English 5522 - Literary Theory and Criticism
Reader or Writer?
Like Tompkins, I suffer from multiple literary personality. Sometimes I write as though I am an expert on some subject (More often than not, I write thus in order to scare away the demons that tell me I have no right to write anything at all). Other times, I write more tentatively, not knowing if what is going on inside my head can be adequately expressed on the page. Regarding Barthes and his essay on the murdered author, don't these voices of mine determine the overall outcome of my "work"? And if so, what does this mean for the poststructuralist who demands that the author should be stripped of any life from his contribution to his text? Mostly I think it is ironic that Barthes advocates such a heinous crime. For he is killing himself while he creates his own killer.
Okay, 'crime' is a strong word for something I don't fully understand. I will explore Barthes' text (or whoever's this is-maybe it's your text and mine since it belongs to the reader now) before I make a rash judgment.
Barthes' main argument is that in order to have an "effective, productive, and engaging reading of a text" you must also have a "suspension of preconceived ideas about the character of the particular author" (1459). Okay, I say, maybe. But when we read a passage that points to the author as the voice (for instance, in an autobiography), can we sever the text from its creator? And if text is a process (which I agree that it is) and a work is a product, then does the work inherently display or reflect the 'person' of the author? Barthes says that the author is also a product of sorts. He is a "product of [. . .] society," and his works display who he is in that regard (1466). I want to merge Barthes idea of author as 'product' with Foucault's idea of author as 'school of thought'. Aren't these the same thing? The only distinction that I can find is that the product is passive while the school is active. Both, however, are fed by experience.
Barthes also says that the "explanation of a work is always sought in the [one] who produced it" (1466). For Barthes, this should not necessarily be the case. Again, I say, okay, maybe I agree. So do we seek the explanation from the 'school' that the author has become? Or do we seek wisdom from some other source, unrelated to the text at hand? To me, this would seem absurd.
So the text lives without the author. It is the "language which speaks, not the author" (1467). Language is the actor, the performer. But I am forced to look backward to a cause. What is the language acting out? What is it that it performs? Does it perform wisdom? An ideology? And if so, where does this wisdom originate?
Proust, it seems, intentionally murdered himself as he shrouded his influence into obscurity in the manner in which he wrote his characters. But why? Can the reader and writer not co-exist? I guess this is my real issue with Barthes. He wants the reader to be the authority (notice the root for authority-maybe this is why he wants to discredit this sign for what it signifies???), saying that significance or "unity" in the text comes "not in its origin but in its destination" (1469). In fact, Barthes goes as far as to say that "the birth of the reader must be at the cost of the death of the Author" (1470). Please tell me there is someone else out there who does not agree with this statement.
One other thing (since I seem to be over my 500 words, sorry). He says, "To give a text an author is to impose a limit on that text" (1469). I don't think this is necessarily so, but if it is, it is so far the best excuse for the murder.