A Right to Destroy - "Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"

-- By StephenSevero - 16 Feb 2010

Kafka and Emily Dickinson - The Right to Destroy as the Absence of Compulsion

In American law, we often recognize a right to destroy goods which would be valuable to society as a whole. Human beings are allowed to retain healthy, functioning organs in a lifeless and decaying corpse. But some people contend that this right should not extend posthumously to authors and their unpublished material. However, to forbid the right to destroy is essentially to compel publication. This may actually work to discourage creation. If a creator is worried that some misstep, something he considers a creative failure, will be made permanent, he will likely be even more hesitant to make that initial step. As I watched the wiki over the course of the week, I noticed few students, myself included, putting up their rough sketches and outlines. Even fewer had their brainstorming sessions made public. In all creation, there is a fear, perhaps unfounded, that others will judge our unfinished work and find us wanting. Until the idea is fully crystallized, it may not be committed to paper. And since few of us have eidetic memory, this will lead to degradation of the work and many lost moments of brilliance.

We recognize the right for a living author to destroy or overwrite his work, and it may be harmful to not extend this posthumously. By forcing a reticent author to destroy his works in his lifetime, we would encourage premature destruction. A sickly author might not wish his unfinished work to be "completed" as Tolkien's Silmarillion was. Fearing his sickness may be unto death, and knowing that his wishes will be ignored, this author may feel compelled to destroy the work while he still has the power. This would prevent any chance of him later modifying the work until it is sufficiently improved to be published.

Vergil and Nabokov - The 'Need' for Greater Understanding

When dealing with previously established authors, the argument in support of compelled publication is stronger. The work must no longer be published just for any individual (potential) literary merit, but because it will aid our understanding of the author's published works of known literary value. But this very reason increases the likelihood that a work will be prematurely destroyed. An author usually wishes his work to be destroyed because he feels it is not "good enough" to warrant publication, and that its release will temper his current status. A known commodity will be even more keen to protect his image, lest his past brilliance be deemed a fluke.

Also, how far would this shield extend? Would we compel publication of personal letters and private diaries? These works, arguably more than an unfinished novel, would give us tremendous insight into the author; but few would support such an intrusion.

By compelling publication of a work, we would also discourage collaboration. The more people that know of a work, the harder it will be to destroy. Beyond a single person whom the author trusts to destroy his work, he would keep the manuscript a total secret. This novel, even if completed, may lack a true sense of discourse and would certainly have benefited from the input and help of other eyes.

Dr. Seuss - Information Distribution when the Cat is Out of the Hat

The right to destroy, however, is essentially extinguished once the work is published. No longer is it comparable to a compulsion to publish, and any "right to destroy" is rendered practically meaningless. The author does not wish to destroy a single manuscript, but instead wants to erase every copy of the work. It would be impossible to place the cat back in the bag, and until all media is under the control of Kindle, copies of the work would be forever disseminated.

Further, the right to destroy his own work cannot be extended to destroy the works of others. Since our culture is built by accretion, this would require surgical precision - removing the grain of his own work without damaging the nacre added by others. Would he be allowed to destroy all translations? Isn't translating a creative and not merely a determinate process?

The Extension to Tangible Art

The dichotomy of published and unpublished works does not extend to more visual and tangible forms of art where the expression is almost inseparable from the physical instantiation. In the case of sculptures and paintings, the work is inherently unique and cannot be perfectly copied. This means that the destruction is now practically possible, and can easily be done without destroying the work of others.

Some destruction is of course accepted as a necessary part of the creative process. A traditional marble sculpture is created by repeatedly destroying its predecessors each time hammer meets chisel. Denying the creator the right to destroy his art denies him the ability to determine what is outmoded and what needs to be altered - would we stop a sculptor when we feel the work is complete? The expressive urge which drove him to create is integral to his desire for destruction. His initial creation was a way of stating "This should be expressed", and the destruction should be seen in the same light - similar to performance art.

Also, unlike in a published work, the destruction is not an attempt to Herostratize* the work. (The mere creation of this verb speaks to the impossibility of that goal, particularly in the age of digital storage and dissemination.) Instead, the destroyer only wishes to eliminate this single instance of the work. All photos, descriptions, and other echoes of the work (the works created by others) will remain untouched.

Unfortunate Results

To be certain, there are unpleasant repercussions. We would be without much of the work of Kafka and Dickinson. We would be without Vergil's masterwork. But we should not build our artistic culture by conscription.

* In verbing this name, I mean to refer to the Ephesean response, and not to Herostratus' plan. Also, most of the links are not directly relevant to the text, but instead are various things that I was thinking about as I wrote the paper. Interesting, but often tenuously connected at best.

• Conceptually, I have a hard time buying that people are not writing because they're afraid of missteps. Sure, at the margins, fear I might be judged might make me not put something in writing (notably in email), but you have very little evidence to back up the idea that the work of Kafka and Dickinson and Vergil and (maybe more importantly) everything that has been built creatively upon it would have been worth losing to society. It's fairly obvious to me that we grow more by interaction than by lone rumination, and so I have difficulty accepting your claim to the opposite without much more than conjecture to back it up. Finally, as a practical matter, how would you suggest I should have made my brainstorming public? It was going on in my head. Other than using the TWiki editor and saving every few minutes (I happen to prefer a classical text editor, but considered that route), what could have made my work more public? -- DTRK - 01 Mar 2010

I'll go through your points in reverse. Perhaps we mean different things by "brainstorming" - Posting on the wiki is exactly the way to make it public, and to a lesser extent a personal conversation. I think Nona's page is a good example of making brainstorming public. Keeping it between your brain and your text editor is "lone rumination". I think interaction is important, and hermitage (mental as well as physical) is the domain of gods and beasts. We, as a society, certainly do grow better by collaboration, and I don't see where I made the claim to the contrary. But I don't want to conscript anybody into that collaboration. If someone wishes their work to remain private, I don't want to force them to share. I also don't want to make the choice binary: total participation (publication) or none. If someone is hesitant, that will only further discourage them. I have no evidence for this (and it doesn't seem possible to have evidence for or against it), but it doesn't seem too large a step from Vergil's wish to burn his manuscript (he must not have heard "manuscripts don't burn"). Also, maybe it wouldn't create works to step up in their place, but so what? Culture will survive. There are plenty of great books by willing authors to take the place. And that's what I want - a literary culture built by willing artists. - Stephen Severo