Confronting authorship, constructing practices – how copyright destroys collective practice

Abstract

This chapter investigates the coercive relationship between authorship and copyright from the perspective of intersectional feminist knowledge practices. Examining three artistic strategies (Richard Prince, Cady Noland, The Piracy Project) that try to challenge the close ties between copyright and authorship – with very different outcomes – I map the blockages and contradictions that an understanding of authorship grounded in possessive individualism creates for critical art, education, and collective knowledge practices.

Trying to politicize individual authorship I investigate its construction by legal, economic, and institutional frameworks and subsequently ask how this chapter would circulate in current systems of dissemination, validation, and authorization if I did not assign my name to it – if it went un-authored, so to speak.