1. Theory! Authors! Aliens!

2. Theory=? Abstract Concepts Where opinions come from
From textbook: “We’ve all got opinions/Where do they come from?” “We’ve all got opinions”; that’s easy enough to understand as an emphasis on the everyday, on the active exchange of social discourse. “

3. RITUALS
Think about rituals- before a test, what is your ritual- some people believe that a 4 leaf clover helps- this means that they have an opinon- logically this doesn’t make sense but they believe it- stems from larger belief that if you do something right the outcome is good-> larger social order

4. Why is it useful? -larger questions about the origins of knowledges, who holds them, and how such knowledges were formed and might be changed—
How we think changes how we act. Eg ww1 changed how we thought of women-> changed vote

5. Why use it?
intervening in otherwise inaccessible debates and discourses
you need theory precisely because it does some work for you (and, with any luck at all, it does some work on you); it offers angles of intervention that you wouldn’t otherwise have. That’s the sense of theory that we’re interested in introducing here: theory that’s less about names or movements or modeling readings of texts than it is about intervening in otherwise inaccessible debates and discourses- can you think of a few issues this might be helpful with today?

6. Where do we learn opinions?
Family- school- main ones – everything around us-

7. Why is School Important?
Science
Math
Writing
Reading
What types of knowledge does school emphasize? – where do we see this? (CU’s core circulla)

8. What is an Author?
“author” can be a verb as well as a noun, and that even the noun names a social action
how someone who authors becomes an author (or how “author” changes from a verb to a noun) is intimately tied to the question of canonicity
Eg. James Joyce vs Stephen King- which one will most likely be studied at university?
Name some of the great authors- think beyond just lit- Einstein science philosophy
What are some assumptions about authors in list?-usually English, topics, not filmmakes artists etc
Authors beyond American & British Lit-
Think about jj vs sk- one is “author” and one “writer” – why does that happen? Who decides which work is culturally significant?

9. Where is Authorship everyday?
Constitution
Patent Laws
Journalism
Court Cases-> “Interpreting the Law & intentions of its creators”

10. Author/Authority authorship is tied intimately to authority
Who counts as an author is a means of asserting authority
-tink about oral folk tales- not until economic means did authors ppl names to work
Question of who is in and out
How many ppl can recognize pic? Edmund spenser most important of time but not now all Shakespeare now so authority changes w/ cultural moment

11. Do meanings or readings cancel Each other out? Who is the author here?
When has your reading of anything been different than someone elses
Fox and cnn’s words on the democratic or republican debates- whose authorship supercedes the other?
Are they both reading an event- who becomes the author in this context? Although the author is clearly not in control of meaning, he or she has nevertheless functioned as a guarantee of meaning throughout much of the history of literary criticism

12. Assumptions:
Even if we don’t know a thing about a text’s author, the notion that a piece has an author—that someone, somewhere originally had this experience, thought this thing committed it to writing—allows the soothing conclusion that it means something, even if we don’t quite know what
: If its author were here, he or she could tell us what the text means, and even if we have no access to the author, the very fact that a work has an “author” behind it seems to guarantee meaningfulness
Look at changes to science before- used to be based on names, Newton, Coppernicus-> now based on facts

13. Once the author’s privilege has been debunked, meaning is then no longer found but rather produced
question we ask of the text is no longer “what did the author really mean?” but rather “how does this text produce meanings?”

14. Occupy WallStreet
First reactions to it & now. What did you think then and now?
What methods did they use to communicate & convey message?
Think about to typical definition of author. Does it apply here? Why or Why not?
Foucault postulated that “in every society the production of discourse is at once controlled, selected, organized and distributed according to a certain number of procedures, whose role is to avert its powers and its dangers” (216). So how exactly is discourse “powerful,” and how might it possibly be construed as “dangerous”? How is that seen in Occupy? Or the coverage of Occupy?
How do labels like “political” or “unpatriotic” or “emotional,” when attached to discourse, serve to contain its effects? What labels were given to Occupy? Which do you think serve?
What ultimately did authorship do to authority in Occupy? How does this effect change?