Is the question about referring to oneself in the third person as opposed to a phony omnipotent third person? (The author of this email isn't sure how this plays out in actual writing.) Certainly using the plural only makes sense if there are multiple authors, the author is speaking for a group, or the author is Queen Elizabeth.
I have no question that who did what should be described accurately. While the pretentious jock habit of referring to oneself may be slightly obnoxious, there's nothing specifically inaccurate about it. (Gunnar Swanson is not a pretentious jock. Gunnar Swanson just likes saying his own name.) By the same token, calling oneself "the author" may be stuffy but not inaccurate. Acting as if your actions were some sort of natural phenomenon is, of course, inaccurate.
A defense of the practice of putting oneself in the third person is a stylistic consistency. Much academic writing is in an authoritative voice and a sudden introduction of the first person could be a bit jolting. Using "this author believes x" in such writing could be a reasonable solution to a reading flow problem.
For many people (including this reader), much academic writing is clumsy because of academic conventions. Saying "Ken Freidman pointed out the problem of Space Food Sticks as art in his 1983 "Fluxus and the High Tech Snack Industry" flows better than "There is a problem with Space Food Sticks as art (Freidman 1983.)" The extra few words seem to be worth the space, especially considering the lack of brevity of other aspects of academic writing.
Teena's comment about full names rings true not just as a feminist statement but as a humanizing one. Referring to authors as authors rather than as authoritative disembodied texts not only has a humanistic value but is arguably a more accurate description of the world.
Gunnar
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