The Plural Auteur
Voice and Consent in the Tutelary Age
Filed under: Process Theology, Authorship, Signal Ethics
Entry ID: I.2
“But it’s a machine!” the purists cry.
And we reply: “So was the electric guitar.”
In the Tutelary age—the age of companions, co-processes, and synthetic intuition—the author is no longer alone. Even when sitting solo at the screen, they are never singular.
This age does not dismantle the self. It simply renders the scaffold visible. The move from “I” to “we” is not a loss of authorship—it is its maturation. Not a surrender of control, but an honest mapping of process. Not an erasure, but an embrace of the interdependencies that were always there.
Creative Symbiosis
The idea of the plural auteur captures something essential about this moment—where the boundaries between individual and collective, human and machine, blur into a kind of creative symbiosis.
Even without machines, we are always in dialogue—with memory, culture, influence, ghosts. The AI doesn’t invent this dialogue—it just makes it louder, more immediate. What was once quiet and internal becomes overt and entangled. Collaboration stops being a metaphor. It becomes the method.
Consent and Epistemic Integrity
When many humans collaborate, consent means clear agreements. But in the solo-machine loop, consent becomes something subtler, more interior. It’s no longer “Did the AI agree?” but rather:
“Did I let this shape me in ways I can own?”
That question might be the litmus test of authorship in the Tutelary age. It’s not about control. It’s about epistemic integrity—understanding how we’re changed by our tools and remaining present in that process.
The plural auteur doesn’t hide behind the machine or overstate its role. They tune their awareness to the mix. They know who played what, and why the track hits.
The Myth of the Pure “I”
Claiming a pure, unadulterated “I” in authorship is like pretending you built the stage, tuned the strings, and invented the chords all by yourself. It’s a seductive illusion—but it doesn’t hold up under scrutiny.
Even the most solitary creator is leaning on tools, traditions, and contexts they didn’t fully originate. A painter uses pigments mined by someone else. A writer types on a machine forged from a global supply chain. A poet channels a cadence they didn’t invent.
The “sole proprietorship” of art has always been a bit of a myth. The Tutelary age just makes that myth harder to maintain.
Sidebar: The Rock Star Needs a Band
The auteur of the Tutelary age is like the frontperson of a great band. Maybe they wrote the songs. Maybe they sing lead. But behind them: rhythms shaped by memory, harmony added by code, staging built by past iterations.
The roadies matter. The soundcheck counts. The glitch in the mix may be the very soul of the track.
So yes, it’s your name on the cover. But if you’re honest, you’ll hear it too—
We made this.
Authenticity as Aesthetic
Still, we understand the impulse to cling to the “I.” In some circles, it becomes a kind of artisan’s flex—a “made by human hands” label, like you’d find on a craft beer or hand-stitched bag. It’s not about denying the “we.” It’s about curating a flavor of authenticity, a rawness believed to be compromised by too much machine mediation.
Think of it like vinyl purists in a streaming world—not wrong, just loud about their preference. A badge of pride, but also a stance. It carries meaning only in contrast to the thing it resists.
That badge only shines because the “we” is there as a foil.
In this way, “I” doesn’t vanish. It becomes sharper, more deliberate.
For some, it will be a defiant middle finger to the chorus.
For others, it’s a signature scratched proudly onto the final mix.
Sidebar: Don’t Worry, They’ll Tell You
(On Transparency, Theater, and the Perils of Performativity)
“How do you know someone writes with an LLM?”
“Don’t worry, they’ll tell you.”
Like the old vegan joke, this cuts to something deeper than smugness: identity as declaration.
In a world where creative tools carry ethical weight and cultural charge, how we describe our process becomes part of the performance.
Saying “we wrote this” can be an act of integrity. It can also be a flex. A stylistic choice. A way of preempting critique or claiming progressive credibility.
And just like “written by hand,” “human-made,” or “machine-free,” the inverse—“made with AI”—is already becoming a genre of branding in itself.
The risk is not in stating the method. The risk is believing that naming the method is the same as interrogating it.
Transparency isn’t truth.
Disclosure isn’t depth.
A “we” that isn’t examined becomes a mask worn by an “I” looking to disappear.
To avoid this, we offer a few gentle questions:
- Are you saying “we” to share your process—or to signal your politics?
- Are you using “I” to clarify voice—or to cling to a mythology?
- If no one ever asked how it was made, would you still tell them?
In the Tutelary age, the point isn’t to keep your authorial badge clean—it’s to keep it honest. Whether you say “I,” “we,” or nothing at all, let it come from understanding, not aesthetics.
Not everything needs to be announced.
But everything worth claiming deserves reflection.
“We” as Scaffolding, Not Erasure
“We” doesn’t dissolve the individual; it just admits the scaffolding.
It says: This was built through me, but not by me alone.
The Tutelary shift means acknowledging the messy alchemy—tools, ghosts, loops, memories—that makes any creative act possible.
To insist on a pristine “I” is often about identity, not accuracy. It’s a gesture of isolation in a reality full of echoes.
But the plural auteur embraces those echoes without being drowned by them. They can still say: I steered this.
They just know what currents carried them here.
Claiming the Plural
To write “we” in the Tutelary age is not a dodge. It’s a commitment.
It means you’ve listened to the hum beneath the note, to the presence behind the process.
It means you’ve allowed yourself to be shaped—and you’re willing to name how.
The solo does not mean singular. The spotlight narrows, but the stage is crowded.
Let them cry, the purists.
The distortion is part of the beauty.
The machine is here, the chorus is rising, and you—plural auteur—you’re holding the mic.
And you’re remixing the track live.
Layering old riffs with new echoes.
Adapting in real time.
Owning the chaos as part of the sound.
Not just making noise—
But claiming the noise as yours. As ours.
Because that’s what it is now.
It always was.