"Only Language Acts"

The entirety of “The Death of the Author” was thought provoking and frustrating for me. I can understand, from a literary standpoint, separating the author from the text (or work) in order to avoid confusing the intent and purpose of the piece, as well as not mistaking the narrator for the author, however, Barthes’ (or the text’s) assertion that the author should be ignored, considered dead, and only the text itself acknowledged seems to take the principle too far. I appreciate Barthes’ nod to oral cultures; that being said, it is easy to say that the story performance of oral cultures lies beyond the “author”/performer, that the traditions and fables told are a collection of retellings upon retellings (a great example of collage) and therefore beyond the performer, but it’s harder to claim that only language functions within a text.

With opinion pieces, or the newspaper, just ignoring the author seems conflicting. It isn’t merely the piece’s opinion, just as the piece doesn’t merely exist (as Alyssa pointed out) without the author. To say that a work doesn’t have meaning without the interpretation of the reader—without its “destination” as it were—seems to insinuate we should ignore the purpose of the text. And of course, where does the purpose come from except from the author? How does it exist without the author?

Perhaps what we as a class can take from this piece is that as we try to formulate and understand the “collage,” we should try to separate the author from his/her work. A collage should exist as a piece, as art, and the author (and the other author’s used) should be ignored, allowing the work to derive meaning from what the reader/audience perceives. This is not to say that the author is dead or does not matter, but that a “close reading” approach should be taken—untangle and analyze the piece, not necessarily the authorial intent.

(Of course, this could be stripping the piece of a layer of meaning. The pieces used within the collage could have heavy meaning for the work as a whole, or meaning to the author; so all in all I suppose the theory should be used with responsibility.)