Who is right? Barthes vs. Ong

When it comes to art, who has the power? The creator/artist or the observer/consumer? Does a writer’s authority dissipate once the reader comes into the scene? Should the relationship between a writer and their audiences contain a basis of equality? While the answers to these complex questions can be left solely to personal opinion, both Roland Barthes and Walter Ong expertly challenge the preconceived ideas of a writer and the audience and how that connection can completely alter
In Barthes groundbreaking piece “The Death of the Author”, he makes no shy attempts at making known his belief that in order for a work to gain meaning and value, the author must “die” to allow for the “birth” of the reader. At first, this concept comes across as completely nonsensical; if the author dies, then does the subsequent work die as well? Throughout his piece, Barthes challenges the unreachable pedestal that writers reside on, allowing their literary works to be tainted with their own personal life, tastes, and passions. In order to break the tyrannical power of the Author, Barthes pushes instead for “the language to speak, not the author” (Barthes, 875). Once the language speaks for itself, the readers are free to choose any explanation for a work without the constricting grip of the author’s opinions. Barthes goes on to acclaim the surrealist movement for their powerful strides in the “desacralization of the image of the Author by… entrusting the hand with the task of writing as quickly as possible what the head itself is unaware” (876). In doing so, the language becomes the origin of the work. With the language speaking directly to the reader, the reason for the author to exist becomes obsolete. As a result, “the birth of the reader must be at the cost of the Author.”

Although Barthes makes an astounding observation in letting the beauty of language flourish without the limitations of the authors physical earthly bonds, it leaves the question that without an author to write the work, wouldn’t the work abstain from existence in the first place? Is not the author the life-blood of literature that allows language to come forth and provide a reader a break from reality? In direct contrast to Barthes need for the author to die in order for the reader to live, in “The Writer’s Audience Is Always a Fiction” Ong raises the point that both the author and his readers or audience reside in a mutual, give and take relationship. Without one there is no other.

While Ong points out the differences between a speaker and his audience, and a writer and his readers, he maintains the idea of the author “fictionalizing” his audience in order for their own beliefs, contexts, and explanations to shine through. With this concept in mind, many writers enjoy challenging this relationship to create innovative, groundbreaking works. For example, in Italo Calvino’s novel, If on a winter’s night a traveler, he casts the readers in role as the main character where they are the one’s experiencing the adventures in the story. Although Calvino is obviously leading where the story goes, he allows the readers to explore their own experience as the main character. For Ong, this novel precisely represents the concept of casting the readers in a role and fictionalizing their existence.

Though it is incorrect to assume either Barthes or Ong must be right, they raise astute observations on the ever-changing concept of the relationship between the author and the readers. They equally value the importance of language and the right for the reader to choose their given meaning of a work. While Barthes veers off and claims the author should remain obsolete in order for the much needed connection between the language and the reader to occur, Ong takes it a step further and allows both the author and the reader to enjoy a mutually beneficial relationship which permits the work to flourish.

-Clare Davis

Barthes, Roland. “The Death of the Author.” The Critical Tradition: Classic Texts and Contemporary Trends, Third Edition. Ed. David H. Richter. Boston, MA: Bedford/St. Martins, 2007. 868, 874-77.

Ong, Walter J. “The Writer’s Audience Is Always a Fiction.” PMLA 90 (1975): 9-21.

"What Is an Author?" and "The Death of the Author"

Both deal with how the demise of the author allows for an active reader. I think that it is important to realize or understand that the death of the author doesn’t mean the physical ending of the person but rather the disappearance of the direct link between the author and his written work.One way in which the author dies is when he loses his voice leaving only the writing. The importance placed on the author is a relatively new idea, which combines the person with their work (Barthes 875).  

Post-Authorial Musings of Barthes and Foucault

 According to both Roland Barthes and Michel Foucault, as a social construct, the notion of the “Author” is the product of convenience and self-interest – to literary critics, to the assumed author’s capitalistic pursuit of “ownership,", and to theological tradition’s conditioned adherents. It is an opportunistic reduction, and one that has been thoroughly exploited by its beneficiaries.

Dear Anthropologists of the Future...

              When I was a child I addressed my diaries to scientists living hundreds of years in the future. My reasoning was that one day my diary entries could be one of the few remaining artifacts of human life in the early millennium and that it would be cool if I addressed these scientists directly. I was an incredibly strange child; but after reading Ong's "The Writer's Audience is Always Fiction" I began to consider if this strange practice was something that all writers do on some level. Ong describes that when writing the author must fictionalize the audience in order to create the intended experience for the reader. He describes how written communication will often provide a more intimate and excluded experience for the reader; rather than verbal communication which tends to be more communal in nature. Ong describes the most notable example of an author fictionalizing their audience would be the works of Hemingway. In his writings he speaks to the reader directly as if they are a close friend. This writing technique allows the writer to feel included in the storyline and more interconnected with the dialogue. While writing to future anthropologists might be an extreme example of fictionalizing an audience; at its core it shares the same characteristics of many of our writings today.

Foucault - Ong

Ong raises an interesting concept:  that “the audience is a fiction” (12). The two ways an audience may be fictionalized are distinguished as “the writer must construct in his imagination… an audience,” and “a reader has to play the role in which the author has cast him (Ong 12). Agency and power may relate to these functions, pertaining to the authorization (no pun intended) and capability of the author and readership to perform these fictionalizations.

The effects of the dual fictionalization of an audience are examined hypothetically in reference to a diary (Ong 20). The quote “And to what self is he talking?” (Ong 20), correlates with Foucault’s concept of the author-function. It could be possible that the fictionalization of audiences is a result of the author-function. This would mean that both the readership and author are necessary for the author-function and the fictionalization of the audience. As described, the author-function “does not refer purely and simply to a real individual, since it can give rise simultaneously to several selves,” (Foucault 910).

Foucault, Michel. “What Is an Author?” The Critical Tradition: Classic Texts and Contemporary Trends, Third Edition. Ed. David H. Richter. Boston, MA: Bedford/St. Martins, 2007. 904-914.

Ong, Walter J. “The Writer’s Audience Is Always a Fiction.” PMLA 90 (1975): 9-21.

ong / barthes - writers audience

After reading Ong's writings on the writers audience I began to question some of what he was saying. To me it seemed that he was implying that because a writer's audience was removed by time and space it would become harder to implement rhetorical devices. This seems true because, as Ong states, so much of rhetoric is transferred orally and physically from a speaker to their audience. However, Ong brings up the notion that because an audience is listening to something and in one collective place, an orator has more control over and knowledge of the audience than the writer does. On page 3 Ong gives the example of an audience that has written word. He writes that when the audience looks down to read the text the become individuals and must then be collected again when they return to listening. However, to me it seems that even though an audience is collective listening to an orator they would still be bringing their own ideas, experiences and opinions to the table and therefore considered individual from one another.

As I read on Ong described in more detail why an audience must fictionalize their audience. He states "the student is not talking, he is writing. No one is listening. There is no feedback. Where does he find his audience? He has to make readers up, fictionalize them." Here Ong is implying that an oral speaker does not have to do this, because their audience is presented in front of them. However just because there is a physical audience does not mean that an orator knows who is his audience is. In many ways he must still fictionalize them. Furthermore, today we are surrounded by technology that allows a speaker to be deeply removed from his audience while giving a rhetorical speech. Where does the line get drawn between a present and collective audience and a fictionalized and individual one?

Barthes writes more on how the piece of writing is removed from the writer and therefore becomes an individual and therefore becomes "neutral" and void of any voice. However, this again seems to be deeply connected to the presence of a body in a rhetorical situation. Barthe speaks less of the writers lack of connection with the audience and more of the author creating an individual piece of work. I began to think about how this could be considered today with writing on the internet or anon pieces of text. In this sense, does the text lose some of it's rhetorical power?

- Estes

Ong, Barthes & Audience

There is one quote in Ong's essay that I believe ties up his idea of audience very well. Ong writes, “For the speaker, the audience is in front of him. For the writer, the audience is simply further away, in time or space or both. A surface inscribed with information can neutralize time by preserving the information to its recipient over distances that sound cannot traverse" (Ong, 10)

Authors and Audiences

An author really never dies. If anything, a text is a series of observations frozen in it's own time and frozen in it's own context. With a simple perspective change from common-courtesy constructive-criticism (which every author has to adapt to), the author responds to stimuli from the audience and changes the nature of his work, whether through revision or a reinvention. Calling an author dead just because the audience read his/her work once seems to me like a typical English-major abstracting hyperbole.

For instance, if a well known author writes a children's book involving a serial killer clown and the book gets shut down by an editor before reaching a major audience, did the author die at any point of that process? There are still words written on the paper and there's still technically an audience of one with the editor, but nobody "died" in that scenario. Unless you count having one horrible book being read by one editor as dying, then all that happened was a precursor to revision so the book will be better received. Even works of art are liable to be judged against their Plato-esque perfect potential form.

So, the question that I'm perplexed about, really, is "How does revision tie into the idea of author-death?" Obviously an author will respond to criticism if it's presented well and is rational, and obviously an author's writing is a personal endeavor in the sense that the right words, thoughts, idioms, points, and counterpoints were all formulated in one brain. What this means is that nobody dies in the process. During the writing process an author will be thinking of the audience but only a shill and sell-out would write for the sole purpose of mass-appeal. An author has to put a part of his soul into his work or the words on the page will be inauthentic and reeking with formulation. While responding to criticism, the author can make changes to his work to adapt to his predicted audience as a sort of compromise between sender and recipient. Nobody's dying, but there's still fighting going on.

Ong said that writing is based off of orality on page 9, and that's probably true. Yet, writing is a time capsule of words accessible every time an author's work is read. There is no instantaneous mistakes to be made in writing the way there is with oral language. In written language there are no Freudian slips, no tongue twisting tongue twisters, and all because of time and the possibility of revision letting authors have the time and authority to craft a better, more developed product than if they were improvising verbally.

Unlike Barthes on page 845, I don't think any author dies, ever. Writing is like an absentee opinion or observation. In the most crude example I can think up, the graffiti spray painter is not there when you read "Down with the system! -Carl", but you understand that there at least was a Carl and that he had these particular thoughts about the system at one point or another. I believe that in a similar mechanism as in Foucault's author function, if that graffiti somehow escapes a painting over for 5,000 years, the same observation could be made about Carl, bringing him back to life. In writing, there is no death like in other technologies, especially with the internet.

The Audience and The Author: Ong vs. Barthes

What is the purpose of art if there is not an audience to observe it? What makes an audience? How many people does it take? How long must the art be observed by a the audience in order for them to be considered with such a title? Walter Ong attempts to answer these complicated questions while explaining the ideas he has on the topic of an “audience.”

"Original" is alive and well!

Focusing on Barthes, I will attempt to describe the many thoughts raised to me that comes from something he pointed out. Barthes says that "text is a multidimensional space in which a variety of writings, none original, blend and clash; a tissue of quotations drawn from innumerable centers of culture..." (p.876 "Death of the Author). In other words, writing is the Death of the Author because the language and words one uses to write with, itself, is preconceived. He further explains saying that the only person that can be original and really own their work is a scriptor. Why? Because scriptors are the first ever to write down the new language. You would think that knowing this, that I would believe that that would mean anything anyone ever writes is already separate from the author, "where [all] subject slips away, the negative where all identity is lost..." (p.874 "Death of the Author"). However, I do think it is possible for something to NOT be a remix, and original. "WHAT?" You say? "HOW?" Here's why:

Complications between the writer and reader

An agent is someone or something that represents something else. There was a question presented in class; "Can passive observers be an agent?" For the purpose of answering this question, I will conclude that an observer can very well be an audience member or an individual reader.  The term is interchangeable. The reader and writer can be an agent. The reader can view him/herself as just a reader, but to the writer, s/he needs the reader to be more for the purposes of the writers work to be decoded with clarity or truth. The reader is subscribing to the writer’s agency.

But a writer can be subscribing to the reader’s agency in the sense of writing successfully to the reader, the writer must impose certain ‘traits’ into their writing.

Put to death yourself in order to revive someone else...

In Roland Barthes' essay, "The Death of the Author", Barthes stresses the importance of a writer's realization that his work is not his own. As writers, we die every time we start a sentence. And though we may die, that does not mean that the text is not alive and well.

"No doubt it has always been that way. As soon as a fact is narrated no longer with a view to acting directly on reality but intransitively, that is to say, finally outside of any function other than that of the very practice of the symbol itself, this disconnection occurs, the voice loses its origin, the author enters into his own death, writing begins," (Barthes 875).

As writers, we become so tied to our writing. It's our personal thoughts and opinions, even if fact based, that push us to show, explain, and visualize for other people on paper. What I find interesting about the thought of putting yourself to death as a writer, once you begin writing, is that as much as we want people to see I wrote this, the reader just reads the text. They read the text, they analyze it for themselves, they form their own opinions about the subject matter, and all many times without ever thinking of who wrote what they're reading.

Game of Literacy

In Walter Ong's essay "The Writers Audience is always Fiction" begins with an introduction into rhetoric, reminding us that rhetoric began with a focus on orality before making the shift into writing (Ong, 9). With this, there is an evolving audience that forms in situations of the spoken word and the written word. "For the speaker, the audience is in front of him. For the writer, the audience is simply further away, in time or space or both." (Ong, 10) Perhaps what I did not consider before is Ong's distinction between "Audience", a collective noun and "Readers", a plural (Ong, 11). A group of readers do not act collectively to a written work in the same way an audience would react to a speech. It is in the "game of literacy" the reader must conform to the writer; does this still give birth to the reader at the cost of "killing" the author?

Where Barthes Fails and Ong Prevails

The audience has played an undeniably crucial role in writing since the day the art began. The study of it and it’s nuances, however, has begun fairly recently. It is quite curious that scholars of literature have taken so long to acknowledge the role that the reader plays in the text’s inception and its reception. Perhaps this is hindsight bias on my part; now that I have begun to study the works of Roland Barthes and Walter Ong, as well as their contemporaries, the idea seems quite obvious. This apparent existence of the reader as relevant seems to be as far as Barthes takes his argument. Ong, however, unravels the mutual fictionalization between the author and the reader to paint a much more complicated yet comprehensive picture of the most essential consideration in writing of all time.

Ong and Barthes: Construction of Audience and its Shifting Modern Significance

As writers, insofar as we strive to be insightful, compelling, and entertaining ones, we often face an objective myriad of hurdles, be it challenges of maintaining the attention of our readers, internal strife over crucial stylistic choices, or even just struggling to imagine the real context of our piece's use. The more I read on rhetorical theory, the more I begin to realize such common obstacles are at once innately connected to one another and yet often hold individually-defined solutions.  Ong reassures us that writers must plant and sustain a certain "fictionalization" of their audiences in order to make their pieces blossom with resonance to the most distant of readers, yet also highlights that the process is more often than not a relative procedure, so long as it operates smoothly enough within the boundaries of its readers' culture and assumptions.  In attempting to dissect Ong's ideas with respect to a modern audience, do his ideas still hold true? At what point do issues of hypertext, multimodality, and technological immediacy in general begin to skew the data? No doubt the culture of 2015 is a bit removed from that of 1975, but certain tenets of readership laid out by Ong and Barthes persist today, if in a more fittingly accessible variety.

Ong's Fictionalizing Process

In Ong’s essay “The Writer’s Audience is always Fiction,” he discusses what he refers to as the fictionalizing process of an audience, which is pivotal in establishing an author reader relationship. Ong believes that without this relationship a writer can not effectively speak to his audience. Ong briefly discusses the ways in which this relationship is created by an author with his examples of Faulkner and Hemingway. Faulkner’s diction and complexity make his works quite difficult to read, which Ong argues is Faulkner’s intention. Faulkner seems to have intended for highly educated, almost academic elite to be the ones studying his works, a very specific audience.

The Role of the author in the 21st Century

In today's modern society, electronic word processing, the Internet, and social media have given rise to a proliferation of constant, instantaneous publishing. As anyone can publish their works on a digital platform from nearly anywhere in the world, the role of the author function must be reconsidered.

Foucault considers the author to serve as a function by which to associate any writings of a similar style. This function can also impede interpretation, as the author's aura will seem to surpass the text itself and render it to be viewed with a sort of bias. Therefore, in order for a text to be truly free and open for discourse, the author must not be associated with it. However, a text can not exist without the author. Due to the the exponential advancement of technology, more people than ever are writing and publishing new pieces every day. Does this rise in writing lead to a rise in authorship? Or is the opposite true?

According to Foucault, the to be considered a true author, some epistemology must be considered. An authored work requires a body of effort put into it, such as research, drafts, development, and notes. Foucault also limits the author function to that of mostly rhetorical and literary fields, citing a private letter as not being truly authored. Is this restriction limited to just physically published works? Certainly not, as the very writers on this blog could be considered authors by Foucault's standards.

To state that an author serves as a function to inhibit the free interpretation of a text is false. In a sense, the opposite is true: the author serves to aid the identity of a text. The plays of Tennessee Williams are regarded as being great because of Williams's eccentrically charming style. The author is just as much a part of the text as the words, plot, and characters. In today's world, millions of people are learning to develop their own writing style, and could-and should-be considered authors.


-Max C.

The "Presence" of an Audience

In Walter J Ong's "The Writer's Audience is Always a Fiction", he explains the difference between an orator's audience and a writer's audience. One main distinction had to do with time. He writes, "the spoken word is part of present actuality and it has its meaning established by the total situation in which it comes into being" (Ong 10). While it is true that a writer does not have to consider the very present moment, I believe he must consider the moment in which he will have an audience. That moment, when the audience is reading his work, is their present moment. Since the present for the writer, while writing, is technically the future for the reader when he reads, the writer must think of the reader in their own present.

It's a bird...it's a plane...no, it's an AUDIENCE!

I have imagined myself as a world-famous author before. I am sure many English majors have. And when I do, I consider the individual people who would be reading my book: my mother, my best friend, my priest, high school teachers. It's not something I can really control. You see, when people choose what to wear for the day, they consider a multitude of things - the temperature and weather, their activities, the setting of their activities, and the people they will see. The people they will see! Many will beg to differ, but a large portion of people determine their clothes based on the fact that they need to be presentable to a group of other humans. I originally thought it was the same for novels, but this is probably because it was the same for me, at least to a certain degree.

Ong: Audience and Reader

Ong's text 'The Writers Audience is Always a Fiction' highlights a few of the most interesting and complicated themes in Barthes and Foucault's views on the Author. Ong begins this text with a couple quotes from Cicero, in which Cicero muses on the role of the author and writing within his own terms. One of the quotes states: "When there is nothing to write about, one writes himself". Considering our discussions concerning 'Death of the Author' and 'What is an Author', this view is a bit jarring. One of the many ideas within these two texts is that an author must die, not simply retreat into the work, but disappear from it entirely. So how does Ong fit into this perspective with his text on audiences?

Writers, Authors and athors

In Barthes’, "The Death of an Author” he talks about two different types of authors. Authors with a capital A and author with a lowercase a. Author means the language or discourse of the writer in the overall view of the text. While “author” refers to a writer implementing the language in the text. The text is called “The Death of an Author” because Barthes implies that an author must die in order for the reader or writer to be born. The literal meaning of death is not implied but rather it symbolizes the fact what must be moved out of the way in order for the text to be focused on something other than the author. Readers are born within the text and their role is meaningless without the text and their interpretation of what the Author or author is trying to say.  So one must ask themselves, who is more important? The author or the Author? And what makes one more important or powerful than the other?

In Ong’s, “The Writer is Always a Fiction” he starts of by saying that a lot of literature and text is dedicated to discussing the relationship between oral and written and oral verbalization but not much is ever focused on the audience. Now what does he mean by audience? According to Ong the relationship of audience to writing is the “situation inscribes communication established and to the roles that the readers as readers are consequently called on to play”. Just as Barthe gives importance to the Authot or author, Ong gives importance to the audience implying that they are an important part of the overall reading and writing experience. He touches on the difference of location of an audience depending if you are speaker or a writer. A speaker places the audience before him. But the writer has a space between him and the audience whether it is in time or space.

Part two of Ong’s “The Writer is Always a Fiction” clearly summarizes the main point of the text saying that:

“These reflections suggest, or are meant to suggest,that there exists a tradition in fictionalizing audiences that is a component part of literary tradition in the sense in which literary tradition is discussed in T. S. Eliot's "Tradition and the Individual Talent." A history of the ways audiences have been called on to fictionalize themselves would be a correlative of the history of literary genres”

Is J.K. Rowling Really Dead? (Barthes, Aristotle)

Is the author really dead? Barthes' Death of an Author, Barthes asserts that in order for writing to begin, the role of the author must die. Barthes' stance on a text's significance is clear; a text is defined in its destination, rather than its origin. A text, once removed from a creator's superimposed meaning, can finally be freed.

Are character and agent equivalent? Does either have agency?

These questions were posed in our class discussion and they require further analysis. When discussing Foucault, Barthes, and Aristotle, we traced character and agent. Therefore we separated them into two different terms. This implies two separate meanings, however we didn't define character (for ourselves or for our authors). This begs the question, why have we separated them? what is the difference?

Ong, Aristotle and the Separation Between Writer and Written Work

Emotions are a controversial topic. People push them aside, put them front and center, and use them to set up their arguments and convince others to do what they want them to do. However, too strong an influence from emotions and situations get messy. In his essay "The Writer's Audience Is Always A Fiction", Ong discusses how the writer and the audience gets involved in a work. Ong claims that the audience is kept at a distance, but given a role in following along with what the narrator says to move the story along (Ong, 13). Any stronger involvement of the reader, and the story would fall apart.

An Elaboration on Dialectic: Origins, Dialectical Criticism & The Exploration of Barthes' Application

First and foremost, the concept of dialectic was originally developed by Greek philosophers, more specifically Socrates and Plato, (Murfin & Ray 110). It is “a form and method of logical argumentation” that usually “addresses conflicting ideas or positions,” (Murfin & Ray 110). In its plural form, dialectics aim to resolve any “contradiction between opposing ideas,” (Murfin & Ray 110). Its main use is for argumentative purposes, and to further explain the two sides of an argument, using their duality to reach a new conclusion from the two presented spectrums. Dialectic is rooted in the art of investigation and of discourse. It is a discussion and more so treated as dialogue between two sides of a greater truth. The end result is the outcome of the synthesis of the two opinions at hand.
 

Understanding Actuality Through Fiction

Throughout Walter Ong’s “The Audience is Always a Fiction”, and less often yet still prevalent in Barthes “The Death of the Author”, the reigning theme of performance is at the center. The writer must cast readers into “roles” and the reader must take up these roles in order to fulfill their end of the performance. Performance governs every aspect of communication, and even as “love” can come close to breaking down the “masks” with which we constantly perform, they cannot be completely unveiled, even in respect to ourselves (Ong 20).

Barthes & Ong: Audience Interpretation Differences

After reading Ong, I  noticed that he focuses on words that we barely pay attention to. For example, "audience"and "reader". Ong explains the difference of the two and how one is a collective noun and how the other isn't. His point in mentioning that is to say that an audience is a collective noun but if a speaker asks the audience to read something silently then at that point they are going into their own separate  reading minds. Answering the questions posed in the blog if the audience has not experienced what the author is talking about, imagination can always come into place for you to think outside the box. I don't think that should stop the audience from connecting with the author. The readers can also listen to details that are given in the text to picture what is happening.

“First, that the writer must construct in his imagination, clearly or vaguely, an audience cast in some sort of role-entertainment seekers, reflective sharers of experience, inhabitants of a lost and remembered world of prepubertal latency, and so on,” (12). This quote basically means that the writer must also meet the audience half-way so that they can understand where the writer is coming from. That connects the writer and reader together and the point in which the writer was trying to make will end up being conveyed. 

"Oral strorytelling is a two way street." (16) This is true because oral is can only be told through verbal dialect. Whereas, writing and printing can be interpreted in different ways since no one is physically reading it to you. That allows your mind to wander to different places and interpret the main points in different ways. 

Now as far as Barthes goes in "The Death of the Author" he feels that the reader should interpret the content of the article in a way that makes sense and has meaning to them. That way they will feel as if they understood something and got something from the text. Ong feels as if the reader interpretation doesn't matter. Clearly Ong and Barthes have different views. 
Kelshay Toomer

Barthes, Roland. “The Death of the Author.” The Critical Tradition: Classic Texts and Contemporary Trends, Third Edition. Ed. David H. Richter. Boston, MA: Bedford/St. Martins, 2007. 868, 874-877.

Ong,Walter J. “The Writer’s Audience Is Always a Fiction.” PMLA 90 (1975): 9-21.

 

Aristotle's Thoughts on Choice

Aristole's Choice

In Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle discuss in depth, the idea of choice. Aristotle starts by discussing how choice is usually thought of as a voluntary act, but says that “Children and the lower animals including men are capable of voluntary action, but not of choice. Also sudden acts may be termed voluntary, but they cannot be said to be done by choice” (129). Aristotle is trying to distinguish the difference between what a voluntary act is and what a choice is. He then goes into explaining why some people would “identify Choice with Desire, or Passion, or Wish or some form of Opinion” (129) 

How do desires effect our everyday choices? Aristotle argues that “man of defective self-restraint acts from desire but not from choice; and on the contrary a self-restrained man acts from choice and not desire.” (129) What he means by this is that people who react quickly to situations with out thinking, don’t do this by choice. Its an irrational reaction to something we find “pleasant or painful” (131) based on desire. Whereas a person who would rationalize before acting, does there act by choice, and not desire. Aristotle’s thoughts on choices effect by passion are simple. Basically, how can something from be a deliberate choice if it is driven by passion. I have to agree with this. Like desire, humans tend to think irrationally when they are very passionate about something. Many horrific crimes are considered to be “crimes of passion”. 

Its hard to say that a wish can effect your choices or that a wish is a choice. You can choose to do something impossible to you can wish to do something impossible. Aristotle makes a great argument when he says “we wish rather for ends than for means, but choose the means to our end”(131). Our wishes for what we want later on in life effect the choices we make today. Wishing to get into doctorate school you’ll probably choose to study for the exams. 

Aristotle then goes on to mention that choice can not be an opinion either. I agree with Aristotle that choices are thought of as being “good” or “bad”, but disagree when he says that “we distinguish opinion by its truth or falsehood”. How can you call someones opinion either “true” or “false”. Its all based on their own opinion. But then you have to think of how this opinion was developed.  Aristotle makes a good point though by saying “we choose only things we absolutely know to be good, we opine things we do not certainly know to be true”. (131) 

After reading this article I was thinking of act that I did the other day. While sitting at a red light I decided to take a right turn at a light that had a “No Turn on Red” sign above it. Why did I make this choice. In my opinion running lights like this is bad. On the other hand I wish I could make it to class on time and I have a desire to be there. Based on Aristotle’s theory of choice I believe this was a voluntary act and not a choice. “Choice involves reasoning and some process of thought” (133). In this instance I wasn’t thinking rationally of the consequences that could come from this action. Overall I can agree with Aristotle’s theory that choices are not always as thought out as planned. There are many different variables that can taint the choices we make. 

-Sam

Disentangling Barthes

I found it ironic that the text that contained Barthes’ essay prefaced “The Death of the Author” with a brief biography. The irony lies in how Barthes’ essay argues for the deconstruction of a text, that an active reader disentangles away from the Author. When one is too focused on who the Author is it clouds the writing, Barthes claims it kills voice. In order to do so the capital-A Author must “die” and what proceeds is the “birth” of the reader.            

A Close Companion On The Internet

In the article “The Writer’s Audience is always a Fiction,” Walter Ong discusses the nuances entangled with the use of the word “audiences” used by writers, readers, and scholars to discuss the readership (“there is no collective noun for readers”) of a text (11). Professor Graban offered us some guiding questions to better understand the article, and I decided to explore how Ong’s conceptualization of the “audience” might be even more complicated to interpret in a modern context.He describes the difficulty a writer has in choosing an audience when writing a novel, ”For the speaker, the audience is in front of him. For the writer, the audience is simply further away, in time or space or both” (10). 

Ong's Fictional Audience

Growing up in the generation that we are in, a generation defined by our technology and digital tools, our lives (in all aspects) have been both altered and transformed by the use of technology. Walter Ong states that "except for a small corps of highly trained writers, most persons could get into written form few if any of the complicated and nuanced meanings they regularly convey orally". Coming from the technology driven generation, this made me personally think about text messaging. In fact, the entire argument Ong presents about the fictional audience directly correlates with the art of text messaging and just how the genres of literature have transformed from oral to written, communication has as well and therefore so has the meanings and audiences behind it.

The Evolution of the Reader

In Ong's "The Writer's Audience is Always a Fiction" and in Barthes' "The Death of the Author" both writers emphasize the importance of the reader/audience. In many ways I feel that recognizing and analyzing the role of the reader is a concept that has developed gradually. Barthes, for example, would consider the reader and the language itself in a work of writing as being just as powerful agents as the actual author. Additionally, one of Ong's best examples of an author who has a deep connection with the reader is Ernest Hemingway (a 20th century writer). In all of these instances I find a common denominator, and that is TIME. Ong, Barthes, and Foucalt all transfer power from the author to the reader in their works that are published after the 1960's.

Foucault's 'Author-Function' and Ong's 'Writer'

In Michel Foucault’s “What is an Author,” he lays out the criteria for what he calls the author-function. These criteria specify that the author-function is linked to the institutional system that determines and articulates the universe of discourse. The criteria also state that the author-function does not affect all discourse in the same way, and that it is not defined by a spontaneous attribution of a discourse to one person, but is rather a complex series of operations (Foucault 910). By stating these criteria, Foucault attempts to define the author’s role beyond the mere implementation of language. In Walter Ong’s “The Writer’s Audience is Always a Fiction,” he expands that definition. To begin, Ong cites Henry James’s claim that an author “makes his reader very much as he makes his character” (Ong 9). In this light, Foucault’s ‘author-function’ and Ong’s ‘writer’ take on many of the same characteristics.

Barthes and Ong Debate: The Role of the Reader

Ong and Barthes aim to define the role of the prospective reader. By using these two works in together, we may be able to understand how readers are able to take on a variety of roles.

Ong suggests the Author of the “text” fictionalizes the prospective audience explains how the Author is able to maintain an active role. He premises his argument on the idea that rhetoric has slowly evolved from primarily oratory to written speech. Therefore, the shifting in becoming a reader doesn’t assume the same collectivity as being an audience member (Ong 10). He believes that this type of transition has contributed to the idea of “each new role that readers are made to assume is related to previous roles” (Ong 12). He argues that reader’s role “evolve without any explicit rules or directives “ by using Hemingway’s style as an example. 

Ong: He May Not Be Wrong About Us, The Audience?

Walter Ong presents an interesting point about an audience in his writing. His two stances on orators and writers is interesting in that these two do indeed, have two separate audiences that have to be looked at differently to be the most effective.

Authorship and the Active Reader According to Foucault and Barthes

The importance of the active reader is an underlying theme in both Barthes's "Death of the Author" and Foucault's "What is an Author?" At first glance, Barthes may seem to be arguing for the need to get rid of the author as a figurehead and Foucault may just be describing how an author becomes a figurehead, but the overall, both texts seem to be stressing the need for active readers in order to look past the figurehead author. 

Textual Unity Through Disconnected Voice

“A text's unity lies not in its origin but in its destination”

The above quotation comes from Ronald Barthes The Death of the Author, in order to decipher its significance Ronald Bathes, Michel Foucault and Walter J. Ong's conceptions of author-reader relationship will be analyzed along side the writers notions of immortality. The persistent duality between reader and writer creates a paradigm by which all writing can be perceived.

Barthes & Ong: Audience and Fictionalization

We have come across some very interesting pieces of text since the term began, but we each have a different or similar favorite read that has been discussed recently in class. Roland Barthes “The Death of the Author” and Walter Ong’s “The Writer’s Audience Is Always a Fiction,” are both interesting texts that have differences on what defines an “audience,” “author,” and a “reader.” However, Ong defines “fictionalization” which focuses on the audience while also discussing how the writers words are interpreted by the audience or reader. According to Ong there are two definitions, the first focuses on the role of a writer/ author, “First, that the writer must construct in his imagination, clearly or vaguely, an audience cast in some sort of role-entertainment seekers, reflective sharers of experience, inhabitants of a lost and remembered world of prepubertal latency, and so on,” (12). However, the second definition, which I was confused with its meaning, is about what an audience is and how it is a fiction, “Second, we mean that the audience must correspondingly fictionalize itself. A reader has to play the role in which the author has cast him, which seldom coincides with his role in the rest of actual life,” (12). Although he gives examples on what defines an audience, what is Ong saying when he states how the reader is playing a role that corresponds with their life?

Is authorship important?

Authorship comes into question in the subject of Barthes essay "Death of the Author." Throughout his essay, Barthes analyzes the idea of what is considered to be an author. He does this through an analysis of what an author is vs. the importance of knowing who the author is. In our society today, we consider authorship too much of an importance in our readings. Many works today are collaborations, mashups, or remixes of another person's original thought. So then who becomes the author here?

Barthes agrees with Mallarme when discussing the idea that language is what is speaking to us, not the author (875). When the reader is able to actively read the essay and the language it uses, there is a better interpretation then that of when trying to think of what the author is trying to say. When discussing what authorship is, the ideas become harmful, according to Barthes, because the idea of authorship is lost. We become obsessive over the idea of who the author is rather than fully understand the meaning and the language of the text. 

Death and the Written Word

According to both Barthes and Foucault, writing and death have much in common. For both authors, the writer is dead once the words are written on the page. According to the two, the author must exit in order for the audience to properly understand and interpret the text. The text is about the language, structure, and form, not about the writing's relationship to the writer. In order to have a true relationship with what you're reading, text must cut all ties with it's creator, symbolically killing the author in the process.

Audience or Readership??

According to Ong, "Words are never fully determined in their abstract significance but have meaning only with relation to man's body and its interaction with surrounding" (10). In other words, words have no meaning in isolation, but derive meaning when used in a certain context or through a particular medium; whether spoken or written."The spoken word is part of the present actuality and has meaning established by the total situation in which it comes to being" (10). The spoken word and the written word have or may imply different meanings because of the different settings in which they may be said or written. For example, a speech given by Martin Luther King Jr. in the 1960s would yield different significance if it were to be given today. Subsequently, if those very words were to be printed, they would also yield different meanings, because of the audience/ readership and the circumstances.  

ENG 4020: Blog Post 1

The main focus of this exploration will be the relation of action to choice and the will in light of epistemologies proffered by Aristotle and Barthes. First of all, Aristotle makes a distinction between voluntary and involuntary action. The main difference involves the fact that involuntary action requires two conditions, 1: that the act is performed out of ignorance, meaning that it is outside the agent, and thus contributing nothing (Aristotle, 121) and 2: that the action was performed out of ignorance. (Aristotle, 123) Therefore, a voluntary action means that the action was performed by the actor with his full consciousness and in freedom with all required information. Compulsion, while distinct and important to identify in how actions are carried out, still should be part of the actor, because the will initiates the action, although certain circumstances may move the intellect to do something that are not in freedom, one example being that a person threatens your life or another’s life if you do not perform a certain action. Although you don’t will the action in itself, you do will the safety of yourself or loved one more than the undesirable outcome you are being coerced into. With this, the will still ultimately prevails, just not in the direct result of the action one performs, but the circumstantial consequence that was added conditionally. Additionally, Aristotle would affirm that an action done from ignorance is not voluntary because the actor does not have all the information necessary to properly understand the consequences of the action. While this is true, and culpability on the actor would be dramatically reduced, the action itself was still voluntary, and the will is still totally involved, but ignorance may delegitimize the action, and so the actor may act in ignorance, but he/she still acts. In other words, the man still does something, but whether or not he can be held responsible for the ethical implications is contingent upon the awareness of the consequences of that action. Aristotle then contends that choice, which is categorized under a kind of voluntary action, is not related to choices, passions wishes and opinion. (Aristotle, 129-130) Discipline and self-restraint, when exercised properly, keep man from taking voluntary actions that are done out of passionate desires. The reason choice is distinct is because Aristotle considers it a voluntary action that has been done with deliberation, but deliberation is not what distinguishes choice. Choice is a voluntary action, but an action motivated by passion or otherwise is still a choice, and a decision in passion may still have been thoughtfully deliberate upon. The distinction Aristotle makes is not one of choice versus voluntary action that is not choice, but between a prudent, or good, virtuous choice, and a poor, dishonorable, choice without virtue. Indeed, deliberation makes a choice more intentional, and almost certainly can be considered generally to be done either of less ignorance or without ignorance as a result. Choice, then, is behind every action done by an actor. Whether for the direct result as it affects them or one they care for or for avoiding an unwanted result (affecting them or one they care for) in the absence of an action. The actor chooses, and such choice extends from the will. The degree to which the will was involved is contingent on the circumstance under which the action was taken. A choice to do something one would otherwise not choose to do under threat of an undesirable result otherwise that comes from the action of the one who threatens initiates the threatened actor to choose to obey. The actor still has a choice to disobey, but at the end, the actor will choose to obey or disobey out of a personal cost-benefit analysis of the circumstance they think will exist after their choice. If a man had a gun to the head of another man’s mother and threatened to shoot her if he didn’t kill his father, the man must make the choice based on various factors, such as how likely he thinks it is the man will actually carry out his threat of killing his mother, and whether he thinks it likely that if he kills his father, the man will not kill his mother, These and other factors contribute to the man making a decision that result in the most desirable outcome he thinks possible.

-Matt

Aristotle, Barthes, and "Meaning"

In his Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle discusses in depth some of the notions of capital-g-Goodness that contribute to a person’s virtue. Some of these notions include capital-h-Happiness, Good versus Ideal Good, virtue in relation to honor, voluntary action versus involuntary action versus nonvoluntary action, choice, and deliberation. Of these, the most intriguing topic to me is that of voluntary, involuntary, and nonvoluntary action, particularly in relation to choice, ignorance, and compulsion.

The Perplexing Tales of Barthes and Ong

If you haven’t done so yet, you’ll find Walter Ong’s piece, “The Writer’s Audience Is Always A Fiction”, an interesting read in comparison to something we read and discussed in our last class, “The Death of the Author” by Roland Barthes. I am here to put these two reads into conversation with each other, discussing Ong’s obsession with “audience” and “fictionalization,” and comparing it to Barthes’ attraction to the “author,” while also addressing two of our discussion leading terms: dialectic and epistemology.

A Fundamental Audience Entices Literature

Walter Ong's, "The Writer's Audience is Always Fiction" discusses how a piece of literature affects an audience. Ong states that, "a writer addresses readers only, he does not quite 'address' them either: he writes to or for them" (Ong 11). Ong correlates an audience as 'fiction' in order to prove that a piece of literature cannot hold substantial value if an audience is not present. Ong defines an audience by two separate definitions: "First, that the writer must construct in his imagination, clearly or vaguely, an audience cast in some sort of role-entertainment seekers, reflective sharers of experience, inhabitants of a lost and remembered world of perpubertal latency and so on" (Ong 12). The second part of the definition states that the "audience must correspondingly fictionalize itself" (Ong 12).

Ong: The Writer's Audience is Always Fiction vs. Bathes: The Death of the Author

Every writer and every author is different. Although they may write similar pieces of work, no two authors or writers are ever the same. Yet, we as readers, or audience members, have come to the conclusion that the writer and the author hardly hold a purpose anymore. Throughout Roland Barthes' article, we as the audience are told that the author dies at some point in the process between the creation or idea of a novel and the completion or the end of said novel.

How can we as writers and authors interpret this in a positive light? It causes us to think, at one point to I die and at what point to I lose myself and my authorship in this piece of writing? Although to the author the benefits of writing and substantial and incomparable, the author still feels this sense of loss when a piece of writing has been completed. Whether it be the sense of loss within himself or within his novel, it is still a sense of loss none the less.

The Three Stooges

In Foucault's What Is An Author, he speaks about who/what the author is...a figurehead. This is something that has never been brought to my attention. I was interested in this, because after he continued to explain his reasoning, the picture opened in my mind. This connects to Burke's concept, that humans always need a reason, and an explanation. We can never be satisfied without those things.

Choice and its Overarching Place in Rhetoric

Determining the meaning of the term "choice" is an object most of the writers/theorists most of our readings work through.  The concept is covered extensively in Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, but makes its presence known in other forms in the other readings.  For example, some potential equivalent words include strategy (or strategies) from Kenneth Burke's Equipment for Living,  privilege from Michael Foucault's What is an Author?, writing as expressed in Roland Barthes' Death of the Author, and fictionalize (or fictionalizing) put forth by Walter Ong's The Writer's Audience is Always a Fiction.  Although within this list language differs in terms of style and specific functions, including modern grammatical rules, they also work to represent specialized factions of ideas, first put forth by Aristotle (as understood in this post on the date of the first published work). Our current understanding of "choice" has altered considerably since Aristotle's Ethics first circulation.  However, understanding it to the fullest extent allows for further examination upon similar ideas expressed by later rhetoricians and theorists.

Author and Writer

In both Foucault's What is an Author? and Barthes' The Death of the Author, the role that the Author (capital A) plays in literature and society is called into question. Foucault and Barthes go so far as to demand its destruction. This argument seemed a bit overzealous to me during my first readings, but when looking at the text more closely, I realized that my definition of the term Author didn't match up with theirs, that I was missing out on some important context. Foucault and Barthes capitalized author for a reason (or, as sometimes is the case, italicized it or encompassed it in quotations). There is a distinction between Author and writer, and I think it is an important one to consider. Where do we make the separation between these two terms? What questions does this separation raise?

Ong: Presuming the Role of Reader and Writer

Ong’s article, “The Writer’s Audience is Always a Fiction,” discusses the interconnection of both reader and author through the use of a written text. As an author formulates a text, he or she is left to visualize and put into perspective the potential readers of the particular text he or she is writing for. This is generally based on traditions of past written works, in which an author is forced to make an assumption based on what his readers are already aware of.

Ong: The Role of the Audience

In Ong's ""The Writer’s Audience Is Always a Fiction," he looks at the relationship between writing and it's audience. It is worth noting though that Ong thinks it is quite misleading to think of a writer as dealing with an audience. A writer is writing to or for them and not necessarily addressing them. Ong likes to refer to the audience as "readership".  In his text he is basically asking the question,"What roles are the readers called upon to play?" Ong starts off by distinguishing the difference between writing and oratory. "Oral word is part of a present actuality and has its meaning established by the total situation in which it comes into being" (Ong 10). He is saying that the context for the spoken word is always present, the orator always knows whom they are addressing. Whereas the "audience" of writing is "simply further away, in time or space or both" (Ong 10). Writing allows for people in all different parts of the world to see it and it can be seen over many time periods. Because of writing's vast reach, there is no way for an author to write to every single individual reader that will come across their work. However an author does have to take into consideration the “social, economic, and psychological state of possible readers” (Ong 10). 

Ong-Audience

    Ong makes it clear in his article, that he is determining differences between the practices of oral and written expression. He discusses how audience vary between a writer and a speaker, which makes very good sense to me.
    Verbal communication must be reduced to simpler mechanics in order for an audience to fully comprehend the information that is being given to them (10). He describes how a reader can pretend that a speaker is in front of someone who is reading, by pausing and imagining someone actually speaking the information that is being read (11). However, the author must also fictionalize the audience to know how to write and form the information properly in order for an audience to identify and understand what is being read (11). "A reader must play the role in which the author has cast him."(12).
    Being a writer, speaker, or reader, all of these have some role to play in order to gain the ultimate understanding of what is being said read or written. A writer must fictionalize the type of audience he wants his words to be read by and he has to do it in a way that will work. A speaker must do the same but a different process will be used because they can express importance with their voice. A reader, to me, is the hardest role because they have to analyze what is trying to be said. Unless the writer uses side notes and bullet points, this can be hard for a reader to accomplish.
 
Samantha Oellrich
   

Orator VS. Writer

Ong’s article, "The Writer’s Audience Is Always a Fiction," focuses on Ong’s interest in how the transition from orality to literacy changes human consciousness. Ong goes in to detail about the differences between oral and written verbalization (Ong 9). Ong also discusses the differences between a writer and a speaker and how their “audiences” are also different. The writer writes for his readers while a speaker speaks for his audience.

The New Author

The relevance of authorship is the subject of both the works of Barthes and Foucault. In these essays, Barthes and Foucault aim to analyze the preconceived notions of what an author is and how that shapes an experience. The association with the modern author’s importance in society is something that both Barthes and Foucault find irrelevant. To them, it is the subject matter and framing that should hold the utmost importance in a text. Through their arguments, it is easy to see exactly how important the discussion of authorship is to the subject of agency.