The Death of the Author is an essay by Roland Barthes that argues against incorporating the intentions and biographical context of an author in an interpretation of text, and says that writing and creator are unrelated. Barthes' articulation of the death of the author is a radical and drastic recognition of this severing of authority and authorship. Instead of discovering a "single 'theological' meaning, readers of text discover that writing, in reality, constitutes "a multi-dimensional space," which cannot be "deciphered," only "disentangled." "Refusing to assign a 'secret,' ultimate meaning" to text "liberates what may be called an anti-theological activity, an activity that is truly revolutionary since to refuse meaning is, in the end, to refuse God and his hypostases—reason, science, law."
We go a step forward, and maintain that the very notion of authority and authenticity attached to authors is now in question. In the age of Wikis and weblogs, there is no time for one to verify – in fact, nothing much gets read. It is a democratic way: everyone has a say. But does anyone have an ear? who's reading the stuff anyway? There are more writers (bloggers) than readers. Have fingers, will (type and) blog, is the attitude of many bloggers now. “Are you saying anything new?” is not a concern. And this is how it works: I blog here; I email a friend with a link to this page. The friend may read (just may) this, and email me back with a URL where he or she responds - in another blog - to my thoughts.
A simple one-to-one communication is replaced by a complex one-to-many (blog), one-two-one (email), one-to-many (response to blog), and one-two-one (response to email via email) communication scenario. I was emailing my stuff to a bunch of people; one of them said why don’t you blog? So that I can respond to it on the blog. I fail to see the use of these newer, complicated media, when we don't have time to communicate using the older media. The pleasure of reading a good book is becoming rarer and rarer.
It is a different story that not all paper-based writings are impartial; there are very opinionated authors and there are biased readers. But then, the process of publishing involves some kind of ‘validation’ of what is written. In the age of wikis and weblogs, there is no mediation between the writer and reader, there is no royalty paid, there is no price tag on the publication. It is a good thing that no trees lose their lives in the process.
If you follow Jacques Lyotard, the notion of a narrative (a particular interpretation or theory about things) is in question. In his seminal essay, The Postmodern Condition, Lyotard proposes what he calls an extreme simplification of the "postmodern" as an incredulity towards 'grand narratives' – which are grand, large-scale theories and philosophies of the world, such as the progress of history, the knowability of everything by science, and the possibility of absolute freedom. Lyotard argues that we have ceased to believe that narratives of this kind are adequate to represent and contain us all. To relate the incredulity towards grand narratives to the death of the author, we now have no faith in authors who give us cogent theories or interpretation of one or another thing. We have become alert to difference, diversity, the incompatibility of our aspirations, beliefs and desires, and for that reason postmodernity is characterised by an abundance of micronarratives. Micronarratives can be thought of as blogs. As we said, everybody has a say, nobody gets a serious hearing.
Bottomline: The Postmodern Condition seems to offer its own grand narrative in the story of the decline of the grand narrative!
I think "the death of the author" is somewhat overrated as a concept, or at least taken too far. It's simply too extreme a position. Despite that, it raises and important point: that the author and reader create meaning together. Communication cannot happen with either one alone; both are required.
ReplyDeleteThe thing about blogging is that it's more like sowing grains of wheat than it is like a zero-sum game: most bloggers read the words of many other bloggers, so each grain that sprouts in someone's mind grows an idea somewhere far distant from the original field, and possibly many different elsewheres if the idea finds fertile ground in many other minds.