About authorship(s), transitivities and stiffnesses: A reflection on practice

Abstract

This work aims at reflecting on the notion of authorship in the publishing field, with a special focus on the oscillations between a more expanded and flexible conception of the authorial phenomenon, and a more rigid one – the latter of which is the one supported by the Law. In the first part of the discussion that will follow, we will address the stages of the development of the notion of authorship in the West. Having established this overview, we will carry out a brief study of a recent publication which is illustrative of the transitive aspect of authorship: the book-object terralegria, by Wagner Moreira and Mário Vinícius (2020). Afterwards, still based on the editorial experience materialized in the aforementioned book, the issue of authorship, as it has been treated in Brazil by the institutions that regulate it, will be discussed. In the final considerations, while seeking to foresee questions that may arise regarding the future direction of this debate, we will seek to devise a possible synthesis of the dialectics between recent authorial practices, considered from the publishing perspective, and the standpoint of the laws that deal with the subject.
Key words: authorship, publishing, book-object, copyright.