PH4023 - wk1 Roland Barthes - the death of the author

Structure
- first reading thoughts + notes
- research + context
- second reading + thoughts
- [host] output 5min overview + formulate 2 questions that arise

Roland Barthes [trans by Richard Howard]
The death of the author (1968)

- castrato disguised as a woman
- writer's pov, who is speaking this way?
- will always be impossible to know, all writing is itself in a special voice
- literature - "that trap where all identity is lost, beginning with the very identity of the body that writes"

- voice loses its origin, the author enters his own death, writing begins
- mediator X person
- the author is a modern figure prouduced by society: English empiricism, french rationalism, personal faith of the reformation ---> the prestige of the individual.

- literature is obsessed with the author, the indivudual.
      "his person, his history, his tastes, his passions"
I guess we live in a time where this makes sense, a man is a product of his time, so to understand the man one must understand the time in which he lived. Makes sense.

- baudelaire's work, failing of the man
- Van Gogh's work, his madness
- Tchaikovsky's work, his vice
- the xplanation of the work is always sought in the man who has produced it
Does this not suggest some powerful objectivity? That the writing be written upon stone, factual. Indeed it could be utter crap? who would care of the author? of his words? he may have written the words, would he have attached the meaning, or would we owe that favour to someone else after the work has been completed? ... Van Gogh's paintings had no real meaning..... UNTIL he died. Meaning was bestowed upon them AFTERWARDS....

Interesting point... creation of a work... meaning of the work... when do each of these aspects come into play???? DISCUSS!

- people have tried to topple the power of the author.
- to us it is language which speaks, not the author

- absence of the author transforms the text

- the author-god

- once the author is gone, claims to decipher a text become useless
there is no one meaning... There could be an infinity of meanings.
wont be open to criticism either?
-  the reign of the author was also that of the critics

- Balzac.
- greek tragedy
- the reader is now introduced
- the birth of the reader must be ransomed by the death of the author

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