Multiple Agents at Once: Ong Against Formalist's in Defining Audience

According to the Bedford Glossary of Critical and Literary Terms, reader-response criticism emerged in the 1970s (425). This was very different from the traditional Formalist approach to literature studies that arose in the 1920s and 30s, which insisted that literary works had intrinsic value on their own as a text without outside factors such as the intention of the author, or the signification of the reader (189). Ong criticizes formalist thinking because "none...appear to broach directly the question of readers' roles called for by a written text"(Ong 9). The advent of reader-response criticism, for the first time, considered the role of the reader in literature studies as a way to understand literature and it's process of making meaning in the world. Some reader-response critics developed into reader-oriented critics which began to investigate reading communities as the most important aspent to literature studies. During the rise of reader-response criticism, in 1975, Ong considered the role of the reader in literature deeply in "The Writers Audience is Always a Fiction". However, in Ong's study of the writers audience (readers), he focuses a great amount on the writers role in texts based on an imagined, or created, audience by the writer. In this way, Ong utilizes ideas of reader-response criticism, but does not seem to completely support the idea that readership is the most important quality in literature studies due to his avid concern with the writer's dilemma and role in literature studies. Ong's focus on the writer and the reader supports the idea that there are more than one form of agent in literature, and readership is one of them.

Ong begins his argument with defining a writers audience: a writer does not have a collectivity of people in front of them, but instead has many individual readers who do not get the benefit of sharing the literal space or context of the author (not necessarily including special exceptions of writers in the same room for certain circumstances) (10-11). This differentiation is important to understanding the reader as a specific individual that brings to the text their own ideas, context, and themes.  As reader-response critic Holland put it, "readers find their own 'identity theme' in texts...readers use 'the literary work to symbolize and finally to replicate ourselves"(Bedford Glossary of Critical and Literary Terms 428). This idea gives agency to the reader, as they discover a meaning or implication that is not always the direct meaning that the writer intended.

Therefore, in the role as writer, the writer must consider/ fictionalize the audience they are addressing in order to write successfully in a way that an audience can relate to or understand (11). Ong emphasizes the author's role as an agent of the words on the text, "The writer must construct in his imagination, clearly or vaguely, an audience cast in some sort of role"(12). If this is successful, then "the audience must correspondingly fictionalize itself"(12). The audience will become the role that the author has built/ organized for them. Formalist Barthes claims in the "Death of an Author" that "the birth of the reader must be at the cost of the death of the Author"(877), but if the reader is correspondingly fictionalizing him or herself into the author's text, then is it not the author who has some sort of agency over the text still? It seems as if the agency of the writer and the agency of the reader is corresponding and working at the same time.

For example, in the Nike campaign, The Girl Effect: "I dare you", the beginning of the video is actually daring the viewer to view each image of a girl in a certain way. The introduction is just words on a black screen: "I dare you". And then series of imagery of girls from third world countries with a voiceover saying "I dare you" to look at them as more of than a statistic, more than an image ("poster for your cause"), but as a girl with capabilities, unique qualities, and a way toward a better life in these communities. The introduction projects what the audience is supposed to feel and be in that moment: someone who sees these images of girls in third world countries often and has not done more than feel pity for them. This allows the audience to become the person who looks at these images and feels more than just pity, but sees a strong girl who, with some support, could be the change in her community. The author shaped this campaign video to create a role for the audience within the text. It is literally addressing the audience, and that gives them a role by being intimate (through words) with the viewer. The author's decisions of how they build the role of the reader is a lasting decision that continues to affect how the viewer intakes the information. The agency of the author is extended through how the text is organized and portrayed to the viewer.

It is possible to consider the text as the agent over the material until the viewer becomes the new agent (in Barthes idea of death and birth of the agent), based on the idea that Aristotle posed to us that information already exists but authors put them into written account. In this idea, authors do not create new information, and therefore they may only be acting as a temporary agent when they put information to text. However, the organizational choices and the voice of the author that guides the audience to play a certain role in the text is the agency of the author that is lasting. That aspect of the author as an agent will not die, but instead shape how the readers as agents understand a text (even if it does not completely decide how readers as agents interpret the material).