{"id":3619,"date":"2026-03-08T19:07:11","date_gmt":"2026-03-08T19:07:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/iranians.global\/news\/?p=3619"},"modified":"2026-03-08T19:35:11","modified_gmt":"2026-03-08T19:35:11","slug":"roland-barthes-declared-the-death-of-the-author-but-postcolonial-critics-have-begged-to-differ","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/iranians.global\/news\/roland-barthes-declared-the-death-of-the-author-but-postcolonial-critics-have-begged-to-differ\/","title":{"rendered":"Roland Barthes declared the \u2018death of the author\u2019, but postcolonial critics have begged to differ"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Michael R. Griffiths, Senior Lecturer in English Literatures, University of Wollongong<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\n Our cultural touchstones series examines works that have had a lasting influence<\/em><\/p>\n\n

In 1967, French literary and cultural critic Roland Barthes<\/a> published a short essay that would have far-reaching influence. Titled The Death of the Author<\/a>, the essay argued that, for the purposes of interpretation, the intention of the author is irrelevant, even stifling. <\/p>\n

In asserting that the author is irrelevant to the act of interpretation, Barthes put in play a wealth of interpretive possibilities. As he put it in the essay\u2019s closing line, \u201cto give writing its future, it is necessary to overthrow the myth: the birth of the reader must be at the cost of the death of the Author\u201d.<\/p>\n

To write, according to Barthes, is to enter into language, inscribe oneself in its symbolic space and, in doing so, efface oneself. He initially presents the resulting disconnection between author, text and reader as universal: <\/p>\n

\nNo doubt it has always been that way. As soon as a fact is narrated no longer with a view to acting directly on reality but intransitively, that is to say, finally outside of any function other than that of the very practice of the symbol itself, this disconnection occurs, the voice loses its origin, the author enters into his own death, writing begins.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The idea that authors do not lend texts their exclusive meaning derives from this universal principle that to write is, in a sense, to die. What Barthes largely means by the playful metaphor of \u201cdeath\u201d is that the author\u2019s intentions and consciousness are withdrawn. Readers cannot access either, but have only the text before them. <\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n
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<\/a>

\n Roland Barthes, author killer.<\/span>
\n Goodreads<\/a><\/span>
\n <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Though Barthes wonders about this universal principle, he suggests the concept of an \u201cauthor\u201d is a product of relatively recent times. The author, he argues, is a \u201cmodern figure\u201d. It is \u201ca product of our society insofar as, emerging from the Middle Ages [\u2026] it discovered the prestige of the individual, of, as it is more nobly put, the \u2018human person\u2019.\u201d <\/p>\n

So while Barthes suggests that the author\u2019s \u201cdeath\u201d in the act of writing has \u201calways\u201d happened, he also historicises the figure of the author. He differentiates the creative practice of writing from the \u201cperson\u201d of the author.<\/p>\n

He also implicates the concept of authorship in \u201ccapitalist ideology\u201d. An author\u2019s name on a book cover is associated with a form of property: intellectual property, copyright. Writing is solidified under one proprietary name, even though it is, at least in part, a collective endeavour that also involves editors and readers.<\/p>\n

Intentional fallacies<\/h2>\n

There were precedents for Barthes\u2019 criticism of our attachment to the \u201cperson\u201d of the author”. British writer Zadie Smith pointed out<\/a> that \u201cit\u2019s easy to read The Death of the Author as a series of revolutionary demands, but it\u2019s worth remembering that it was also simply a licked forefinger held up to test a wind already blowing.\u201d <\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n
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<\/a>

\n Zadie Smith.<\/span>
\n David Shankbone, via Wikimedia Commons<\/a>, CC BY<\/a><\/span>
\n <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In the early 20th century, T.S. Eliot\u2019s notion of poetic \u201cimpersonality<\/a>\u201d established a precedent for Barthes\u2019s concept, expressing an ambition on the part of the writer to erase themselves from the work, so that it might stand alone. <\/p>\n

US based literary critics William Wimsatt and Monroe Beardsley offered a drier elaboration of similar ideas in 1946 under the name of the \u201cintentional fallacy<\/a>\u201d. For Wimsatt and Beardsley, placing excessive emphasis on authorial intention led to fallacies of interpretation. We may imagine we know what the author means to say, but we only have the text present before us, not the author, so we are mistaken if we think we can know their intentions. <\/p>\n

Wimsatt and Beardsley\u2019s argument has much in common with Barthes\u2019, though it lacks the latter\u2019s panache. Where the Americans spoke of a \u201cfallacy\u201d, the Frenchman declares the author\u2019s irrelevance to be fatal. <\/p>\n

In declaring the death of the author and the birth of the reader, Barthes precipitated a revolution. His essay is a product of the unrest in France that would culminate in the student riots of May 1968<\/a>. Barthes\u2019 anti-capitalism precipitated ideas that led to the uprising. <\/p>\n

Barthes\u2019 work of this period also exemplified the transition in French thought from structuralism to poststructuralism<\/a>. Structuralist critics had sought to reveal underlying patterns through rigorous analysis of cultural signs. Poststructuralists called into question the distinction between surface details and underlying structures that was the foundation of structuralism.<\/p>\n

Barthes early work had taken a structuralist approach. In many ways, his attack on the notion of authorship manifests the provocative logic of poststructuralism.<\/p>\n

For teachers of literature, the notion of the death of the author has been preeminent for some time. These days, many literary scholars and even some writers accept Barthes\u2019 premises. From literature departments to creative writing programs, the idea of the death of the author has become something of an orthodoxy. <\/p>\n

Manifested experiences<\/h2>\n

Barthes\u2019 ideas about authorship had their detractors. Critics came forward almost immediately. Many of the defenders of authorial intention came from the ranks of colonised people and postcolonial writers. For many of these critics, the author\u2019s presence and humanity in the text are complementary to anti-colonial politics. <\/p>\n

The death of the author and the play of signification might have served to liberate readers. But such liberation seemed to many anti-colonial writers not to be located in the sphere of emancipatory anti-capitalism, but in the zone of regressive forms of anti-humanism. To turn to the typewriter or the pen was meant to be a means of liberation, not death. <\/p>\n

Poet \u00c9douard Glissant<\/a>, from the Carribean island of Martinique, is one example of an intellectual from a colonial society who questioned Barthes\u2019 premises. Within two years of Barthes\u2019s essay, Glissant had compiled some of his existing writings with new essays to offer a powerful rejoinder. His book Poetic Intention<\/a> (1969) develops a theory of difference in relation to artistic and literary intentions. He would elaborate this theory until his death in 2011. <\/p>\n

Glissant seeks a literary criticism that will pursue more than the \u201chidden purpose of the author\u201d. He wants writers to consider \u201cthe manifested experience of a people\u201d. <\/p>\n

Like Barthes, Glissant is aware of the limitations of fetishising authorship. But he goes further. He enters into a tradition of black intellectuals, such as Frantz Fanon<\/a>, who see the meanings of literary works as manifestations not of hidden psychic structures, but collective social endeavours.<\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n
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<\/a>

\n \u00c9douard Glissant questioned Roland Barthes\u2019 premises.<\/span>
\n Yehkru.com A.C.C., via Wikimedia Commons<\/a>, CC BY<\/a><\/span>
\n <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Like Glissant and Fanon, Edward Said<\/a> saw writers as representatives of their people. \u201cIntention,\u201d he argued, \u201cis the link between idiosyncratic view and the communal concern.\u201d <\/p>\n

Said was a student of French structuralism and poststructuralism. He was both knowledgeable about and critical of figures such as Barthes and Michel Foucault<\/a>. In his book Beginnings<\/a> (1975), Said politely took issue with the idea of the death of the author: <\/p>\n

\ndespite recent genuinely investigative tendencies in criticism (in, for example, the work of Roland Barthes), certain conventions, persisting as unexamined vestiges of the whole history of ideas, have a strong hold [\u2026] But certain questions \u2013 such as the nature of the author\u2019s (beginning and continued) authority over his text [\u2026] remain relevant.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

His reasons for insisting on the author\u2019s relevance were complex and abstract. Said was a Palestinian intellectual and unwavering critic of the forces of empire and colonialism in the US, Israel and elsewhere. In his later work, he would increasingly come to link intention to colonialism, and to its critique. <\/p>\n

By the time of 1994\u2019s Culture and Imperialism<\/a>, Said had broken with key French intellectuals \u2013 notably Foucault. On one page of that book, he names a series of liberation struggles (\u201cAlgeria, Cuba, Vietnam, Palestine, Iran\u201d), asserting that these struggles were not only against the structures of empire (though they were), but also against the use of imperial force. <\/p>\n

Recognising intention\u2019s role in texts and social relations means recognising agency. With this recognition comes an awareness of the operations of power and the capacity to resist. For Said, acknowledging intention meant acknowledging the agency of those participating in varying forms of resistance.<\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n
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<\/a>

\n Edward Said.<\/span>
\n Francis Tsang\/Getty Images<\/span><\/span>
\n <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

As time has worn on, criticism of the death of the author along these lines has intensified. In a 2017 essay<\/a>, First Nations (Goorie) novelist Melissa Lucashenko asserted: \u201cThe author is not dead. More specifically, the Aboriginal author is certainly not dead, a double happiness!\u201d <\/p>\n

Similarly, Wiradyuri author Jeanine Leane<\/a> has taken aim at two aspects of Barthes\u2019s essay: its whiteness and the way its openness to the reader can serve to justify appropriation. The birth of the reader, she suggests, always carries with it the potential for such appropriation. For Barthes, Leane writes, <\/p>\n

\na text\u2019s unity lies not in its origins, or its creator, but in its destination, or its audience. This view aptly sums the long trajectory of European appropriation, blindness to its own cultural standpoint, western literary colonialism, and the consumption of minority cultures by invading, colonising powers.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In the more than half a century since its birth, Barthes\u2019 notion that the author is dead has been incredibly influential. Yet his approach has arguably encouraged the unitary model of authorship that it sought to avoid, his decoupling of authorship and humanism giving rise to ongoing postcolonial critiques. Especially in relation to anti-colonial thought, rumours of the author\u2019s death are greatly exaggerated.\n <\/p><\/div>\n

<\/p>\n

This article written by Michael R. Griffiths, Senior Lecturer in English Literatures, University of Wollongong<\/strong> and is republished from The Conversation<\/a> under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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