2024-09-21

How to kill an author

Alright, bunnies, let’s try something a little different today. It’s quick, and it’s called murder. And you won’t even get in trouble.

You’ve probably seen the expression “Death of the author” flying around. I know I use it. It’s probably time to explain it, and see if you’ll join me on my killing spree. You’ll see, it’s all very French and metaphorical.

The point

So, some of you have done literary analysis in school? You remember being upset about “When the author writes about blue curtains, they meant to elicit a feeling of depression and yearning”, and covertly thinking “Nah, mate, the author meant to say the bloody curtains were blue”? And thinking that this whole process of trying to reconstruct author’s intentions and context and state of mind was kind of useless?

Well, good news. I’m with you on this, and so are Roland Barthes and Michel Foucault. Or maybe, bad news, if you consider structuralism a swear word and cannot pull off a turtleneck. Sorry for your loss, bunny.

Anyway, the year is 1967. And Roland Barthes, like you, is pissed to have to trudge through author’s biographies, historical essays, to try and reconstruct what a novel / essay / poem meant to the person who wrote it, in the context they wrote it. He is fed up with looking for secret meanings, and trying to figure out what the author wanted to say. And, my favourite pet conspiracy theory, he has made a bet with Michel Foucault on whom can write about “words scintillating on the fabric of meaning” while still being taken seriously.¹

But none of his intentions matter: because he writes The Death of the Author, an essay according to which texts and writings should be analyzed separately from author’s intent and context. According to which a text has many meanings, that emerge during the act of reading, rather than a single meaning assigned to it at birth, that the author has authority and control over.

To go less handwavy structuralist vibes on you: The Death of the Author tells you “It doesn’t matter what the author meant; what matters is how the text, as a unit of meaning, can be interpreted.”

Why kill the authors

“Oh Llwyn, you’re just going all postmo relativist on us again, and there is no definitive truth and meanings are social constructions…” Yeah, sorry, I’ve had a rough few months and absurdism is my comfort metaphysic.

You’ve got to hand it to me though: it’s refreshing to read a text and find out what it means to you, rather than try and piece out the author’s intents. A death of the author attitude focuses on reception: on how a text can be interpreted in different contexts, on how it can speak to different perspectives. And the idea behind this type of analysis in literature is to move away from the “there is one true meaning - of which the author holds the key” and towards “a text has potential to elicit meaning, that will differ depending on the context in which it is read”. The author probably meant to write a cool thing anyway, and say the curtains were blue. But the blue reminding you of depression is also an aspect of the meaning.

Foucault also has a cool point – in his approach to micro-history through his biography of Raymond Roussel (1963, trans. Death and the Labyrinth: The World of Raymond Roussel 1983) he is confronted to the impossibility of “putting himself in the shoes” of a XIXth century reader. Inasmuch as he can try to elucidate the biography of the author, the original context of publication of his works, etc., he will never be a XIXth century reader of Raymond Roussel, and therefore he will never grasp the meaning that a XIXth century reader of Roussel could grasp. Does it mean, though, that it is a fool’s errand to analyze a work that you can never grasp in its historical context?

Does it mean that, because we are not Elizabethan, we can never access the meaning of Shakespeare’s plays?

The death of the author answer is no, we can access meanings – because the meanings are contained in the text, and pertain to the text / reader relationship. What the writer meant is not the only truth of the text, nor does it matter so much. Because the writer does not have authority over the meaning of the text. Instead, the text, when published and fully formed, goes on to have a separate life from the writer.

It kind of ties in to our reflexion on communication: how meaning elucidation is not so much about “finding what the speaker intended to communicate” but rather “finding what the speech communicated”. And it’s about context of reception, and intention recognition.

—

It’s a quick one, and I’m rather unsatisfied, but hopefully it gives some pointers. Death of the author is about accepting that texts, works of art, works of science, can have many different meanings, and that there is not a single true super secret meaning that only the author knows. It’s about accepting that texts and fictional characters have a life of their own, even if the author didn’t plan for it.

To wax poetic about it, what Death of the author means to me is…

Miguel de Unamuno wrote Niebla in 1907. Niebla is a novel where the main character, Augusto, is suicidal after a heartbreak. But then, Augusto realizes he is a character in a novel, and does not want to die for the whim of the author. So he goes on a trip, and finds Unamuno writing the novel in his office, and pleads for his life, and Unamuno tells him he must die for the plot. So, instead, Augusto kills Unamuno. The novel ends in a haze – hence the title: who’s writing the end? How does Augusto keep existing?

And Unamuno wrote Niebla 60 years before Barthes wrote about characters acquiring their own life outside of the author’s intention. And when I read Niebla, it refers to The Death of the Author; not because Unamuno wanted to refer to Barthes (that’d be absurd), but because, as a reader, I can see how Niebla, the text, refers to the same idea Barthes wrote down.

Structuralist rambles, I guess.