According to Barthes "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." Without belittling Barthes this seems to me the complete opposite of what writing is. In the world of fiction at least, so much of what the author writes is dependent on their personal experiences and are completely subjective. Characters are based on people they have met and the story progresses according to their own sensibilities. Even in theoretical writing the text is written in accordance with the views and beliefs of the author, and not anyone else, thus making it a very personal activity. Because of the inevitable subjectivity that is imbued in the text Barthes reasons that "the explanation of a work is always sought in the man or woman who produced it, as if it were always in the end...the voice of a single person, the author 'confiding' in us." However, he does not see this as the way things should be.
In our seminar we discussed what it meant to be an author and tried to describe the very act of writing itself. It seemed very difficult to come to an understanding of what actually takes place when someone begins to write something. For writers inspiration can come from anywhere, and then it is simply an act of sitting down and putting pen to paper. After that, the ideas seem to just flow. At least they do for people who write often enough. Barthes suggests that the French author Mallarmé saw the necessity to "substitute language itself for the person who until then had been supposed to be its owner." Yet do we not then give language the same power that we previously gave to the author? In some sense this simply makes language the author of the text and we are still left with someone or something that is the origin of the text and has the final authority over it.
I think the author and the reader are both equally important to an understanding of a text. Without the author it would never have been written, and without the reader there can be no recognition of the existence of the text. For me it is difficult to completely comprehend what it is Barthes means by the death of the author. Does this imply that all texts will now be presented to us as if they were written anonymously? Or is it more like a removal of the influence that the author has over the reader, purely by virtue of being the author? Unfortunately while it is simple for me to pose these questions, I cannot answer them. But perhaps that is what Barthes intended. His text could just as easily be a test, a probing of the response people will give to the idea that the author should no longer exist. As an experimental idea The Death of the Author has a lot of power to provoke a response and generate discussion.
Barthes, R. "The Death of the Author". The Book History Reader. Ed. David Finkelstein and Alistair McCleery. London and New York: Routledge, 2002, pp.221-224.
Barthes, R. "The Death of the Author". The Book History Reader. Ed. David Finkelstein and Alistair McCleery. London and New York: Routledge, 2002, pp.221-224.
Hi Sophie,
ReplyDeleteI agree with you that writing is certainly not an anonymous act, but the idea of considering that something inherently human should rid itself of human characteristics is an interesting one. I think 'The Death of the Author' is not experimental at all, but something that should be practised by a reader (as well as authors) at least once.
There are certainly books which have been ruined for me, by knowing too much about the author; Alice Sebold for example, and her childhood experience of rape before writing 'The Lovely Bones'. Or there are texts that should not speak just for the author, but for all its readers; Brecht's plays, for instance, deliberately use a Barthean idea of distance between author and reader.
Then there are authors like Australian Brian Castro, who puts Barthes' ideas into practice, and rids his novels of traces of biography. I find this idea of experimenting with the author's death and the reader's birth creates a lot of exciting possibilities for the past, as well as the future, of literature and literary criticism.
But does that knowledge of the author 'ruin' the book, or just impose a different, and possibly more difficult to handle, interpretation into your brain? Does it just make the book 'read' you, as such, a little more - remove some of your conscious agency to the realm of your subconscious?
ReplyDeleteAll very interesting. Do you think that maybe an 'ideal world of reading' might follow this kind of a plan:
ReplyDelete1. No author is known. We read the work, we respond to it as it is.
2. After this response, and if we wish to, we can learn about the author. This might alter or affect our reaction at step 1.
This structure would perhaps give the reader the best of both worlds. But yet again, in such a scenario the second step will be unavoidably affected by the first, and will not, perhaps, be the reaction we would have had if we had known the author first, and the work second.
But I think overall, as readers, our object of greatest attention must be the book itself. So if it were up to me, I'd go with my 'ideal world of reading'.
Again, an interesting concept; but one where we might never read anything decent again. Sometimes knowing the author's name, or reading a book for the name's sake, is a way in which we read. If you didn't know the author's name, you might end up reading Danielle Steel novels for the rest of your life and never know any better...
ReplyDeleteTo some extent though, isn't the 'inevitable subjectivity' that is 'imbued in the text' what Barthes is talking about when he says that 'a text is a tissue of quotations drawn from the innumerable centres of culture'. That is, something like that the writing process involves many different snippets of the wide range of an 'author's' experience flowing out of them, forming the textual product? Well at least that's how I interepreted it. I'm still not sure what I think about this, though. Any ideas?
ReplyDeleteAnd, to Anna, perhaps if you didn't know any authors' names you might start reading Danielle Steele novels, but would you finish them? I think not, but then again I only know her by reputation...
But even when the author is six feet under, what power they still have to SELL books. I could name a handful of authors - some of them recognisable staples of the canon, others more contemporary authors - whose books I would buy for my personal library, regardless of the book itself. The author becomes like a brand for their text in this way, selling it to the reader.
ReplyDeleteThese comments have all given me a lot more to think about, as if I wasn't struggling with Barthes already. I think the suggestion of your 'ideal world of reading' would be an interesting one to try out. As Lisa said the author does contribute a lot to the standing of a book and its ability to sell so if we could remove this impact then perhaps we would read it differently. And maybe that was what Barthes intended with suggesting the death of the author, however I still don't know.
ReplyDeleteI guess the answer has to lie somewhere in between. I think authors are more than capable of creating fiction incorporating some form of personal investment, whilst also distancing themselves from their writings. The two dont seem mutually exclusive for me.
ReplyDelete