I found this week’s reading to be challenging, mainly as I disagree heavily with Barthes’ idea of ‘’The death of the Author’’. I do agree that the meaning of a text depends on the reader as we will probably all take away something different from our reading experience, perhaps due to Bourdieu’s idea of different ‘’tastes’’ which relate to one’s social position.
I disagree however that writing and its creator and unrelated. The author has created the work; therefore the author has formulated the words, the dialogue and the narrative according to his or her own tastes.
The reader is ‘born’ to interpret the writing. Yet this seems a rather unfair relationship as it is not reciprocated as Barthes does not permit the author to interpret the reader. Barthes implies that the reader will judge the text and respond to it, thus themselves becoming a critic, yet in reality the writer also passes judgement on the reader. A piece of writing exists because the author had a specific intent, and likely taken into consideration when writing would be the reader’s response. An artist cannot surely be disconnected from his masterpiece? Spectators may choose view and interpret a work of art separately and out of context of the artist who produced it, yet the artist is still omniscient within the work.
Talking about the death of the author also implies a previous existence; therefore there has been historically an author. The suggestion that writing is now dispossessed implies that it was ‘’possessed’’ in the first place. Yet it seems as if Barthes is implying that there has never been an authorial presence.
On a separate point I found the reading on Bourdieu to be very interesting where he talks about the fact that language is used as a mechanism of power. Also that the way in which we choose to present our social space to the world demonstrates our perceived notion of our place in society is highly intriguing. Bourdieu talks about ‘’the practical ‘attributive judgement’ whereby one puts someone in a class by speaking to him in a certain way (thereby putting oneself in a class at the same time)’’ (242) which demonstrates the ‘’power’’ of language and how it can be used positively or negatively. The idea that we are all ‘’potential object[s] of categorization’’ (245) I think is rather dangerous as one will either consider oneself inferior to or greater than the person or group to which one compares oneself.
I liked your comment on the idea that if there is a death of an author there has to be an existence of an author before it’s death a “historical” author. I believe that it is important to define “author” in order to say when an author exsist before. And explaining this would be interesting especially since the idea of an author is a historical construct!
Hello Sinead,
Great post! I especially like your point about how the death of the author implies a previous existence – I had never previously thought it about it in that way and now that I do, I find this to be a very important point. I agree with you that this would imply a historical existence of the author and it creates the impression that we must overlook this, and that would not be a beneficial thing in my opinion. Very interesting point that I will definitely be thinking about as I continue to grapple with these concepts!