This is certainly not the first course in which I’ve encountered Barthes' 'Death of the Author'. The dead author springs from the grave almost every semester to fight the auteur, armed with the claim that “writing is that neutral, composite, oblique space where our subject slips away, the negative where all identity is lost, starting with the very identity of the body of writing.”
I adore the gist of this particular standpoint of Barthes’, and I think it injects a healthy does of perspective into the critical understanding and close reading of a text. But it took some time to embrace the concept: I recall pointing out to my year 8 English teacher, with pained concerned (for the author was still very much alive at the time), that should we stumble upon some meaning that the author had zero intention of building into the text, then we'd be barking up the totally wrong tree. Eventually I've come to an understanding that a writer’s work develops a life of its own, that any meaning that can be read exists, and that ‘correct’ interpretation is a construct of educational evaluation and not a feature of the organic relationship between the text and reader.
Of course, when writing entails “the destruction of every voice, of every point of origin”, the author might operate as a useful compass that guides us in our initial steps through the text. But that person cannot be – nor should they have to be – the guardian of finite meaning for that text.
When we seek the explanation for a work “in the man or woman who produced it”, it’s like asking a mother to explain the behaviour of her fully independent adult son; an author gives birth to the text, at which point to text begins to breathe on its own (and, Barthes argues, leaves the author to die from the complications of childbirth).
Words develop their own agency the moment they flow from the pen. The text has the power to overtake and outlive the author, to become a Petri dish for unintended meaning, and reveal more than the author bargained for. Barthes refers to an understanding within ethnographic societies in which “the responsibility for a narrative is never assumed by a person but by a mediator, shaman or relator whose ‘performance’ – the mastery of the narrative code – may possible be admired by never his ‘genius’.” I agree that when we study a book, it is the biodynamic life of text itself, and not the person who wrote it, which deserves our attention.
As a side note, I suspect this theory is only meaningful when regarding ‘complete’ texts. The author might still hold the interpretive key to less creative forms of writing, such as shopping lists, letters, and essays.
Moreover, in tying this theory to Barthes comparison of writing and speaking, I wonder if this same agency is assumed by the spoken word, leaving the speaker’s mouth with the same abandon that written words do? I doubt the ‘Death of the Orator’ is as stable a theory, unless perhaps in the case of voice-overs and commercial commentary, where the speaker is hidden from view and the voice assumes an anonymous omnipresence.
On the subject of "Death of the Orator", look at the oral tradition of indigineous populations, it is never the speaker that lives on, just the story... While we assume the author exists, I doubt the orator ever did...
ReplyDeleteI really like your comparison to the mother and the grown son, I think that it really puts into perspective what Barthes is saying, in a way that we can all relate to it. Everyone seems to be so against him in this course, though I think that it is the most important thing we have studied, as it questions all our literary notions at once. Nice one Lisa.
ReplyDeleteI loved your analogy to the mother/son and the metaphor of a 'petri dish of meaning'. I think it's great to express theory in creative, figurative terms rather than dry jargon. Good points regarding the organic interaction between text and reader. But I do think that language to an extent is finite- the author knows what the connotations of the words he uses are. He is able to detach from his text and ponder how it could be received and then alter to the text in an attempt to make it achieve what he intended. We shouldn't overestimate the myopia of authors.
ReplyDeleteWords are fleeting and speech is fleeting. I learnt that again when I forgot to do the catchpa phrase and lost my comment. And now it will be different to what I wrote before. I too liked your analogy about the mother and son. I think it goes further, I feel it does refer to speech as well. speech is iterable, especially now that it is recorded. Even before recording speech was iterable. look at university lectures. the same words are uttered by different lecturers in different lectures, the wavelengths of sound and the faces may be different but the words are the same, they have their own life in a way. So too with recorded speech, it can be cut reinterpreted and lose all connection with its original speaker. A look at youtube will show people being remixed and 'autotuned' so as to have a new life all their own, removed from their author. Derrida argued that with iterability comes a new form. No signature is ever the same but it is always identical perhaps offering just a spectre of its author.
ReplyDeleteBut I also think that Barthes was just carrying out an experiment with his proposed murder. To see what the academic landscape would look like if it were populated only by readers and not giant authorial figures. We always redefine texts when we read, and I doubt any two people read the same text identically. That is what i think the death of the author implies, that the power in this relationship lies not with the author, and not even really with the text but the reader instead. In the case of your analogy I'd say the reader was like the son's lover, having a completely different involvement at times tender or bitter with the spawn of the parent.
I, like everyone else, also appreciated your analogy of the mother and son in relation to the author and text, But what I found most interesting about your piece was the idea about the death of other authors in other art mediums. the fact that you think 'the death of the Orator' is not possible, confirms my belief that literature is one of the most traditional, difficult and complicated art forms out there to truly understand.
ReplyDelete