Authorship, collective signature and game in the journalistic narrative: a dialogue with the documentary Voyeur

Abstract

This article discusses the authorship in the journalistic narrative, as a horizons opening perspective to the understanding and to the experience in social me- diation. Based on the notions of text as a game, by Wolfgang Iser, of “author function”, on Michel Foucault, and of collective signature, on Cremilda Medina, the article proposes a dialogue with the documentary Voyeur – which addresses the controversies involved in the production and publication of the book The Voyeur's Motel by Gay Talese, which narrates the adventures of the American Gerald Foos, a former motel owner who, for decades, spied on the intimacy of his guests and was the subject of several controversies involving not only the veracity of what was narrated, but the relationship between journalist and it’s source –, to give rise to a reflection on questions such as: Does the story being told belong to whom? Who narrates it? Who is its author, when authoring, hermeneutic, and, more broadly, symbolic horizons have their foundations in question?