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 But some people contend that this right should not extend posthumously to authors and their unpublished material.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 will 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.

Additionally, we recognize the right for a living author to destroy or overwrite his work, so why should that right extinguish at death? 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 recovering (or not) and adapting and 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. If an author knows his work must be published, he may not seek out the input and help of others. 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 of other eyes.

Dr. Seuss

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 of his text? Isn't the act of translation 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 perhaps the current system has denied us even greater pleasures by stymieing more timid writers.

* 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