"The author is the ideological figure by which one marks the manner in which we fear the proliferation of meaning"- Michael Foucault, "What is an Author?" (1979)
How else can you appropriate their mental labour? If there are no "author's" proper, only "author functions", then the individual's role as "cog in the machine" is affirmed and the writer's legal rights (to "property" - copyright) "erased". You may now through "custom" begin to legally appropriate the author's already completed efforts and attach new meanings (and authorities) to them for whomever (and whatever) project you wish!
- Randall Jarrell, "The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner" (1945)From my mother's sleep I fell into the State,
And I hunched in its belly till my wet fur froze.
Six miles from earth, loosed from its dream of life,
I woke to black flak and the nightmare fighters.
When I died they washed me out of the turret with a hose.
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