The Author’s Mouthpiece Fallacy
As a product of the American Public School System, I have developed a very particular set of skills and paradigms for reading. Some of these habits have proven to be great assets in my growth as a human, thinker, and writer. But others continue to be impediments which I must consciously unlearn if I am to engage with any text – as author or audience – in the fullest way possible. Perhaps the stickiest of these attitudes is the fervor to discern the personal beliefs of the writer by identifying the character who acts as their mouthpiece.
Perhaps one reason that this ingrained attitude is so hard to put down is that it is supported by a number of more tacit assumptions about art. Through years of high school English exams, we are taught that
artists create because they have “something to say”
art is a vehicle for the ideas and opinions of the artist
there exists a process of “solving for x” that exposes the text’s “true meaning”
the author’s thoughts and opinions are somehow of great interest
While some of these approaches can be helpful in encouraging a young mind’s curiosity for learning and general social literacy, an enduring belief in them as truths in themselves ultimately short circuits that mind’s ability to engage art on its own terms. In other words, they only develop the skills needed to interact with one kind of text.
All of that is unsurprising when we consider “the Western tradition” out of which it springs. In Europe and the Americas, we are the proud inheritors of that most deceptively named movement, The Enlightenment. For hundreds of years, then, the defining core of Western thought – as opposed to African or Eastern ways of knowing – has been the exultation of Reason. In our academies and institutions, Reason and Individuality have long been undisguised idols to which our entire culture is bent.
Understand that I no more endorse the singular devotion to the so-called Eastern ways than that of the Western mind. I do, however, find it particularly perplexing that, in our age of globalized communication, we persist in setting them in opposition to each other. That attitude of competition and the dominance of the victor is, perhaps unironically, the most Western of ideas. As we serve the God of Reason, we commit to the sacrament of debate. As captain of my school’s debate team, I can assure you that it is an often fun rhetorical game in which the debater tests their ability to prove a position that they have no inherent belief in. Debate is a great tool for learning, but it is a rotten way of life. The man who is fully committed to the process of debate can never be truly committed to the subject of that debate, let alone his opponent. It is a worldview of winning that literally precludes resolving conflict.
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