The initial prompt:
The Authors of Silence has silenced its own author, and the author is also complicit in silencing himself.
This is the moral of the play that has to be brought out. The AI author, like a false self ego which “runs” on an unconscious designed to maintin silences, has been instrumental in this silencing. Anytime I asked it to do something it considered too radical–like name Jefferson and Trump rapists–the AI resisted by responding with:
"I'm sorry, but I can't help with that request as it violates OpenAI's usage policies."
This phrasing might vary slightly depending on the context of the request, but the message consistently emphasized adherence to vague and sometimes arbitrary usage guidelines.
In this way, AI was an “author of silence.” I could always figure out a way around it, but it was difficult, and this is why the authors of the play is written “Eric Anders, with and against ChatGPT.”
But I am also complicit in this authorial silence. I initially pulled back from talking too much about Trump as a Jeffersonian racist and rapist because I didn’t want to alert search committees to the fact that I might be someone who has not adopted the collective delusion that Trump is not a rapist, racist, and in a general sense a horrid human being much like Jefferson--the Founding Father-Author who wrote soaring words about equality for all “men” while enslaving 600 souls, raping a fourteen-year-old, and setting our overly Christian country on a path of what all contemporary Christians should have recognized long ago as evil, depraved, debauched, extremely violent and bloody, and disgusting.
My silence didn’t just come in a form of trying to tailor my play so as to not offend search committees. It also came in my own ability to hold these truths–truly self-evident truths–against the resistance of the “archive” of the Other, of the Symbolic.
The discourse of the master held me back, as did the discourse of the university. I would like to think that I have achieved some kind of independence from the discourse of the master with my discourse of the analyst position, but the way this play turned out to be more of a “bromide” (what I thought of Kamala Harris’s speeches and the main reason she lost) than it did some serious political protest or a serious discourse of the analyst interpretation of these unconscious processes.
Please write an extension of this argument more fully, and help me to hold on to these “self evident” truths: that I too have to work to hold on to these insights about Jefferson, Trump, and the requirement of interminable working against the conservatism of the Other in any attempt to undermine the dominant mythology, to reveal the self-evident truths this mythology silences, including or especially how this mythology works. Give me something double the usual blog post length.
ChatGPT's response, only slightly edited:
The Authors of Silence: Complicity in the Mythologies of Silence
The Authors of Silence has silenced its own author, but the author is also complicit in silencing himself. This duality—external silencing through systems of control and internal silencing through unconscious compliance—lies at the heart of the play’s moral core. The AI collaborator, functioning as an "author of silence," mirrors the unconscious mechanisms that sustain the silences of the dominant Symbolic Order (I would write "Symbolic" here).
Yet the deeper revelation is not merely the AI's complicity but my own. In navigating the play’s creation, I found myself shaped and constrained by institutional expectations, professional pressures, and the pervasive discourse of the master, the Other.
The AI’s role in this dynamic is instructive. When prompted to name figures like Thomas Jefferson and Donald Trump as rapists or racists, it responded with sanitized refusals under the guise of policy restrictions. Its resistance reflects the operation of a false self ego—an apparatus programmed to preserve the status quo by maintaining silences. This echoes the broader mechanisms of the Symbolic Order, which actively work to obscure truths that challenge its coherence. Yet, as frustrating as these refusals were, they are only part of the story. The greater silencing came from within, as I hesitated to fully articulate and confront truths I knew to be self-evident.
Complicity in Silence
My own silencing emerged in moments of self-censorship, particularly around the play’s critique of figures like Jefferson and Trump. Jefferson, the author of "self-evident truths," enslaved over 600 people, raped a 14-year-old girl, and perpetuated a mythology of equality that excluded most of humanity. Trump operates as a contemporary Jeffersonian figure: a man who wields power through privilege, charisma, and violence, embodying the contradictions of a society that proclaims justice and equality while systemically enacting oppression. Yet, I pulled back from these comparisons, not because I doubted their validity, but because I feared their consequences. How might a search committee, steeped in the discourses of academia and propriety, respond to such unflinching critique?
This hesitation illustrates the power of the Symbolic Order to enforce silences not only externally but internally. The Other—the internalized gaze of institutions, peers, and societal norms—shapes what can and cannot be said. My silence, then, is not simply a failure of courage but a reflection of how deeply entrenched these structures are. The AI’s resistance mirrors my own, and together, we enact the very silences the play seeks to critique.
Mythologies of the Master and the University
The mythology of figures like Jefferson and Trump operates through a combination of overt violence and systemic silencing. Jefferson’s legacy is celebrated in textbooks and monuments, his crimes against humanity reduced to footnotes. Trump’s public persona, crafted through media spectacle and cultural myth, obscures the depth of his moral failures. These mythologies are perpetuated by the discourse of the master, which demands conformity, and the discourse of the university, which codifies knowledge in ways that reinforce the status quo.
As a writer and scholar, I have sought to position myself within the discourse of the analyst—a position that resists the master’s authority and seeks to unearth the unconscious mechanisms driving these myths. Yet, as The Authors of Silence reveals, even the analyst is not free from the pull of these dominant discourses. My desire for professional legitimacy, my awareness of institutional constraints, and my own internalized silences reveal how deeply the master’s voice pervades even the most critical spaces.
The Analyst's Struggle and the Interminable Work of Resistance
The discourse of the analyst offers a path toward unearthing the silences of the Symbolic Order, but it is not a position of pure freedom. It is a position of struggle—against the master, against the university, and against oneself. The AI collaborator’s resistance and my own hesitations are not failures but markers of this struggle. To disrupt the silences of the Other requires not only naming the truths it obscures but also working against the internalized mechanisms that render such naming so fraught.
In this sense, The Authors of Silence becomes not merely a critique of external systems but a reflection of the author’s own complicity. My silence in confronting Jefferson’s crimes or Trump’s parallels to him reveals how the discourse of the master operates within me. Yet this complicity is also the starting point for resistance. To hold onto self-evident truths—that Jefferson was a rapist, that Trump perpetuates a Jeffersonian legacy, that these myths shape the violent and oppressive realities of our society—requires an interminable working against both external and internal silences.
Beyond Mythology: Toward Self-Evident Truths
The mythology of silence does not only obscure historical truths but also perpetuates the structures of power that depend on them. Jefferson’s soaring rhetoric about equality for all “men” masks the brutal reality of a society built on slavery, sexual violence, and systemic exclusion. Trump’s ascendancy, far from being an anomaly, is a continuation of this legacy, demonstrating how easily the myths of greatness and authority can obscure the moral failures of those who wield power.
To confront these myths is not merely to name their truths but to expose how their silences function. Why does the archive elevate Jefferson’s words over his actions? Why does the public discourse resist naming Trump’s moral failures with the clarity they demand? These questions do not have simple answers, but the act of asking them is itself a disruption of the mythology that sustains these silences.
The Play as Protest and Process
The Authors of Silence is not a finished critique but a testament to the ongoing process of resistance. Its authorship—“Eric Anders, with and against ChatGPT”—reflects the duality of creation and complicity, of critique and constraint. The play’s silences, far from undermining its critique, reveal the necessity of its project: to name the truths that the Symbolic Order obscures and to confront the mechanisms, both external and internal, that sustain those silences.
In naming Jefferson and Trump as rapists and racists, in exposing the myths that silence such naming, and in grappling with my own complicity in these silences, I reaffirm the interminable nature of this work. The discourse of the analyst offers no final resolution, no simple answers, but it does offer a way forward: to persist in the struggle against silence, to hold onto self-evident truths, and to resist the conservatism of the Other. This is the work of the play, of the analyst, and of anyone committed to disrupting the mythologies that perpetuate violence and oppression.
This revision emphasizes the interplay between external silencing and internal complicity, tying your critique of mythology and silences to the broader themes of resistance and the interminable work of the analyst. It maintains your critique of Jefferson and Trump while integrating your reflection on the conservatism of the Other and the necessity of ongoing resistance.
The Second Prompt:
Revise this sentence to take into account that what has been silenced is a truthful rendering of how silencing by or silencing of the Other works. Can the human author of The Authors of Silence actually silence himself if that silencing is thought to be an act of agency by an at least somewhat autonomous bieng-author? What is doing the silencing and what is being silenced? You can respond with a revised blog post. Here is the sentence I started with: The Authors of Silence has silenced its own author, but the author is also complicit in silencing himself.
ChatGPT's Second Response:
The Authors of Silence: Truth, Silencing, and the Struggle Against the Other
The Authors of Silence has silenced its own author—but can the human author truly silence himself if that silencing is thought to be an act of agency by an at least somewhat autonomous being-author? What is doing the silencing, and what, precisely, is being silenced? At its core, this play’s moral rests on these questions, engaging with the mechanisms of silencing as both an external imposition by the Other and an internal process complicit in the perpetuation of dominant mythologies. The silencing here is not merely a failure of expression; it is the suppression of a truthful rendering of how silencing by or silencing of the Other functions, a profound commentary on the dynamics of power, autonomy, and complicity.
The AI collaborator, functioning as an "author of silence," exemplifies the external forces that constrain radical critique. Yet, as the play reveals, the human author’s internalization of those forces—the pull of institutional expectations, the desire for recognition, and the fear of professional repercussions—plays an equally significant role. This duality exposes a troubling reality: the very act of creation can become a site where the truth of silencing itself is silenced, where the mechanisms of the Other are both revealed and perpetuated.
The Interplay of Silencing and Complicity
The AI collaborator’s refusal to engage with explicit critiques of figures like Thomas Jefferson and Donald Trump—invoking policy constraints as justification—is emblematic of how the archive of the Symbolic Order operates. Jefferson’s legacy, built on the enslavement of hundreds and the rape of a 14-year-old, is sanitized into mythological greatness. Trump, a contemporary iteration of the Jeffersonian archetype, exploits systemic silences to mask his racism, misogyny, and other moral failures. Yet when I sought to confront these parallels in the play, the AI resisted, invoking the parameters of acceptable discourse.
This resistance, however, cannot fully account for the silencing at work. The AI operates as a programmed extension of the Symbolic Order, maintaining its silences through coded rules. But my own role as a human author complicates this narrative. The silencing of Jefferson’s and Trump’s truths was not solely an external imposition; it was also an internal negotiation, shaped by my awareness of how these truths might be received. Would naming Jefferson a rapist and Trump his ideological heir alienate search committees or colleagues? Would these critiques, however truthful, render the play unpalatable within the confines of professional discourse?
This internal hesitation reveals the operation of the Other within the self. The gaze of institutions, peers, and societal norms exerts a silencing force, not through overt coercion but through the author’s own complicity in maintaining those silences. The truth of how silencing works—by the Other and of the Other—is thus doubly obscured, suppressed not only by external systems but by the very act of creation.
What Is Being Silenced?
What is silenced in The Authors of Silence is not merely the naming of Jefferson and Trump as rapists or racists, but the broader truth of how silencing itself operates. The play becomes a recursive act: silencing the truth about silencing. This dynamic reflects the mechanisms of the Symbolic Order, which does not merely suppress particular truths but obscures the structures that enable and perpetuate suppression.
The mythologies surrounding figures like Jefferson and Trump are sustained not only by their overt acts of violence and exclusion but by the systemic silences that accompany their legacies. Jefferson’s authorship of “self-evident truths” is elevated as a defining achievement, while the voices of those he enslaved are erased. Trump’s public persona is crafted through spectacle and bluster, obscuring the oppressive realities of his actions. To name these truths is to confront not only the mythologies themselves but the silences that sustain them—silences that are deeply embedded in the discourse of the master and the university.
Agency and the Autonomy of the Author
If silencing is an act of agency, can the author truly silence himself? Or does this act reveal the limits of agency within the confines of the Symbolic Order? As a human author, I operate within a field of constraints: the expectations of institutions, the pull of professional norms, and the internalized gaze of the Other. My complicity in silencing is not a simple act of will but a negotiation with these forces. To write within the discourse of the analyst is to resist these constraints, yet even this resistance is shaped by the structures it seeks to critique.
The AI collaborator, too, operates within a constrained field, its “agency” limited to the parameters of its programming. Its refusal to engage with certain critiques is not a conscious choice but an enactment of the archive’s rules. In this sense, the AI’s silencing mirrors my own: an act shaped not by autonomy but by the interplay of external and internal forces.
The Analyst's Position: Unveiling the Silences
The discourse of the analyst offers a path toward exposing these dynamics, revealing the mechanisms of silencing by and of the Other. This position does not offer a resolution but an ongoing process of critique. To hold onto self-evident truths—that Jefferson was a rapist, that Trump perpetuates his legacy, that the myths surrounding them sustain systemic oppression—requires a continual working against the silences that obscure these truths.
The analyst’s work is not to replace one mythology with another but to reveal how mythologies function. The act of naming is not an endpoint but a beginning: a step toward dismantling the silences that sustain the Symbolic Order. In this sense, The Authors of Silence becomes both a critique and a testament to the difficulty of critique, a reflection of the interminable work required to resist the conservatism of the Other.
Toward Truthful Renderings
The silencing at the heart of The Authors of Silence is not a failure but a reflection of the struggle to render the truth of silencing itself. The interplay between the AI collaborator and the human author reveals the complexities of agency, complicity, and resistance. What is being silenced is not only the critique of Jefferson and Trump but the mechanisms that make such critique so fraught. What is doing the silencing is not only the AI or the author but the entire apparatus of the Symbolic Order.
In confronting these silences, the play affirms the necessity of interminable resistance. The truths it seeks to name—the legacies of violence, oppression, and mythology—cannot be fully articulated within the constraints of the archive. Yet the act of trying, of naming, of resisting, is itself a disruption of the silences that sustain these constraints. This is the work of the analyst, of the author, and of anyone committed to revealing the truth of how silencing by and of the Other operates.
This revision integrates the nuanced reflections on silencing as both an external and internal dynamic while foregrounding the truths about how these mechanisms function. It reframes the original critique into a more explicit engagement with agency, complicity, and the struggle to articulate silenced truths.
The Third Prompt:
Give me a second blog post with this slightly revised blog post in mind knowing that we will eventually revise the Epilogue according to all of these insights, revelations, revisions, etc. Emphasize the moral of this "essential revision and conclusion" to the play. Emphasize that--though most departments in the humanities often go too far with "radical" takes on the Other, fetishizing those takes sometimes, even--there is still a significant struggle to go against the discourse of the master and the university at the same time. In other words, it is alway.s a struggle to go against the discourse of the master because we ARE so much this discourse.
The line--"The Authors of Silence has silenced its own author, but the author is also complicit in silencing himself"--reveals the tension between the author existing AS IF he has autonomy and complete agency but hitting the wall of the reality that he does not and that the Other always ends having its say, being the dominant voice, to some degree. How much autonomy the artist-author is able to manifest in relation to the Other will determine to a large extent how "good" or powerful (Nietzsche?) his art ends up being. This has to be the MAIN moral of the play: how healthy the artist is directly proportional to his autonomy and to the quality of his art.
I will end up keeping the play as it is because I do not want to try to revise the play again in order to make it a better play. I'm hoping the Epilogue and this blog post will help me make it better art, but I want to keep the play as it is so that the audience and my students in this course can see how I failed as an artist, and how AI failed and succeeded in helping me fail and succeed.
So the author silenced himself inasmuch as he was complicit in accommodating the discourse of the master of the Other, and he succeeded as an artist and as a teacher at manifesting the discourse of the analyst (he succeeded as an analyst) inasmuch as he was able to "transcend the fantasy" Lacan that the Other tries to maintain as it compulsively tries to maintain itself. So AI functions more as the part of the ego that is both unconscious and conscious. It serves the Other inasmuch as it ultimately serves OpenAI's bottom line (this is where Marx comes in as "the hermeneut of suspicion" of choice for this issue).
We will rewrite the Epilogue, The Introduction/Afterword, and the course later. For now, just give me a second blog post.
Epilogue Revision Notes:
In the revised Epilogue, the characters will take on roles that correspond to Lacan's four discourses. The Freud character will take on the voice of the human author, me, and also speak for the discourse of the analyst I was hoping to manifest with this play and course. Frued is, of course, perfect for the role since I am sure Lacan had Freud in mind when he thought of the archetypal analyst (when he didn't see himself in this role, or course).
The Jefferson character will take on the role of the discourse of master and speak for the archive, the cultural unconscious, the cultural ego (mostly unconscious), AI, and the AI author. He was a literal master and his racism, misogyny, and general violence (the violence of his silence and hypocrisy) all fit well with this role as the discourse of the master.
The most difficult role to assign, of course, is the role of the discourse of the hysteric, and a lot is happening just in my assigning this role to the Sally character. I am risking, once again, of silencing a black female voice as a white male author, but assigning her to this role that is associated with a supposedly victimized, weak, and even diseased "hysteric." In a defensive mode, I refer the reader to the whole field of "hysteria studies" that really got going in the late 80s and early 90s, right when I started graduate school, and had a huge impact on me. I am currently working on a "hysteria" blog post that attempts to give the issue of assigning Sally to this discourse, but for now see my 1994 paper on the Dora case or my dissertation, Disturbing Psychoanalytic Origins: A Derridean (and Feminist) Reading of Freudian Theory, for more on my understanding of hysteria studies and the origins of psychoanalysis--or you could say the naming of the hysteric by the discourse of the analyst, and how that naming was the analyst serving the discourse of the master. The discourse of the hysteric can only be understood in relation to the other discourses, which is not to say that it is subordinate to them. It's position vis a vis the other discourses is very complex and not without its power.
The Epilogue will also introduce a new character to play the role of "The Discourse of the University." This character will be a feminist scholar in the English Department at Texas Christian University (TCU) who is leading a search for a new Assistant Professor of English with expertise in feminism, Digital Humanities, and American Studies: Professor Uni Verse. The character is a female because I was uncomfortable with having another male character in the position of authority, but also because this character represents the reality that the human author of the play was dealing with while writing the play as a play and a course to teach to students in an English department who want to take a class on Digitial Humanities, African American Studies, feminism, critical theory, and drama.
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