Autonomous subjects

Houston Wood (hwood@hawaii.edu)
Mon, 23 Oct 1995 13:34:13 -0500

I have been troubled to see how the thread Fred began quickly assumed
that there is "authentic" and "inauthentic" writing. The notion of
writers writing "independently" of the rules is like the belief in
consumers choosing "freely" what they will consume.

All the talk about those who write within the official system and those
who do not seems to me to continue the mystification of this reality:
Most all of us write within the same system that teaches us to believe we
are autonomous subjects. This raises two questions I am interested in:
1) Whose interests does it serve for us to continue to believe
that we are "free to choose" because we live in a "free society"?
2) Is it possible for any kind of writing (whether Fred's or
those he criticized) to begin to build alternative societies and senses
of self?
Why is it, I also wonder, that this question seems seldom to
sustain interest as long as this perennial question about rules and grammar?

*********************************************************************
Houston Wood hwood@hawaii.edu
UH Manoa, Hawai`i
Honolulu, HI 96822 (808) 956-3059