Feb 08 thought paper

The Death of the Author or the Rejection of authors?

Charlotte Tschider
02/08/2005
RIPI

After reading our assignments for this week, one must consider the presence of literary form and example. Is it possible that the writing itself is just a combination of previous forms and concepts (which are, in turn, built upon those preceding, i.e. ______ is _____, which is ______, and that all goes back to Homer), or is the unique, artistic aspect of writing (which demands artificer for artifact, a necessary association) a superceding or rejection of form all-together?
In Barthes’ Death of the Author, he asserts that “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.” In this option, the author slips away, allowing the only focus to fall on the reader, not necessarily to the point of reader-response criticism, but only to allow that “losing” the author rejects singular meaning, a “right” vs. “wrong” interpretation of reading. Later, Barthes, drawing on Vernant states that “thus is revealed the total existence of writing: a text is made of multiple writings, drawn from many cultures and entering into mutual relations of dialogue, parody, contestation, but there is on e place where this multiplicity is focused and that place is the reader, not, as was hiterto said, the author.” The reader here (as the author turns to scriptor, a mere utility for the thoughts, feelings, and multiplicity of the audience) bears the responsibility of asserting meaning, understanding duplicity (as in the Greek tragedies), and gaining from it a reflection of past experience. The scriptor here is only the tool of the audience, the art which is displayed informing life, not imitating it. In this sense, the romantic sense of the Author simply religating in the gifts and inspiration of the gods/God/muses falls away and leaves the audience/society in a dominant position.
I have to wonder how different this really is from other readings demonstrating the author as secondary (as Jeff has noted) to the only true Author, a heavenly being/s of some kind, informing the author and using him as a mouthpiece. Isn’t this just a shift in power? It seems as if society in general and the immediate audience are working in symphony to make the text itself not a mere reflection of previous writing/social values but rather to infuse their own feelings, values, understandings, and comprehension to ascribe meaning and relevance. This relates (I think dramatically) to rhetoric. In terms of the Aristotelian enthymeme, for example, the enthymeme requires audience belief/value/opinion to provide one aspect of the audience. The speaker (or scriptor in the text’s case) simply sets up the framework; the audience provides the persuasive/relevant aspect. In this case, the audience really becomes artistic, becomes creator, just as the reader becomes creator (of meaning) for the scriptor. Here, it seems that authorship and rhetoric go hand-in-hand, a reemergence of audience as Author, ascriber of meaning.