Authorial attribution functions as a gendered economy of credit

Evidence

Wolitzer’s slim novel reveals that the celebrated literary career of Joe Castleman has been ghostwritten for forty years by his wife Joan, who has never received public credit. The book operates as a feminist critique of the legal author-figure: the named copyright holder, the man on the dust jacket, the recipient of literary prizes. Joan’s predicament demonstrates how authorial attribution functions as a gendered economy, with credit asymmetrically distributed even where contractual arrangements would suggest otherwise. For research on feminist IP scholarship and the construction of authorship in the Foucauldian sense, Wolitzer’s novel offers a domestic test case that resonates with broader questions of ghostlabor in generative AI. — , The Braided Reading EPUB, 693

Categorization

• XREF: Strongly parallels the ghostlabor debate in generative AI and the woman-writer invisibility theme in Ain’t I a Woman. — connects to: Literary prestige is allocated by gendered hierarchy of subject matter — Hilary Mantel, A Memoir of My Former Self- A Life in…, 1047; Women’s lower self-citation yields competence-versus-likability penalties in academia — Brooke Erin Duffy, (Not) Getting Paid to Do What You Love:…, 621
• SEED: Article angle: ‘The Wife as Ghost Model’ — framing domestic ghostwriting as the domestic prehistory of AI ghostlabor in training-data attribution.

Broader Connections

• Literary prestige is allocated by gendered hierarchy of subject matter #expands (0.70) — Hilary Mantel, A Memoir of My Former Self- A Life in…, 1047