RECOUNTING THE AUTHOR by NATALIJA GRGORINIĆ Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Dissertation Adviser: Prof. Gary Stonum Department of English CASE WESTERN RESERVE UNIVERSITY May, 2012 CASE WESTERN RESERVE UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF GRADUATE STUDIES We hereby approve the thesis/dissertation of ______________________________________________________ candidate for the ________________________________degree *. (signed)_______________________________________________ (chair of the committee) ________________________________________________ ________________________________________________ ________________________________________________ ________________________________________________ ________________________________________________ (date) _______________________ *We also certify that written approval has been obtained for any proprietary material contained therein. 2 Table of contents Abstract………………………………………………………………………………… 3 Preface…………………………………………………………………………………..5 Introduction……………………………………………………………………………10 The Metaphor of Marriage and Its Implications……………………………………….71 The Role of Singular Authorship in Openly Collaborative Writing………………….106 Singular Name/Plural Responsibility…………………………………………………155 Text as the Other……………………………………………………………………...201 Understanding Collaboration…………………………………………………………232 Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………256 Bibliography………………………………………………………………………….263 3 Recounting the Author Abstract by NATALIJA GRGORINIĆ In this dissertation it is argued that all literary authorship is to a greater or lesser degree a product of labor of more than one person and that, as such, all literary authorship is collaborative. For the purpose of examining this collaborative aspect of authorship this dissertation deals exclusively with the examples of unconcealed literary collaboration. Among these, the examples of conjugal collaborations of Michael Dorris and Louise Erdrich, Peter Redgrove and Penelope Shuttle, and Julio Cortázar and Carol Dunlop are used to investigate the usefulness of marriage as a metaphor most frequently employed in the descriptions of overt collaboration. The tentative conclusion reached is that collaboration in terms of literary authorship requires a more suitable terminology, one that would go beyond the romantic or romanticized language of shared intimacy. Another key premise is that the idea of authorship as an exclusive solitary activity leaves a particular mark on the process of literary creation itself, as well as on the very activity of writing. Here novels written by collaborative couples (The Crown of Columbus), but also novels written by smaller (The Caverns) or larger (Invisible Seattle) groups were used to explain how that which is considered to be a ‘proper’ way of writing influences both the character and the reception of a particular text. The name of the author (whether singular or plural), as well as the pseudonym, are described as indicators of relative authorial plurality and shared authorial responsibility, with any name provided as the name of the 4 author symbolizing the necessity of human involvement with the text as well as the other participants in the literary exchange. The model of a particular dyadic relationship established between the text and any person who interacts with it (in any capacity) is offered to account for the notion of literary authorship as a process rather than an act. In this process numerous individuals through the interaction with each other as well as with the text assume responsibility for that text. In the end, the peculiar circumstances of this dissertation’s authorship itself are examined in the context of the key ideas presented. The main conclusion of this dissertation is that examples of open literary collaboration broaden the understanding of literary authorship as a whole, pointing to the fact that all authorship relies at least to some small degree on sharing the creative labor as well as the responsibility for the product of that labor. 5 Preface It can be said that anything worth doing is worth doing twice. It can also be said that anything worth doing is also worth sharing. Neither of these claims is necessarily valid when it comes to doctoral dissertations. If there is any reason to do them twice over, then at least one of the versions was not worth doing. And they are not, under any circumstances, to be shared – this is expressly pointed out in the Graduate Student Handbook (“Students must prepare their own dissertations. Joint dissertations are not permitted” [12]). However, in the case of this particular dissertation, defending it for the second time will, hopefully, be a worthy effort, not for the sake of the degree that might result from it, but for the sake of turning attention, institutional as well as public, to the less than fair treatment of collaboration in academia. In this context, the specific purpose of this preface is to point out two facts: Fact 1: In 2005 two persons were accepted (albeit as “a student”) to the Department of English Graduate Program at Case Western Reserve University, two persons attended the classes and fulfilled together all the requirements of the necessary coursework, two persons taught together as TAs (as two instructors in one classroom, and as two writing tutors per one student needing assistance), two persons passed together the final qualifying exam, two persons proposed and defended the prospectus for a thesis, two persons defended that thesis in front of a committee consisting of CWRU faculty members. Fact 2: This is not a “[j]oint dissertation.” Joint dissertations are not permitted. In 2011, the Academic Integrity Board found that first 6 dissertation or, more precisely, one of the persons responsible for it to be in violation of the University’s regulations. Only the final stage of the above- mentioned relationship appeared to be problematic. The problem was that there had been no previous precedent, no model according to which the academic status and relationship of those two persons could be recognized. The only stipulation (at least in the Graduate Student Handbook) even remotely considering the possibility of two persons taking part together in a PhD program had been the one previously cited: “Joint dissertations are not permitted.” It could be argued that the earlier dissertation, the one that had been found inadequate, was also not a “joint dissertation,” but it had been defended before a committee by more than one person. However, when it comes to this dissertation it is worth repeating that it is not a “joint dissertation” simply because there will be only one person taking responsibility for it before the committee. In a nutshell, this is also the main issue examined in the dissertation: the relationship between a text and the sum of responsibility assumed for it. Fortunately, literary texts, and especially published texts are very different from dissertations. Dissertations are, in a certain sense, almost non-texts, or at least half-texts, texts that do not speak for themselves, feeble texts that need to be defended and approved, lonely texts for which only one person is required to assume responsibility. In other words, the stipulation that “joint dissertations are not permitted” goes against the very nature of the text, at least as it is defined in this particular non-text, in this particular dissertation. To maintain that “joint dissertations are not permitted” could almost be seen as tantamount to a claim such as ‘round wheels are not permitted.’ However, unlike dissertations, university regulations are texts that speak for themselves, strong texts that actively shape and, if necessary, bend reality, texts that express unwavering beliefs, even dogmas, texts 7 one is not supposed to question, texts with which one is not allowed to enter into a dialogue. How else can it be explained that the academic community chooses to ignore the fact that every dissertation is, to a degree, a collaborative effort: on one hand, a PhD candidate has the critical support of an entire committee – every idea, indeed every sentence of a developing dissertation is scrutinized (edited, corrected, influenced) by worthy professionals; and on the other hand, a candidate is supposed to enter into a dialogue with other scholars, match his or her ideas against theirs, use their work to promote his or her thesis. All this accounts for a tightly knit relationship that can best be described as collaborative. Still, as described, this relationship, or web of relationships is not supposed to result in a “joint dissertation,” the text that is supposed to be a dissertation is expected to function as a text, while at the same time ignoring the circumstances of its creation. Traditional (or even institutional) approaches to authorship may be tolerable in dissertations that deal with subjects other than the nature of the text and the nature of authorship, or even dissertations that argue for monolithically singular authorship and individualized responsibility for literary text. However, this dissertation opens all authorship to debate. What is more, in it, all authorship is presented as a sort of a debate in itself, a negotiation of a sort that involves multiple subjects, numerous participants, members, partners… Needless to say, since a dissertation is seen only as a stage in the creation of a fully publishable or published text, it is debatable whether the authorship of a dissertation is an important issue – one might see it as a very private matter,