/lit/ - Literature

>>5035205
O-okay...

>>5035190
What does this mean exactly? Like does it mean that all authors are dead? Are books being written by zombies or something? I don't understnad this is weird and scary plz respond.

>>5035215
In case you are not trolling: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_the_Author
My question would be if you agree with Barthes and the people who picked up his ideas.

>>5035215
The gist is that we're all just transcribing the cultural narrative. We're a filter for language, which is in itself a living organism. I suspect it's just a means to jew people out of the right to dictate the purpose of their own works.

>>5035205
/lit/ today, ladies and gentlemen.

The arrogance of the French.

>>5035190
Yay

>>5035190
Nay

>>5035293
You can't necessarily dictate the purpose of your own work. For one, you have no control over the purpose readers divine from your work. Second, the death of the author concept also relies on the notion that the author's unconscious might be dictating a piece's purpose and that their conscious self might not be aware of this.
In other words, the author's personal experience and life are important in some aspects, but they are really irrelevant when one is trying to divine purpose or what have you from a piece. You can analyze someone's writing without knowing dick about them, and their writing likely won't enlighten you on any of their personal aspects.

>>5035372
>murrican doesnt know his own history

if an author is going for something, he's trying to have it received in a certain way.

it would be a failure to him if it wasn't received that way.

is this true or not? and if so, how does that reflect on the death of the author idea? i'm really asking, because i'm too dumb to think it through.

>>5035495
Same question here...

>>5035495
No, it's not true. The author has no power to dictate how something is received. Therefore, it's a futile goal to base one's success off of how a particular work is to be received by readers.
You should consider your work a success if it is received by readers in general. Even if the response is negative.

>>5035595
Ergo, we all read YA fiction from now on

>>5035475
Nicely put anon, I completely agree.

More interesting would be a convincing argument against the idea, but I don't think I've yet found one. The way that DotA ties into other post-structuralist ideas is flawless.

I interpret all pro-DOTA arguments as satirically anti-DOTA. So I perceive it as an idea that's never been seriously advanced.

>>5036354
um... it's advanced every time anyone does anything other than obsess over the reality of the author's life when interpreting a work.

If you read that (or really, any theory) in terms of "yay or nay" then I think you need to re-examine your critical background. There is nothing "yay or nay"-able about DotA.

>>5035475
this is trash. an author's actual life history matters.

you're saying that an author's work is driven by ucs. motives (or stuffed w. ucs. wishes and etc. that can be analyzed) on the one hand but that also the author's life history is "really irrelevant" on the other, and this is incoherent.

it's just more fodder for selfish vain hipsters to stroke their ego with and view everything through their own lens of confirmation bias

>>5035475

> Second, the death of the author concept also relies on the notion that the author's unconscious might be dictating a piece's purpose and that their conscious self might not be aware of this.

this is fine, but then why offer your own interpretation? you're just willfully making shit up, since you'll never actually get inside the head of the author. if you are truly to acknowledge the importance of the subconscious on art then you should abandon interpretation altogether and acknowledge that it's a futile exercise, rather than distorting the meaning for your own personal gain.

>>5036395

Um... no... it's... not... um...

"We know that a text does not consist of a line of words, releasing a single "theological" meaning (the "message" of the Author-God), but is a space of many dimensions..."

"Once the Author is gone, the claim to "decipher" a text becomes quite useless. To give an Author to a text is to impose upon that text a stop clause, to furnish it with a final signification, to close the writing."

"In this way is revealed the whole being of writing: a text consists of multiple writings, issuing from several cultures and entering into dialogue with each other, into parody, into contestation; but there is one place where this multiplicity is collected, united, and this place is not the author, as we have hitherto said it was, but the reader: the reader is the very space in which are inscribed, without any being lost, all the citations a writing consists of; the unity of a text is not in its origin, it is in its destination; but this destination can no longer be personal: the reader is a man without history, without biography, without psychology; he is only that someone who holds gathered into a single field all the paths of which the text is constituted."

-Roland Barthes, The Death of the Author

>>5036459
um... er... eh... why do those quotes negate what my other post, er, said.

>>5035190
the author has some advantage over the average reader, although not absolute authority, to dictate the meaning of his own text. otherwise you end up with french philosophy

>>5036469

Interesting question.

>>5036395
>every time anyone does anything other than obsess over the reality of the author's life

>We know that a text does not consist of a line of words, releasing a single "theological" meaning (the "message" of the Author-God), but is a space of many dimensions

Seems almost inexpressibly more sweeping and ambitious than merely negating biographical information about the author, don't you think?

>>5036459
The thing is, by confining yourself to a textual analysis you ignore facts that might be increidbly important. "The Rape And Slaughter Of The Bird-Women of Jupiter Nine" may seem like a harmless story on its own with allusions to Sartre and Sade, but if you analyze the text without taking into consideration the fact that the author divorced his Sartre-obsessed wife who had cheated on him with a ornithologist right before he wrote the book, you can't really expect to understand what the book is about just from the words on the pages.

>>5036502

Sure, no arguments here. I didn't quote Barthes to agree with him.

Yes. The rabble is ALWAYS superior to figuring things out than an actual writer/philosopher/etc.

After all, that many empty heads working together adds up eventually.

Suspiciously the inbred retards are only interested in applying this shit to artistic books, in which no important thought has ever been conveyed since the dawn of time. They tend to avoid actual philosophy you see.

>>5036502
if the book can't create a subtext on it's own it's rubbish
in other words no one is dumb enough to write a text which demands the knowledge of its context
if I can't understand "The Rape And Slaughter Of The Bird-Women of Jupiter Nine" without knowing author's bio, it's shit
my english is poor and i don't even give a fuck

>>5036563
But a work's merit isn't always in itself. Sometimes a work can be valuable specifically because of the person who creates it, and if you didn't know what you knew about the author you wouldn't care about the work.

>>5036577
it is still possible to read text without knowing who its author is
everything required to understand the text lies in its premises

>>5036442
Readers interpret texts because without that interpretation there is no text.
>inb4 the book/work still exists
The author willfully makes shit up, even if their work is based off of their life/experiences or is even non-fiction. They have to make up the combinations of words that give physicality to a piece of literature.
Acknowledging the importance of the subconscious on art would not label interpretation as a futile exercise. If anything it would make interpretation more pertinent to the work as one could "map", at least somewhat, the subconscious itself by comparing and contrasting various interpretations.
You claim that the reader's interpretation distorts the meaning of the work, but it's the readers, not the author, who have final say on a work's meaning. Also, you write as if personal gain from interpretation is a bad thing. If one is not to gain personally from literature, then what is the point of literature and by extension, the interpretation of literature?
One must consider that once an author releases a work to readers that they lose control over that work. It becomes its own separate entity, for better or worse.

I dislike the emphasis on special-snowflake subjectivity DOTA puts on literature.

For example, if someone were to come out of reading Madame Bovary with some asinine notion of female empowerment, then I were to say "Um actually no in his later writings Flaubert specifically said Madame Bovary had nothing to do with feminism or chauvinism" that should be /argument. If you're clever enough you can tease any meaning you want out of a longer novel, and have enough supporting evidence for it to make sense. Does that mean, then, that every supportable interpretation of a work is correct, even if it violates common sense?

Furthermore, let's take T.S. Eliot. His works were drastically shaped by WWI and the political and academic climate around him. You can see the evolution of his philosophy from his early writings to Wastelands to Four Quartets. To try and completely comprehend a work of poetry as dense and complex as Four Quartets without first understanding the social context in which it was written and secondly understanding the intellectual metamorphosis that lead Eliot to this conclusion would be hopeless!

No, I don't agree with Death of the Author. It's an interesting concept but it does an intellectual disservice both to the work itself and to the close-reader trying to reach a holistic and meaningful understanding of the work.

>>5035190
gay

Everyone has its own interpretation of the story described in the book.

You could probably drag philosophy of language here to prove this even more.

So yes, death of author.

>>5036628
>DOTA implies every interpretation is valid
Common misconception.

>>5036641

What grounds does it leave to present a given interpretation as invalid?

interpretations that rely on death of the author to work are mostly baseless projections. it's the interpreter who can't stand to not insert themselves into the work of which they have no part in.

>>5036646
Something along the lines of relevance, amount of evidence, and the interpreters coherence. Though that might be prescribed by general lit. theory and not Barthes.
So if one wants to interpret something under a feminist "lens" then one better make sure there are relevant items within the text (which usually one can make most items "relevant" to interpretation), have enough evidence to examine and argue with, and be able to present that argument for interpretation coherently.

Really, you can interpret a piece of literature however you want, but no one is required to accept it as valid or correct by any stretch.

>>5036646
You're thinking of Reader Response Theory. DOTA says that the author has no control over his work, he can't tell you that the story is a metaphor for something or telll you that a character is evil if those weren't made clear in the story itself

>>5036658

I don't see the difference between that and a straightforward text-immanent approach. And Barthes seems very keen to emphasise the role of the reader.

>>5036687
>DOTA says that the author has no control over his work, he can't tell you that the story is a metaphor for something or telll you that a character is evil if those weren't made clear in the story itself

But someone else can?

wait wait WAIT.... If I subscribe to Death of the Author does that mean Dumbledore doesn't have to be gay?

>>5036695
Yeah, dood.

>>5036695
No, because the writer wrote him gay.

>>5035372
Barthes was a Gascon, so not real "French" according to French standards.
>i live in southern france FYI

>>5036702
How do you know he was gay and not trans?

>>5036634
>philosophy of language
I'm sure you haven't taken a course in analytic philosophy of language

>>5036867
I've read through most of the canon authors though ?

>>5035215
The name itself is just continentals being overly dramatic. The idea is that the meaning of a text isn't something that's fixed in the head of the author. Instead meaning is always situated in the backdrop of culture/language. It has a lot to do with the anti-humanism that structuralists were always on about.

>>5036577
Is Chris-chan still alive?

>>5039270
His house burned down in January but he's still alive.

>>5039272
I just read the story on the chris-chan wiki:

http://www.sonichu.com/cwcki/Destruction_Of_Chris%27s_House

>2:00 a.m. EST: According to Chris, this was approximately when the fire began. However, a local news station reporting on the blaze stated the fire started around 3:00am.
>7:10: Chris posted an angry comment on the Keurig Facebook page, producer of the coffee brewer, blaming faulty wiring in the product for creating the spark that created the fire.

it's so hilarious that he ranted on facebook while the house was still hot

>>5039318
Why would he make coffee in the bathroom at 2 AM?

>>5035190
He is dead.

A laundry truck took care of him.

>>5036442
>you're just willfully making shit up, since you'll never actually get inside the head of the author
That assumes that the point of interpreting a text (or indeed of reading it in general) is to 'get inside the head of the author'. Sure, it's one possible reason, but it seems pretty limited to me.

nay many authors purposely adopt a persona when they write

So... now I'm wondering. How many of the people arguing either yay or nay have actually read Barthes' essay?

>>5035190
i think what an author says carries at least some weight, and in many cases is more credible than most interpretations

similarly, however, i don't think what an author says is the end all, be all because something can be included in the text that he or she is not consciously aware of

so neither

I understand that art is open to interpretation, but I've always felt it is equally disrespectful for the reader to disregard the input of the author as it is for the author to disregard the input of the reader.

>>5040319
It's a 6 page essay. Don't flatter yourself kid

>>5040015
Insurance fraud

>>5040356
I know, but there's very little engagement with what Barthes wrote in those six pages.

E.g. the longest response seems to be
>>5035475
>the death of the author concept also relies on the notion that the author's unconscious might be dictating a piece's purpose
What does that have to do with what Barthes wrote?

>>5036354
I agree, Dota fucking sucks.

>wirte a work protesting American foreign policy
>critics and the public claim it's about the hardships of teenagehood
>death of the author brah

nay

it's spelt YEA, not YAY

>>5040576
Idiot

>>5036354
That's a bold claim, if your rating isn't above 6k you have no say on the matter.

>>5035190
Yes, AND death of the reader... and soon to be Death of the Text.

>>5035293

that's not what it means, goofus. it only means that the author does not dictate the meaning of the text he's produced. it's the death of authorial intent

>>5035599
Note that being received by readers doesn't necessarily means being widely read (there are writers who create their own small in number but very passionate audience). There's also the problem of how a work of literature survives, dies, and revives.

>>5036409
The author's life history is not irrelevant, but rather unnecessary. You can enoy a work by anonymous. And you can do it without trying to guess what kind of life anonymous lived. But that's also true for non-anonymous work. Whatever sexual fetish Supertalented McWriter had is less interesting to the reader than what said reader derives from reading his works. Even when fetishes are tangentially related to the topic of the book, at the end of the day what's interesting is the experience you get from the book. The author's life is one tool to analyze this, but not the only tool, and not always the best.

>>5036442
> you're just willfully making shit up
there's not that much difference between willfully making shit up and writing fiction (or even simply writing). It's fun and interesting, so why not do it ?

> get inside the head of the author
As for now telepathy doesn't exist, and th reason we're interested in authors in the first place is because of their works.

You see what I'm getting at: the first thing is the text and what you as a reader get fom it. The rest is derivative (as far as reading is concerned).

>>5040567
If that happens you only get what you deserve for not being clear enough in your statements. What you fail to understand here is, although authorial intent doesn't matter, the text does. Perhaps you just wrote that work as a joke, but it isn't clear to most people, and suddenly everyone is taking your points seriously. And after you're long dead, and the work survives, what matters ? What it meant for everyone around, or what you wanted it to mean ?

Perhaps the Aeneid was just meant as an overly long homosexual joke (it seems unlikely, but you will never get definite evidence on this, unless we find some way to read the thoughts of long-dead author directly from their brains). Doesn't matter in the end.

Literary canons are built on that sort of stuf.

>no reference to Stuart Hall's encoding/decoding theory

/li/, I am dissapoint

>>5044876
>implying text isn't already dead

>put this in a religious context and realize that people actually die over "The Death of the Author"

Post-structuralists are the dumbest retards ever