Walter Benn Michaels, You Are Not the Boss of Me

In The Shape of the Signifier Walter Benn Michaels structures his arguments in terms of very imperialistic dichotomies where “if you think the intention of the author is what counts, then you don’t think the subject position of the readers matter, but if you don’t think the intention of the author is what counts, then the subject position of the reader will be the only thing that matters” (11). (I will assume this is his argument, although I can’t quite tell. He just calls it “the” argument.)

A note to all scholars, you can’t tell me what I do and don’t think. My ability for cognitive dissidence holds no bounds, so if I want to believe in both the intention of the author and the subject position I will, goddammnit.

While WBM’s logical progression to make this divisive statement appears sound enough, it also doesn’t seem to allow for a grey space, a space (under which I was impressed to believe) is where everything lies. McGann calls a poem an experience that has movement and temporal elements associated with it. The movement can fall into the virtual space between author intention and subject position, where all sorts of incomplete canoodling occurs. (This is the space occupied by the cyborg, an entity that takes in dichotomies without hierarchizing either polarity and mixes them into a nice goulash of incomplete shiftiness [not a direct quote].)

A grey space that might cause problems in WBM’s theory is Jörg Piringer’s Soundpoems. Not only is his website entirely grey, Piringer’s sound projects are extremely simple, theoretically complicated, and insanely fun. I want to focus on Soundpoem 1, which operate a little differently than 3-6, although all share similar principles.

Piringer’s SP1 and SP2 function as software for the creation of sound poems. And while it may seem that it looks like software from 1993 with limited permutations (compared to GarageBand, SoundBooth, or Audacity), there is deceptive depth to what can be created from such basic elements. In SP1 an operator can place nine buttons in four squares to make combinations of sounds. However, there is no limit to how many buttons can be placed in the squares, which means opens up exponentially more permutations (not infinite, I don’t think, because the beats loop). The authorial intention here is based in the material limitations of what we are given. There are an infinite number of sounds that could be used to create a sound poem; we are given eight and a pause. I think it is hard to ignore such limiting boundaries that Piringer has placed on the subject. However, the subject-position cannot create anything without Piringer providing the software. Whatever poems we create, however diverse and divorced from Piringer’s intention, are all limited by his construction.

If the “only thing that matters” is either the author-intention or the subject position, nothing will be created in SP1. The program/poem does not create sound on its own, but without the program/poem the subject cannot create a poem either.