Is the author really dead?

Roland Barthes’ theory on the nullification of the author is based on his belief that literature has come to be “tyrannically centered on the author”. I don’t believe this is necessarily so, for several reasons.

I think part of the obsession with authors is, as was mentioned in the tutorial, the desire to ‘understand’ the person behind text with which one feels a strong affinity. When I read, I find it nearly impossible to not imagine the individual writing the words I am reading, and imagine their thought process, their The author therefore, for me, is an integral part of my reading process, a fictitious character I create that undeniably adds a more tangible human significance to the words on the page. This occurs whenever a text has a profound impact on me—whether positive or negative—and I feel a deep urge to connect in the extra-textual realm with the creator.

The importance of the ‘author’ as a concept is also, as Foucault argues, to do with grouping together a set of texts, styles or ideas under one name. An author’s name, when used adjectivally, can act as a point of reference for future literary texts, and can pithily describing the tone, style or plot of work that is similar to the original in one way or another. But when is an author so significant that they turn from a proper noun into an adjective? I think it is to do with creating something truly groundbreaking and original within a text, whether it be an idea, an use of speech or whatever, which becomes so widespread as to be forever attributed to a single individual, and all future texts which attempt to explore similar modes of expression forced to concede to the weight of their predecessors—what Pease calls a “cohesive cultural realm.” Barthes argues that such originality is impossible, what with all writing being merely a mash-up of already existing words and ideas, but it is when an individual manages to do so, and create something truly remarkable as the end product that true originality, or at least as much originality as we humans are capable of, is achieved.

What ­­­ Pease says is also true- that the author is crucial in the process of literary analysis and criticism, as when critiquing a work, one is simultaneously critiquing the author, or at least the author’s decision-making process in creating the text. The two simply cannot be disassociated from each other. By ascribing it an author, therefore, a text is given more weight and meaning, in a sense that would be impossible if it were just floating around in the void without an owner.

As Herrnstein Smith argues, the author’s evaluative practice of deciding what words, rhymes and structures to use in their texts is just as much a part of literary criticism as are external critiques. Where the problem with authors does lie, as Barthes argues, is when people start expounding a belief in some kind of objective truth regarding a text, in terms of what the text is ‘saying’ or what certain things ‘mean’ or ‘represent’. I think here, indeed, the existence of an author is stifling and severely limiting to one’s ability to engage with and, ultimately, enjoy a text. This is particularly the case with poetry, when the beauty of the sounds and rhythms is so often ignored in favour of analyzing the autobiographical references in the stanzas. I do not believe that all literature is ‘tyrannically centered on the author,’ however I do believe that the role of the author fulfils certain crucial functions in the process of not just literary criticism, but textual engagement and enjoyment.