Although I thought the reading “What is an Author?” was a hard one to understand, I think it held some great points about authors and the “author function.” What I liked about the reading is that it made me think strongly about the points made about the possibility to forget who an author is without taking away from the texts. I think that is an extremely hard thing not to look at an author and be judgmental for whatever reason. For example, I think this was brought up in class, but if I was more interested in global warming and saw “An Inconvenient Truth” written by Al Gore I would be more hesitant to personally pick up that book than if there were an actual expert who wrote it. I know it shouldn’t happen, but I personally do think I judge a book too much based on the author. On the other hand, I think it is good that we have authors listed because we ARE then able to pick out people that have background knowledge opposed to people that feel they need to stretch the truth or blatantly lie.
On our talk of “Smart Mobs” and dealing with ‘community’ I was thinking and I was wondering if we get to choose who our community is. We do by the people we surround ourselves with, but sometimes our privacy is invaded because we choose to put it public. By choosing to do that, does that mean we ‘chose’ that as our community?
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I think your question about community is interesting. I thought about it after class on wednesday because I thought I had a fairly strong sense of the word, but it was challenged. I don't know if a community is some place in which we live, and in that case is it my hometown of milwaukee, or my current place in madison? Is it somewhere I can choose, or am i thrust into a community and are forced to deal with it? I thought you guys did a really good job of leading the discussion too, just wanted to let you know.
Thinking back to when I used to have vocabulary words, either to learn the meaning of or how to spell, I can't think of any word that I looked up that had one single precise definition. I bet that the word "community" at dictionary.com doesn't have a single definition either. Thinking about it after reading your post, and Courtney's comment, I suppose that words, or "community" at least, has a general idea behind it. Something like, "A group of people with a common trait."
While a definition like that may be hard to argue with, it is so general that it is nearly useless. I figure that is when context comes into play. Take Courtney's hometown, I would consider that to be one of her communities. We are all in an English class together, and that is our community. While these are just examples of communities and not definitions of the word, it is nearly pointless to try to exactly define the word out of context, since it is the example, it is the context that fully defines the word.
Since there are so many examples of a community, the word must have a generic meaning in order to suffice in any appropriate context used. Unless, of course, no single precise definition is being sought, which is what I found on dictionary.com while I was writing this (13 results).
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