Walter Benjamin’s “The Author as Producer” addresses questions of content and form, and the reality and responsibility of the writer in radical culture. The article really makes me reflect on my position as a writer in society, a concept that has preoccupied me constantly throughout this final term of mine at WLU Brantford.
The greatest point I take from his article is the difference between the “informing writer” and the “operating writer.” The former can be seen as our traditional, mainstream journalist with his quest for objectivity, balance, fairness and fact. The latter, on the other hand, is engaged with his publics. He’s a part of his audience. In short, he’s a man of the people. This is the kind of writer I want to be, like Tretiakov, who doesn’t idly stand and report. He generates, he moves, he creates culture more than he tries to somehow capture it. This is writing for more than entertainment, it’s writing with a purpose. It’s the purpose of writing.
Benjamin discusses the process of production in terms of culture, like writing. Or in this case journalism. And it brings me full circle back to the idea of being a self-publisher, of citizen journalism, and of producing media free of the standard practices of the news industry as it is practiced today.
Towards the end of the article Benjamin brings up the “epic dramatist” and this is how he explains it in writing, “It is less concerned with filling the public with feelings, than with alienating it in an enduring manner, through thinking, from the condition in which it lives.” I learned this myself through my writings in JN303: Public Journalism and Social Advocacy, when I realized that unfamiliarity is much more purposeful than unfamiliarity, in terms of what I want to evoke in my audience while I’m writing.
And as a journalist, I came to find that this was an extremely effective approach to interpretive, ethnographic writing – and I was able to use it because as the author, I was also the producer. Controlling the apparatus of production – which was my blog in this case – gave me a kind of literary freedom that let me tap into a powerful new way of storytelling. Leave a comment below if you’re interested in reading these pieces, I’ll send you a sample.
THE WHISKEY DIARY 