Wednesday, October 22, 2008
Part 1: Barthes' "The Death of the Author"
When I first read Barthes' "The Death of the Author" I was entirely confused, and must admit that it wasn't until the second reading that I started picking up specific ideas and concepts that he expressed. I am going to try my best to decipher a specific point that Barthes explicated in the article. I must say that one idea in particular stood out to me in the reading. Barthes' concept that writer originality is dead, because everything is just an imitation of everything preceding it, was very interesting to me. Because the art of writing has existed for so long, writers seek to establish a sense of uniqueness to their writing, but the ideas that they display are only elaborations of previous ideas that existed, and therefore, creativity cannot be attained. There was one particular quote that I thought truly epitomized Barthes' argument--he states, " Succeeding the Author, the scriptor no longer bears within him passions, humours, feelings, impressions, but rather this immense dictionary from which he draws a writing that can know no halt: life never does more than imitate the book, and the book itself is only a tissue of signs, an imitation that is lost, infinitely deferred (pg 188)." In this particular quote, I think that Barthes is emphasizing the fact that the death of the author, or creativity, has made the scriptor a bundle of inadequacy. Because the scriptor is unable to create an origin or original idea to his writing, he is forced to draw on previous ideas, and as a result his work of imitation bears no meaning. The fact that there are only imitations, reasserts Barthes' argument that the author is dead. Barthes acknowledges the fact that most people, especially critics, are prone to looking at the author for answers to the text. In contrast to this method, Barthes states that the reader holds the absolute power. Since each text is a mixture of reoccuring ideas, you cannot look to the author for the answer, but instead the reader, because the reader is the one who brings the "lost" ideas in the writing to life, by actively reading the text. I like the fact that Barthes believes that more credit should be given to the reader, as oppose to the author, because it is the reader's interpretation that truly brings the text to life.
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2 comments:
Wow. I think this is a pretty accurate and in-depth analysis of the points that Barthes was trying too make. Going back to the whole analysis of creativity, I think this is very true. In today's society, everything basically has its own core structures and anything beyond that is just an elaboration. The author of a text is seen as the source of artistic contribution. I am not quite sure I still have a clear understanding of the role of the scriptor, but the idea of the author being "dead" somewhat now makes sense to me. Once the text is "complete" we should not turn to the author for further analysis. The author has done its part and contribution already. Composed theories/questions thereafter are up to the reader to analyze, critique,and attempt to answer.
Great Post! I think you made a really great attempt to decipher a really difficult theory. At the end you mentioned that it is the reader's interpretation that brings the meaning of a text into being. I think that what Barthes is getting at in his passage is that there is no subjective "I" that is the source of meaning. Ultimately he is trying to prove that there is no essential meaning in a text to be found in the first place.
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