The Death of The Author: Roland Barthes

and The Collapse of Meaning

“The Death of the Author” by Roland Barthes is a landmark for 20-th
century literature, literary theory, post-structuralism, and
postmodernism. The essay opposes the established trends “in ordinary
culture […] tyrannically centered on the author, his person, his life,”
and abolish the classical literary criticism that analyses a literary work
within the biographical and personal context of the author of the work.

The philosophical implications of “The Death of the Author” transcend

literature and are closely related to the postmodern trends of collapse
of meaning, inability of originality, the death of God, and multiple
discovery.

The essay argues that a literary work should not be analyzed by the
information about the real-life person who created it. The text (rather
than the author, as Barthes himself would agree) complains:

Criticism still consists for the most part in saying that Baudelaire’s work
is the failure of Baudelaire the man, Van Gogh’s his madness,
Tchaikovsky’s his vice. The explanation of a work is always sought in the
man or woman who produced it, as if it were always in the end,
through more or less transparent allegory of the fiction, the voice of a
single person, the author ‘confiding’ in us.
“The Death of the Author” rejects the idea of authorial intent, and
instead develops a reader-response critical theory:

The reader is the space on which all the quotations that make up a
writing are inscribed without any of them being lost; a text’s unity lies
not in its origin but in its destination.

The use of the word “quotations” expresses the idea that a text cannot
really be “created” or “original”—it is always made up of an
arrangement of preexisting “quotations” or ideas. Therefore, the
“author” is not really an author, but rather a “scriptor” who simply puts
together preexisting texts.

As if to corroborate his own theory, Barthes (most likely unknowingly

and independently) wrote an essay very similar to Michael Foucault’s
“What is an Author.” It is also somewhat unclear who published the
work first, as “The Death of the Author” first appeared in English in an
American journal in 1967, but the “original” French book print was
published in 1977. Foucault’s essay was first credited as a lecture and is
officially dated at 1969.

The essay “The Death of the Author” can have several implications,
both literal and metaphoric. In literary criticism, the death of the
Author is the “death” of the physical real-life author of the work: For
example, Baudelaire’s “The Flowers of Evil” should not be analyzed in
the context of Baudelaire’s life.

In literary writing, the death of the Author is the “death” of the

omniscient narrator and the author who calls attention to his presence
in the text. For example, the author should not address the readers
with phrases such as “dear reader”; the author should not give
information about the characters that cannot be known in a “real-life”
situation—such as characters’ thoughts and feelings. Another example
is the use of “I” from the point of view of the author.

The death of the Author is the inability to create, produce, or discover

any text or idea. The author is a “scriptor” who simply collects
preexisting quotations. He is not able to create or decide the meaning
of his work. The task of meaning falls “in the destination”—the reader.

In culture, the death of the Author is the denial of a single “discoverer”

or contributor. It is the equivalent of the “scriptor” outside literature.
Therefore, “discoveries” seem to exist as possibilities predating their
inventor, and the discoverer simply “confirms” ideas that have already
been there. The theory is known as “multiple discovery”—more than
one person reaches the same discovery/idea/conclusion independently.
Carl Jung’s idea of the collective unconscious is similar to multiple
discovery—a series of archetypes collected throughout the course of
evolution that guide different individuals to experience, feel, think, and
observe in similar patterns.

An example is the theory of natural selection that was simultaneously

and independently grasped as an idea both by Charles Darwin and by
Alfred Russell Wallace. An example is also the already mentioned
similarity between Roland Barthes’ “Death of The Author” and Michel
Foucault’s “What is an Author.” Yet another one is the discovery of the
New World—culture and society have designated Christopher
Columbus as the “discoverer,” even though the Vikings had reached the
land more than 400 years earlier.

Common culture seems to oppose the idea of multiple discovery very

vehemently and prefers the “heroic theory” of invention, which gives
all the credit to a single person. Good examples are patents, copyright
laws, and other measures that promote singular contribution to
discoveries.

In the case of natural selection, Darwin’s credit is far greater than

Wallace’s. That does not mean that Darwin does not deserve the
credit—he had been tirelessly working on the theory of natural
selection for 22 years when Wallace sent him a letter about the
possibility of a common descent in all living organisms. Darwin,
however, had elaborated this idea significantly and tested it
systematically.
Another aspect of the multiple discovery theory is the development
and elaboration of ideas. For multiple discovery, a “discoverer” is
simply one of the many contributors. Common culture has it that
Alexander Graham Bell is the Inventor of the telephone, but the
discovery was likely reached independently by others too, as well as
elaborated on. The stages before the official “completion” of the
telephone, for example the wires necessary for a telephone to operate,
are just as important. In a similar way, Apple is considered the creator
of the iPhone. But is it not simply an elaboration of the invention of the
telephone, a discovery inevitably dependent on the invention of
camera, micro chips, etc.?

Another aspect of the multiple discovery theory is the development

and elaboration of ideas. For multiple discovery, a “discoverer” is
simply one of the many contributors. Common culture has it that
Alexander Graham Bell is the Inventor of the telephone, but the
discovery was likely reached independently by others too, as well as
elaborated on. The stages before the official “completion” of the
telephone, for example the wires necessary for a telephone to operate,
are just as important. In a similar way, Apple is considered the creator
of the iPhone. But is it not simply an elaboration of the invention of the
telephone, a discovery inevitably dependent on the invention of
camera, micro chips, etc.?
On the most metaphorical level, the death of the Author is the death of
God that Nietzsche talked about. The literary world is a metaphor of
the real world, which cannot and does not operate on a pre-
determined plan, meaning, or creator.

We know now that a text is not a line of words releasing a single

‘theological’ meaning (the ‘message’ of the Author-God), but a multi-
dimensional space in which a variety of writings, none of them original,
blend and clash. The text is a tissue of quotations drawn from the
innumerable centers of culture. […]

In the multiplicity of writing, everything is to be disentangled, nothing

deciphered; the structure can be followed, ‘run’ (like the thread of a
stocking) at every point and at every level, but there is nothing
beneath: the space of writing is to be ranged over, not pierced; writing
ceaselessly posits meaning ceaselessly to evaporate it, carrying out a
systematic exemption of meaning. […] Once the author is removed, the
claim to decipher a text becomes quite futile. To give a text an Author is
to impose a limit on that text, to furnish it with a final signified, to close
the writing.

The Death of The Author is the multiplicity of meaning—therefore the

ultimate collapse of meaning. It is the freedom from the shackles of
meaning and Author’s intention. The death of the Author is also the
inability to create, invent, or be original. It is the spinning out of control
into the abyss of multiple meanings and inevitable meaninglessness.