Episode 99: Respect My Authority
Synopsis
What exactly is authority? Where does it come from? How do you get it? Can you move authority from St. Paul, MN to the south side of Chicago? Join Em and Jesse for a wide-ranging chat on the subject.
Notes
1/ Of course, many people in addition to women have a hard time getting others (i.e. non-group members) to pay attention to their authority. For example, trans and nonbinary people have a hard time getting anyone to listen to them speaking about their own lived experiences.
2/ I’ve published four novels and a novella since this was recorded, and people actually do think I’m an authority on some topics for some reason.
3/ The story about Aristotle’s phony translators comes from here, I think: https://historyofphilosophy.net/translation-movement
Pseudopigrapha: from pseudo, false, and epigraphe, name or inscription. A falsely attributed text.
U of Michigan’s Galileo text: “After an internal investigation of the findings of Nick Wilding, professor of history at Georgia State University, the library has concluded that its “Galileo manuscript” is in fact a 20th-century forgery. We’re grateful to Professor Wilding for sharing his findings, and are now working to reconsider the manuscript’s role in our collection.” Also, “Wilding concluded that our Galileo manuscript is a 20th-century fake executed by the well-known forger Tobia Nicotra.” (The quotes are from the linked website.)
4/ According to the Virginia Woolf society, the actual quote is: “I would venture to guess that Anon, who wrote so many poems without signing them, was often a woman.” (From ch 3 of A Room of One’s Own.)
Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite (5th/6th century CE))
Pseudo-Pseduo-Dionysius is anyone once thought to be Pseudo-Dionysius but now recognized (by modern scholars) to be someone other than Pseudo-Dionysius. Confused?
5/ Pseudo-Bonaventure (14th century CE) wrote Meditations on the Life of Christ.
6/ I’ve become a bit more familiar with copyright law in the three years(!) since we recorded this, since I’ve published three going on four books of my own since then. A really good example of a point I think past Em is trying to make is Sherlock Holmes, who has recently passed into public domain. He’s a neat character and everyone wanted to play with him (look at the adaptations of recent memory: the Robert Downey Jr. films, the BBC’s Sherlock, the American Elementary). But because of copyright law, this was fairly difficult and confusing until very recently, despite the character’s creator having been dead since 1930. These cases raise many questions of authorship vs ownership and how long someone should really be able to make money on an idea. (Patent Law is, if anything, worse, from what I understand.)
7/ It was a photograph of Prince! Since we recorded this, the Supreme Court sided against Andy Warhol’s estate: https://www.npr.org/2023/05/18/1176881182/supreme-court-sides-against-andy-warhol-foundation-in-copyright-infringement-cas
Girl Talk is awesome: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kSoTN8suQ1o
I mention him because there was a really good documentary about copyright called RiP! A Remix Manifesto that discussed his work (including a discussion of it with the head of the copyright office of the Library of Congress).
8/ Just to clarify, “fair use” is kind of a complicated issue. When you are a non-commercial educational podcast (ahem), you can use things (like samples of YouTube performances) without having to pay licensing fees. You can also fairly quote sections of things for criticism, news reporting, and research. You can therefore quote lines from songs or poems in textbooks, but not in novels because they aren’t considered teaching. Parody (hello, Weird Al!) can be a weird gray area, because a parody obviously has to be somewhat transformative but still retain enough of a likeness that people will know what you’re parodying, and on this question hangs a lot of lawsuits. (Not toward Weird Al though, as far as I know. But Margaret Mitchell’s estate did try to sue to block the publication of The Wind Done Gone.)
See also: Why does Ulysses (in Em’s novels) wear so many band T-shirts and occasionally mention songs and artists, but there are zero song lyrics in the books? Because you can’t copyright band names or album/song titles.
Steamboat Willie has actually entered public domain since we recorded this! [So amazing!–Jesse]
Peter Pan actually first appeared in 1902!
Also, sorry, “Peter Pan is a psychopomp” is somehow not a sentence I had on my bingo card. I guess it has lost a bit in its translation to the screen… On the plus side, SIDS rates have dropped dramatically since 1902?
“I can rewrite Macbeth if I want to.” Or a really complex riff on The Bacchae? Em of 2022 did not know what was coming, lol.
9/ Notably, Spivak also quotes primarily women.
The episode on Hrotsvit: Episode 22
10/ For more on Juliana of Cornillion and the Feast of Corpus Christi, see Episode 6.
11/ Wife of Bath’s Prologue and Tale are HERE. (Also, Chaucer was not, as far as we know, toxic like Joss Whedon!)
12/ Incidentally, violent, in-the-moment reactions to mistreatment by another person are called reactive abuse, and they’re often used by abusers to shift the blame onto their victims. If you are being abused or wondering if you are and want to talk to someone, check out the National Domestic Violence Hotline (https://www.thehotline.org/), or look for local programs. Here in Madison, for instance, we have Domestic Abuse Intervention Services (https://abuseintervention.org/).
