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The Midwife and the Janitor: How Names Convey the Value of Editing

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A Poetics of Editing

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Abstract

The study and theorisation of editing has been fragmented. It is a circular problem: the practice is invisible and so ill-defined, but the lack of a clear identity sustains the invisibility. Names are not purely functional; they reflect cultural values and give substance to ideas that might otherwise remain intangible. The chapter pinpoints the reasons for the ambiguity and creates a new version of Bourdieu’s field of cultural value to show editing’s place in contemporary media production. Greenberg identifies patterns in the naming of acts of editing and offers an original working definition that allows us to identify them in a consistent way across different technologies, genres and time periods. From this generic definition of selecting, shaping and linking, and from descriptions by practitioners, a distinct sense of editing emerges.

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  1. University of Roehampton, Roehampton, UK

    Susan L. Greenberg

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  1. Susan L. Greenberg
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Correspondence to Susan L. Greenberg .

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Greenberg, S.L. (2018). The Midwife and the Janitor: How Names Convey the Value of Editing. In: A Poetics of Editing. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-92246-1_1

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