A reflection on “Death of the Author” by Roland Barthes
When Barthes argues that “writing is...the negative where all identity is lost” based on his interpretation of Balzac I must wonder if this claim would be more cogent for me if “writing” was replaced by “reading.” In my experience, and the experience I have as a teacher of writing, the act of composing is a process through which identity is created or established. I think Barthes claim is limited to the composition of a novel, evident in his example and his assertion that “the author is a modern figure”. If Barthes intended to extend the claim to other forms of fiction, I can point to Ben Jonson’s prologues to provide evidence to the contrary. Yet, even when applying this idea to the novel, one must assume the author is not basing the voice and perspective of the characters on his/her self, which I think is too large an assumption (and one which is easily proven false). I would argue that all writing stems from the personal experience of the author, and therefore, that experience should be considered significant when possible.
The logical counterargument to my contention would be that Barthes uses the term “writing” to refer to the interpretation of writing - which again, I would call “reading.” However, as Barthes says “[t]he author still reigns in histories of literature, biographies of writers, interviews, magazines, as in the very consciousness of men of letters anxious to unite their person and their work through diaries and memoirs,” which leads me to believe many authors want the reader to know their intention and publish their reflections in this various forms to help establish their identities as writers. Why then would the responsible reader ignore this robust resource when interpreting their work? Furthermore, I contest that it is irresponsible not to consider the identity of the author when interpreting works of non-fiction.
However, I do find Barthes notion of the performative compelling. Barthes writes “For him, for us too, it is language which speaks, not the author; to write is, through a prerequisite impersonality (not at all to be confused with the castrating objectivity of the realist novelist), to reach that point where only language acts, 'performs', and not 'me'.” If we believe that meaning lies within language, rather than that meaning is made by the writer, then it is logical to believe that a writer cannot express their identity through the limited scope of their knowledge of language. Each writer can only possess a limited ability to control words and their meaning. Moreover, if we believe, as Bakhtin and Austin do, that every writer is a member of multiple speech communities from which they construct language, then the language they choose to write in is specifically suited to a preexisting community with its own identity. Therefore they are using language to perform a role, or play a part within that discourse community. Yet, I still believe that performance is a form of identity creation for individual, even those I acknowledge that this identity only represents a part of the author, not the whole person.
This debate is very relevant, if not urgent, to new media studies. To follow our discussion from last week, the digital native most likely has many identities online, as I certainly do. However, the validity (for last of a better word) of these identities is questionable, especially in virtual worlds. Also, the postprocess movement claims that in the world of hyperlinks, mashups, and open access, we are actual in a state of postcomposition where we no longer write, but collect the ideas of others. In the postprocess theory, as I think Barthes would agree, nothing is original to the author.
I think this raises so many interesting questions about the future of writing studies, and I look forward to hearing your thoughts.
No comments:
Post a Comment