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Article: Authenticity and authority. (in authorship)
- Article from:
- TriQuarterly
- Article date:
- September 22, 1997
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1997 TriQuarterly. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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In Out of Africa, Isak Dinesen describes the Kikuyu tribe's first exposure to writing: "I learned that the effect of a piece of news was many times magnified when it was imparted by writing. The messages that would be received with doubt and scorn if they had been given by word of mouth were now taken as gospel truth."
- Whereas we may have just weathered the cultural moment when erudite critical theorists devoted their best energy to "liberating the signifier from the signified," as if written discourse were actually a kind of Mad Hatter's tea party. Writers were the casualty of this campaign, replaced by what Michel Foucault called "the author function." As ...