A Further Exploration of Auctorial Constructs

This started out as a response to Lyda's post below, discussing Elizabeth Bear's post on auctorial constructs. It got big enough that I thought I would post it here.

Two explanations explorations of what I think Elizabeth Bear is talking about.

1. I have a picture of Tate Hallaway all dressed up and wearing great makeup, and I have met her at cons. If that was who I was expecting Lyda Morehouse to be in real life, I would be disappointed to discover that she is a totally different person. This is true whether or not you use a psuedonym, though I think in Lyda's case, she can dissociate the Tate persona a further degree because it's not the same name as she uses in day to day life.

But for many authors, it is the same name, and that sales pitch/con job/show they put on at conventions and readings and on the internet is who fans think they really are.

2. You may know details of my life. (Some of you know too many...) Most of those are completely different details, though, than the details the people who attend the synagogue I run would know. If you met someone from the synagogue and began discussing me, you would find out very soon that they have a completely different story of who I am in their head than you do in yours.

Yet, for many people, that story in their heads of who a person is is who the person is. This is completely understandable; we have to rely on the information we have learned about the world in order to make any decisions at all, or risk being paralyzed by constantly questioning absolutely everything. (Is the ground actually solid, or will I fall through it if I step ahead? Or behind me?! What if electricity can leap out of those wall sockets and burn me?) To be rational is to rationalize, to construct a mental definition of the world or some component of it, and then operate according to the definition we have determined. So we beleive that the things we know about someone, or things we think we know, are true things about that person. And we make judgements about people based on the things we think we know about them--what sort of person they are, whether or not they are reliable, flighty, serious, playful, etc.

With anyone you don't know personally, and especially anyone who has a public persona, this effect is magnified by a further remove. Not only do you have details that you beleive you have learned about them, but you also don't have the opportunity to verify those details in person. Yet by default we make determinations of value about details we think we know. Think of the game of Telephone and add in moral evaluations, and suddenly, you've got the internet and the gossip channels and auctorial constructs.