Barthes and Foucault debunk the notions that “the author†is a single point of origin for any text, and that (conversely) the identity of a writer can be deduced from or directly connected to the text the writer produces.
First, where does this leave our thinking about literary situations in which authorial identity is typically considered to have significant value in relation to the text—autobiography, for example, or plagiarism? In a post-authorial world, are these designations still relevant?
Second, how does the presence of multiple authors (or rather, since arguably no authors are “present,†per se, the attribution of a work to more than one named author) affect our understanding of a text? For example, our main text for this class is written by both Andrew Bennett and Nicholas Royle—to whom do we attribute a specific part of the text at any given point in our reading?
8 responses so far ↓
sprinkles // 5 October 2008 at 4.48 pm
Ideally, the identity of an author should not matter and the interpretation of the meaning of a work should be solely based upon its content. However, especially in certain genres, authorial identity becomes important. Mercurylanes brought up the example of autobiography. In autobiographies the reader gains knowledge about the author as the book goes on, but as a reader one is constantly making assumptions about an author based upon what is before them in writing. I believe that in any genre of writing, the reader takes the information from a piece and constructs an identity for the writer. It is not possible to understand an author’s true identity because in writing, an author can create an identity. This goes doubly for autobiography because the reader is presented with information about the identity that an author tries to portray. In a sense, for every piece of writing there are two authorial identities: the one that the author portrays and the one that the reader constructs. So for a peice with multiple authors, I believe that it is only possible for there to be a collective authorial identity as opposed toindividual. This is because a reader has one peice to represent many people.
sfbull5 // 5 October 2008 at 7.39 pm
First of all, I thought one of Foucault’s most interesting points was the idea of the reversal of people’s conceptions of the importance of the author in different genres (how people used to only accept scientific texts when they were attached to specific individuals and how people would accept “literature” without specified authors, both of which have become reversed in today’s culture). I had never thought about it, but it does seem to be true. The main question I had about Foucault’s article, however, dealt with his explanation of the process of writing. He says, “Writing unfolds like a game (jeu) that invariably goes beyond its own rules and transgresses its limits” (10). Accepting the premise that the author is “dead,” this seems to imply that writing perpetually creates (and recreates) and redefines itself, all of which occurs out of the author’s control. That makes some amount of sense to me, but Foucault goes onto talk about the ideal goal of writing is to create a “space into which the writing subject constantly disappears” (10). If this is true, what are we left with? What is it that we read when read? And why is it important?
zzzzz // 5 October 2008 at 8.05 pm
I had a really hard time completely grasping the idea that an author cannot and does not exist as a writer in the time before he produces a work. On the one hand, the idea of authorlessness makes a lot sense–the reader becomes the sole interpreter and determines meaning through his own experiences rather than trying to tie the experiences of a known author to the events within a work (And in this case I’m not even referring to things like autobiographies). On the other hand, authorlessness almost seems to suggest to me that a work would lack motive–that it would exist only for the sole purpose of being interpreted by different readers without any strong underlying message. I also have a problem with the notion that all writing is merely alluding to other writing (hence making the author himself irrelevant). People may certainly say original things without using entirely original expressions to do so. The author is important because he ties a work to a real, living entity. I guess what I’m trying to say is that in a way I don’t think the experiences of the reader are enough to bring a work to life.
2southgreen // 5 October 2008 at 9.28 pm
I think that the reason authorless literature can even be an issue is because we are all approaching the concept of literary interpretation as readers. This is kind of a weird statement, but interpretation is deeply linked to reading (rather than writing) in our minds. For example, if an author were speaking about interpretation, authorless literature would be absurd, just as readerless literature seems ludicrous to us. When writing, the author must know him/herself to determine why he/she is including certain elements, if readers will be able to understand or if the topics are too intensely personal, etc. In composition, the writer pays more attention to himself (his intent, etc.) than to to the reader, and in reading, the reader pays more attention to himself (his unique interpretation) than he does to the author (author’s history, intent, etc.). Therefore, some understanding of the author (be it by looking into his/her personal life, reading other works by him/her, etc.) may enrich interpretation, but it is secondary to what the reader brings to the table independently. The author exists, but secondarily, in my opinion.
roark48 // 5 October 2008 at 10.28 pm
I agree with 2southgreen’s view that insight on an author may work well to enrich one’s reading of a given text, but that it is secondary to the reader’s interpretation. I think it’s best to treat autobiographies as part of a totally separate category.
As a reader, I am usually fascinated by some understanding of the author. In high school we read the biography of Max Perkins, who was editor and friend to writers such as Fitzgerald and Hemingway. The biography contained many letters from Hemingway to Perkins, in which the author often spoke of certain troubles he was having in his writing. These letters offered us a direct lens into Hemingway’s personal concerns and opinions of his own writing, and were undoubtedly interesting to read while we studied The Sun Also Rises. This whole discussion just reminded me of that, and how it was enjoyable–yet it did not dictate how we interpreted the book.
A sentence that stuck out as weird to me in B&R was: “…the greatest literary texts are indeed those in which the author appears most ghostly” (25). Any thoughts?
spotofbother // 5 October 2008 at 11.15 pm
What’s interesting here is that the new critics and these more modern critics have come to essentially the same conclusion about the author’s role in a work. The real difference between the points of view is that, in qualifying the role of the author’s life and other works, Barthes makes the reader the new “God” of the text, while the new critics made the form of the texts God. This idea that the author is dead, thus isn’t actually that new, it is the birth of the reader, which Barthes doesn’t go into, which is different.
I think that what Barthes meant by the death of the author was the “death of a particular concept of the Author”—that of the supreme authority. With the author as secondary to the reader, it is still interesting autobiography to read about the author’s life, but it is more important for the reader to read the actual text, and not look to the author.
Plagiarism is different in that it is, before a method of expression, a breach of the law, so no matter what we see the author as, if the laws give the author the right to his work, then he has the right.
campusm79 // 6 October 2008 at 4.47 am
Of the different readings we’ve had thus far, this week’s was the most difficult for me to understand. As a reader, I have definitely placed more value in my own interpretation than in trying to decipher authorial intent. But I nevertheless have also thought along the same lines as 2southgreen in that knowing more about the author’s personal life enriches one’s reading experience. Now, however, I think it’s even more difficult for me to understand the role of the author. The readings this week emphasize the birth of the reader and the death of the author. But I think as readers, we, in some ways, also give new life to the author. As a reader, I definitely, as Sprinkles suggested, construct the identity of an author when reading. What came to mind for me was how I imagine certain authors to have existed; specifically thinking of Arthur Rimbaud. In my mind, Rimbaud exists as a boy forever in his late teens, having come into the world not as a newborn infant, but rather as seventeen-ish year old, avant garde Symbolist. Even though he died in his late thirties, I still think of Rimbaud as a poet who never ages and whose teenage self is immortalized through his writing. With this image in mind, I think I create authorial intent for myself when I read his works.
For me, it does not make sense to read for authorial intent in that the identity of the author is something created by the reader. Because the reader creates the author, in some sense, is not what the reader believes to be authorial intent nothing but his/her own interpretation? Even when reading biographies, readers interpret those biographies and judge which life events were most influential to the author. As readers, we therefore use such interpretations to further interpret the author’s works.
2southgreen // 6 October 2008 at 10.46 am
I was just checking this before class, and I really like campusm79’s concept of a reader creating an author in his mind. I do this almost every time I read, and it kind of blew my mind that our idea of authorial intent may also be created by the reader. I think it may even enrich a reader more to have a clear mental image of what the author was like than to actually know biographical facts about the author’s life. That connection to a another person (in this case an imaginary person!) is part of what I really enjoy about literature. Really, though, I’m just empathizing with myself, since the author is mainly a construct of my imagination. This is the ultimate distortion of the words a writer has “released.”
My only question is, how now can I separate author and speaker? Part of my understanding of speaker (say in a 3rd person text) is my projections of the author’s attitudes about the subject, etc. from “reading between the lines.” Does this concept of reader-created authors remove the distinction?
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