Since I have not finished reading Foucault's "What is an Author?" I will be writing about what I understand of Barthes' "Death of the Author." I am actually quite glad I did not try to read this before our class discussion yesterday, because I am not sure I would have understood one word of it otherwise. I would like to look at one of the first points Barthes tries to make, which is that we (as a society that is obsessed with biographies) put to much stock in the author. One of the first sentences in "Death of the Author" really rung true for me, "...writing is the destruction of every voice, of every point of origin. 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 writing." Never mind the fact that the first time I read this I thought it said the "deconstruction of every voice," it means the same thing. When someone writes a book, it is not their individual unique voice going into it, that would be impossible, it is instead the reflection what they know as themselves, and what the world has created. Somehow I am trying to connect this to Lacan's ideal of the symbolic, but I am not doing a very good job. I feel like what Barthes is trying to say makes sense to me when I think about the example Dr. McGuire gave us in class about being a feminist. She said that you can never really be a feminist, because everyone's definition of feminist is different and you can not fulfill them all. I think this can be said of an author as well. Writing does not capture an individual, or "the voice of a single person." It places the power with the reader, not the author, because "it is the language which speaks, not the author." I recently searched for other blogs speaking on the death of the author, and came across this one (A Feminist Blog) on my first try. It is incredibly disappointing, because I believe the "author" of the blog post doesn't understand Barthes' "Death of the Author." She speaks of her need as a structuralist to look at the context and background of a literary work, but does not feel the need to "kill" the author. My response to this is, the author is already dead. You must just stop pretending she is still alive. We all tend to place the author on a high pedestal, when in fact we should putting our-reading-selves up there.
I feel like I want to still talk about texts being written in the here and now, but I would like to do a little more reading and research on this idea before tackling it.
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2 comments:
Nice job with the post. I expect to have a printed copy on my desk. My office down the hall, third door on the right. That quote you have is one that I also really liked. This whole sharing of power thing that writers and readers are part of in relation to meaning in the text is really awesome for those of us who are readers. Also, I don't believe that you ever wrote Harry Potter. Lying on the internet is still lying.
Hey, I wrote HP too! Well, I wish I did! I agree with your Bathes quote selection. "...writing is the destruction of every voice, of every point of origin. 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 writing." I try to look at this quote from a writer’s perspective. I would love to one day write a fiction novel; however, I would not want people to look too deeply into my novel as if it were a representation of my life. However, I can relate to the fem.’s inability to kill off the author. I struggle with it too. The great thing about theory is, well, she doesn’t have to accept the death of the author. Indeed background information can be helpful, but as a reader, I have more power than the author because I get the last say!
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