DESTRUCTIVE AUTHORSHIP: ANTI-AUTHOR AND ANTI-GIFT

Abstract

The article deals with the question of the authorship and its nature in connection with the case of Herostratus. The main problem is forgotten creators of the temple of Artemis and the immortal fame of its arsonist. In this vein, the concept of destructive authorship is proposed as a form of displaying authorship based not on the usual act of creation, but on the opposite to it – an act of destruction. At the same time, a distinction has been made between “destructive authorship” as the realization of certain attributes of authorship using destruction as an instrument and its possible coup – “authorship of destructiveness” as a phenomenon based on autonomy and the priority of destruction in relation to authorship. Also, the concepts of “anti-author” and “anti-gift” are being developed, offered as oppositions to the classical notions of “author” and “gift”. Herostratus is represented as the central and featuring figure of certain cultural and historical narrative, which reaches the reverse side of “caring for oneself” through the act of destruction on the way to immortality. In this case, we are talking about the anti-author as an individualization through authorship without creation and focusing the individual on himself. For the story of Herostratus homeric question is impossible because the very nature of its situation is hypertrophy of the individual author’s being, which is incompatible with co-authorship. While not being created, it exists only as a desire to get author’s dividends, and therefore, as a desire to remain the only one. No less important is the question of the gift in the context of authorship, which is turned by Herostratus into a theft. If any authorship is inextricably connected with the gift, the destructive authorship contains an anti-gift – cultural theft (forcible appropriation) of the object or subject of the subject to destruction. It is the anti-gift allows the anti-author to realize himself not only as the one who commits the destructive act, but also the one who steals attention and memory, separating them from the previous carrier and acquiring it to himself. Thus, in the article on example of Herostratus is analyzed the development of the ideas logically parallel or contradictive to the established model of authorship based on the creative act with the proposal of the concepts which are able to expand the understanding of authorship and explore it in the context of destructive aspects.