In his essay “What is an Author,” Michael Foucault briefly discusses the complexities of authorship through considering questions posed after the death of German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. In the debates over which of Nietzsche’s unpublished writing is worthy of publication, there seems to be a consensus that all of Nietzsche’s work can be deemed valuable, not because of its literary craftsmanship or philosophic creativity, but because it is Friedrich Nietzsche, famed German philosopher who wrote them.
“Where should one stop?” asks Foucault. “Surely everything must be published, but what is ‘everything’? …How can one define a work amid the millions of traces left by someone after his death?” (Foucault 103).
In this discussion of post-mortem publication, Foucault paints a disturbing picture: angry friends and followers engaging in petty disputes over whether a shopping list jotted on the back of a receipt is essential in the mission of a “complete publication.” Here, we see how the author, in this case Friedrich Nietzsche, has involuntarily surrendered his position of creator for one of being created. No matter how hard these feral academics scrape into the annals of Nietzsche’s written records, they will never reach the true glory of a “complete publication” unless they, of course, publish Nietzsche himself. Authorship is a unique trait; there is the category of “the author,” somebody who produces written works, but there is also the position of the author in the structure of artistic creation and viewership. In this circumstance we see Nietzsche switch positions, from the author–or the artist–to the art.
Two juxtaposing rhetorics dominate the discourse of modern queer understanding: systems of identity choice—primarily the “alphabet system”—and the assertion that Queer individuals are “born this way.” One paints queer interpretation as a self-liberating form of ownership of identity through definition, saying there is a choice: you can be “who you are” because there is a catalog of categorizations to choose from. The other proclaims that there is no choice in how queer individuals live, that their preferences are entirely natural and essential to their character– “I would never choose to be gay.” Who is the author of Queer identity, the mind or the soul? Do queer individuals have a choice in their identification?
In the complex structure of queer rationalization, the fundamentals of identity formation, authorship, art, and self are exposed. Queer analysis can be a vessel to discuss the temporality of imposed identity and the role that the values of an ever modulating society play in defining the constraints of the ever modulating identities shaped by their systems.
Interpretation and Objectification
“If gender is instituted through acts which are internally discontinuous, then the appearance of substance is precisely that, a constructed identity, a performative accomplishment which the mundane social audience, including the actors themselves, come to believe and to perform in the mode of belief” (Butler 520).
Judith Butler has devoted much of her career to examining the complexities of gender as a social construction. In this quotation she frames gender through the lens of theater, proclaiming that the act of “being gender” is inherently performative. However, through what systems is this performance upheld, and does performance not necessitate viewership? If gender is understood as a social construction, I think it is essential that we expand this thought to understand that gender is assigned through social deliberation. An identity cannot simultaneously be socially constituted and self-directed by the subjugated individuals. Both common queer rationalizations of identity are similarly false. An actor can never watch their own play live, so how would an individual be capable of surveying and rationalizing their own identity? This dynamic destabilizes the position of queer authorship. If not queer people, then who is the real author of queer identity?
As Susan Sontag succinctly puts it in a diary entry from December 26th, 1956, “Interpretation: always the presumption of meaning” (Sontag 96). She follows this entry with another bulleted list later that month saying, “To interpret is to determine. Restrict, or exfoliate, read meaning into” (Sontag 98). In these two valuable entries we not only get to witness the original thoughts behind the eventual 1966 publication of “Against Interpretation,” but we also get to delve into the ideas behind interpretation in its rawest form.
Interpretation in art, as Sontag sees it, presumes that art is a means by which an artist can relay meaning to an onlooker. Take the famous Botticelli work The Birth of Venus for example. A particularly fiendish critic might say, “In this masterpiece Botticelli uses a symbolic re-emergence of the goddess Venus to relay a hope for the rebirth of civilization, signaling a new era of geopolitical, social, and cultural unity following the turmoil of the Middle Age.” The poet of such a statement would no doubt be heralded as a great artistic translator, or alternatively become enveloped in artistic discourses debating the true and proper intention behind the work. What if Botticelli just wanted to draw a beautiful seashell lady—is this such a crime that its possibility must be glazed over with a shroud of performative seriousness?
It is situations such as that which violate the truth behind art. Art can no longer be merely aesthetic or impractical. Instead, within a society that looks down on the traits which make art truest, art is justified as a cryptic device of communication; use is read into the art in order to justify its existence. Interpreting art has become the only means of understanding art, even though interpretation is far more fickle, temporal, and exclusionary than understanding and can often lead to misunderstanding if believed too deeply. “By reducing that work of art to its content and then interpreting that,” writes Sontag, “one tames the work of art. Interpretation makes art manageable, conformable” (Sontag 8). Interpretation is a means to confine art in ways that simplify, utilize, and profit from its sleek digestibility: objectification in the name of understanding.
Who is the Author?
To determine who the author is, we must first determine the duty of the author in our modern understanding of art. In an interpretation-oriented society where art is viewed as a message, the author determines the meaning. Of course there is the de facto career of the author (the creator of written publications), but the social role of the author is defined by a unique space within a social system of viewership and understanding. I believe that whoever determines the “meaning” behind a work occupies the author position.
When considering a position as powerful as a social objectifier, it is always easiest to point fingers at “the man,” the embodiment of the most privileged and powerful within social complexes. However, the objectifier, the author of identity, is not the man, but the much more docile and often dismissed viewer. If art is asked to justify and defend itself to the viewer’s perception of what it is, then the viewer is shaping the expectations of how the art is perceived and what the art means. I believe that this position of independent surveillance is most aligned with the duties of authorship. Whatever the viewer perceives in a truly subjective work is the truest interpretation. The artist is not involved in the interpretation of a work, and if people take what the artist says as true, then they are merely of the interpretation that whatever the artist says is correct. The act of interpretation, and therefore objectification, can only be completed by an onlooker. And in systems which view art as the artist’s voice, the artist is objectified along with the art. Their statement is decided by surveillance and consideration of minute details in a work: no factor is allowed to just be. We see this scenario play out in the initial conversation about Nietzsche’s publication. After death, he was violated, and in the gap of an author to command thirsty viewers, all of a sudden everything he wrote became important, merely because he was the writer.
“The Man” too, has a unique role. Instead of being the all powerful viewer, I believe that the man occupies a role more similar to a curator. He decides what modes of surveillance are most true, what is and isn’t art, and what criteria a work must meet to be considered in a particular way. He defines the categories and expectations through which objectification occurs.
The Objectification of “living queer”
“Living queer” is shaped through undefinition, fluidity, and playfulness of self; in the most basic sense to be queer is to be incomprehensible, perverse, and uncategorizable. This is diametrically opposed to the pathologized Queerness we see today where queer identity is defined not through position but through preference. In our modern understanding queerness is a condition rather than a state.
The similarities between the system of artistic viewership and the system through which we have come to understand queerness are striking. First, queerness has been subjected to similarly harsh and faulty interpretations. With roots in psychotic diagnosis, systems of Queer categorization, for instance, are a means of pulling use out of something naturally useless (it’s not homosexuality, it’s just sex). Second, queerness, like art, in its truest form is gluttonous and unconfirmed, or, as Sontag puts it, “ritualistic.” Third, systems of enforcement have been implemented to circumvent queer freedom for Queer usefulness. Our society values use above all else, and through the systematic objectification of art and queerness (the most useless things in the world!) these traits too have become useful. In art, meaning drives political statements, artistic idolatry, and academic profit. In queerness, definition established a specific subset of people, taught to embrace the words created to inflict suffering upon them, and now these same words can be mobilized for economic prosperity and political deployment. Interpretation, meaning, and definition: the most powerful weapons against frivolousness. And, in cases where frivolousness is the most natural state, against liberation.
Being useless in a modern world is more criminal than any form of nonconformity or sexual deviation.
Issues of objectification stretch into every facet of Queer life: media representation, political mobility, marriage, family, and Queer temporality. Within every mode of Queer existence one fact remains true: to be Queer is to be created, objectified, art; to be queer, on the other hand, is to be truly free. The cohabitation of these two modes within the term “queer” dilutes understanding of what it means to “live queer.” Queerness is a social prescription, born through modernism, while queerness is an idea that defies modernism and therefore can not be implemented within our current systems (the idea of “system” is absolutely anti-queer!). To seek liberation from these constraints, Sontag may argue that an individual must be against identity, however, to be against identity is still to be identified. There is also the role of non-identity or non-meaning, although better than being against identity, dissociation only turns a binary into a trinary. How can an individual escape from a system of control?
An individual cannot simply opt out of social surveillance and identity deliberation. As a society we must question what the most beneficial system for queer life is while being honest about the role of these systems in control and surveillance of queer identity. Queer rationalization and identity systems were created to and still act as systems of queer control, but they have also enabled many useful legal changes for both Queer and Straight individuals, sparked shifts in perspective on sin, opened unique views of history, and have aided in the formalization of a vibrant worldwide culture. Queer individuals have been tricked into loving the tools of their own oppression, but love above all else is still love. Control is vital within our society, and although it is surreal and falsifying it is also the system which holds our communities and lives together. Control and surveillance have both objectified and created endless beauty within the human world: control creates art, and art creates culture. It is not essential to overthrow queer surveillance–in reality this would be quite a meaningless effort–but it is essential to acknowledge this system’s surrealism. Control and authorship are intrinsically aligned. Both are objectifying, yet beautiful; surreal and uncanny, yet creating: to be the author is to be a god within a constructed system of godship.
Works Cited
Butler, Judith, “Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory.” Theatre Journal vol 40, no. 4, 1988, pp. 519-531.
Foucault, Michel, “What is an Author,” The Foucault Reader, Edited by Paul Rainbow. Pantheon, 1984.
Sontag, Susan, Against Interpretation: And Other Essays. Picador, 2001.
Sontag, Susan, “Reborn: Journals & Notebooks 1947-1963,” Ed: David Rieff. Picador, 2009.