primordial grace
-subsequent fall
-future redemption

Meant the death of the critic as well p341

'birth of the reader must be at the cost of the death of the author

------------
"Foucault proposed to examine the author 'as a function of discourse', replacing the conventional figure of 'the author' with what he called 'the author function' - a concept which sought to capture the discursive role played by that figure." p341

people like Marx and Freud were not just authors but "'initiatiors of discursive practices'" p342
Foucault suggests this author function applies to them as well

Foucault quotes from Beckett 'What does it matter who's speaking?'
The figure of the author as turned from a 'who' into a 'what'

similarities to Barthes:
-The author's death was an authored event
resemblances are misleading
Foucault criticised the traditional concept of the literary 'work' (Barthes left intact)

p343
Firstly, barthes sought to supersede author-figure
Foucault problematised that figure and made him a site of enquiry

Secondly, Foucault was extending the problem from imaginative literature to the domain of non-fictional writing

Thirdly,new figure of the 'text'

Is this really relevant at this point?








Simon Johnson www.thephilosophicalphotographer.co.uk

[Attempted]
The Death and Return of the Author
Criticism and Subjectivity in Barthes, Foucault and Derrida
Seán Burke
Edinburgh University Press

Useful chapters list:

-Introduction: A prehistory of the Death of the Author p8
- 1. the birth of the reader p20
- What (and who)is an Author? p89
- Subjectivities
-Misread Intentions
-Authors or absence
-doubling the text:intention and its other
 -conclusion: critic and Author
-Critic and author?
-Epilogue?

Text seems very difficult to read... Going to see if I can have a secondary text ON this otherwise I may just skip it and focus on reader-response to solve my dilemma....






Simon Johnson www.thephilosophicalphotographer.co.uk

 SO I don't necessarily want the author's death to be final... I want to resurect him because he is still important.
Death of the author, and the birth of the reader
However, I still think that the reader is very important and so the focus shall stay with the reader.

 Literary criticism - reader response criticism
 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SoBXGJCNVPg - to help intiial ideas

Rhetorical triangle.

             text
         /            \
       /                \
author  <---->  reader

Affects all ways
author certainly influencing text
text certainly influencing reader

-RRC reader has more influence on the text, and even the author than before imagined

MAJOR CLAIM: writing is a creative act
   reading is also a creative act, play of imagination + intelligent

each reader brings new experiences, background, personal beliefs, influence perception of what was just read

create your own reader response
-what does it say (some interpretation)
-what does it mean (some personal background n beleifs)
-what does it matter? (put into own context)

-How do you identify with characters or situations?
-Try and imagine how I'd respond at different points in my life

EG, hamlet in prison

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 New source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=olFIaBgFIKA
Project Lit Crit: reader response criticism

interpreting a novel based on readers response.
If faretched, people aren't going to accept it...
WAIT this then means, something that IS plausible, would still obvioisly take note of the author and not completely kill them off wouldn't they? !!! This then wonderfully implies the need for context and a multiple wisdom of the crowd ideal.

-worried about the interaction between text + reader
- what a text is = what a text does
     text is something on paper, FACTS, what it does, is how it affects the reader (emotions) 

affective stylistics
Without a reader to AFFECT, text can have no meaning
no readers = no meaning
 has to read the text to have meaning

determinacy vs indeterminacy
determinacy = facts of the text (characters colour hair, where they went etc)
in = 'gaps' can't put your finger on what happened there, what isn't written (LOTS IN PHOTOGRAPH!)

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

next video source:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MfYDDD91Alw

limitations still exist, not every interpretation can be correct. YES

Not one set reading
not readers interpretation doesn't matter
not message set in stone

important people:
stanley fish
  interpretive community
  similar knowledge
wolfgang iser..
  believed opposite, reading is subjective process

Hans robert charles
  wrote "literary history as a challenge to literary theory"
  readers compare literary works to other works (horizon of expectations)
   focuses on artistic nature of a work
    reconstruction of horizons

I A RICHARDS
  difficulties of reading
   lots of bias from the reader
  





Simon Johnson www.thephilosophicalphotographer.co.uk

Intentional Fallacy
William K. Wimsatt Jr. + Monroe C. Beardley
1946, revised 1954

short essay...

page1

"We argued that the design or intention of the author is neither available nor desirable as a standard for judging the success of a work of literary art, and it seems to us that this is a principle which goes deep into some differences in the history of critical attitudes."

"It entails many specific truths about inspiration, authenticity, biography, literary history and scholarship, and about some trends of contemporary poetry, especially its allusiveness. There is hardly a problem of literary criticism in which the critic’s approach will not be qualified by his view of “intention.”  "

"Intention, as we shall use the term, corresponds to what he intended in a formula which more or less explicitly has had wide acceptance. “In order to judge the poet’s performance, we must know what he intended.” Intention is design or plan in the author’s mind. Intention has obvious affinities for the author’s attitude toward his work, the way he felt, what made him write."
  
series of propositions summarised and abstracted to a degree where they seem axiomatic (self evident)


 1
A poem does not come into existence by accident.
Yet to insist on the designing intellect as a cause of a poem is not to grant the design or intention as a standard by which the critic is to judge the worth of the poet’s performance.

2
One must ask how a critic expects to get an answer to the question about in- tention. How is he to find out what the poet tried to do? If the poet succeeded in doing it, then the poem itself shows what he was trying to do. And if the poet did not succeed, then the poem is not adequate evidence, and the critic
must go outside the poem—for evidence of an intention that did not become effective in the poem.

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" “the poet’s aim must be judged at the moment of the creative act, that is to say, by the art of the poem itself.” "

3
Judging a poem is like judging a pudding or a machine.

4
The meaning of a poem may certainly be a personal one, in the sense that a poem expresses a personality or state of soul rather than a physical ob- ject like an apple. But even a short lyric poem is dramatic, the response of a speaker (no matter how abstractly conceived) to a situation (no matter how universalized). We ought to impute the thoughts and attitudes of the poem immediately to the dramatic speaker, and if to the author at all, only by an act of biographical inference.

5
There is a sense in which an author, by revision, may better achieve his orig- inal intention. But it is a very abstract sense. He intended to write a better work, or a better work of a certain kind, and now has done it. But it follows that his former concrete intention was not his intention. “He’s the man we were in search of, that’s true,” says Hardy’s rustic constable, “and yet he’s not the man we were in search of. For the man we were in search of was not the man we wanted.”


“Is not a critic,” asks Professor Stoll, “a judge, who does not explore his own consciousness, but determines the author’s meaning of intention, as if the poem were a will, a contract, or the constitution?

 The poem is not the critic’s own and not the author’s (it is detached from the author at birth and goes about the world beyond his power to intend about it or control it). The poem belongs to the public. It is embodied in language, the peculiar possession of the public, and it is about the human being, an object of public knowledge. What is said about the poem is subject to the same scrutiny as any statement in linguistics or in the general science of psychology.

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A critic of our dictionary article, Ananda K. Coomaraswamy, has argued that there are two kinds of inquiry about a work of art: (1) whether the artist achieved his intentions; (2) whether the work of art “ought ever to have been undertaken at all” and so “whether it is worth preserving.

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Simon Johnson www.thephilosophicalphotographer.co.uk