birth-of-the-reader

This essay explores the arguments for and against the theory of authorship as argued for and against by Roland Barthes, Michel Foucault, Sean Burke and Jacques Derrida. Also this essay will be looking at how these ideas can be applied in certain art movements such as Dadaism and Net art, and if these theories are relevant today.

Birth of the reader at the death of the author is a theory put forward by Roland Barthes, published in 1967. Barthes was a French literary critic who explored a wide variety of hypotheses. This particular theory is the idea that we should not look to the background and views of the author to decipher and understand a particular text. “Narrative is never undertaken by a person...whose performance may be admired” (Barthes, 1967). It is up to the reader to interpret the text in such a way that is personal to them, as “the author is a modern figure, produced....at the end of the middle ages.” Therefore the author becomes irrelevant and birth of the reader occurs. Barthes goes on to examine this by saying that the written text by an author is in fact influenced by many different factors such as culture, politics, languages and beliefs. “The author enters his own death, writing begins.” We do not know who is speaking in the written text; it could be the character that the work is based on, the author, speaking from personal experience, or the author again, but from a stereotypical and romanticised literary view. Barthes outlines what he sees as the issue with authorship: “the explanation of the work is sought in the man who has produced it” – as if it is one opinion, then to understand it, the author from whom it originated from needs to be also understood to accept his view point and see where his ideas are coming from.

In his essay, Barthes takes the historical development of authorship into account, where as Michael Foucault (1969) discusses in “What is an Author?” whether a text requires an author, or is assigned one. Foucault analyses the author-function in four different ways.

The first is the matter of ownership. “Once a system of ownership for texts came into being...the possibility of transgression attached to the act of writing took on...the form of an imperative peculiar to literature.” Foucault is saying that it is indeed the author that “...characterises our society...” by writing and putting his name to the paper, the author is determining how his written work shall be viewed and understood by the audience.

The second, is that during the seventeenth or eighteenth centuries, a switch takes place. “The author function faded away, and the inventor’s name served only to christen a theorem...” The seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were an era of great scientific discoveries and breakthroughs. Foucault argues that during this period the author’s name was only significant in naming new discoveries. However that was then, but now looking back at the names linked to the discoveries, it is important to link the author’s name and his theory to be able to understand it better. Foucault goes on to say “And if a text should be discovered in a state of anonymity...the game becomes one of rediscovering the author. Since literary anonymity is not tolerable...” This takes back to the first author-function of copyright and ownership, when reliability of the written words is only valid in relation and depending on who wrote it.

The third is “that it does not develop spontaneously as the attribution of a discourse to an individual. It is, rather, the result of a complex operation that constructs a certain being of reason that we call “author.”” Here Foucault is examining the same theory as Barthes does in that an author’s work should not be looked at in dependence to the author, as what the author has constructed would depend on a whole array of influences and philosophies.
The forth is a matter of tradition. Foucault leads this point on from the previous fact. He states that the author had been “constructed...with existing text and discourses-is derived from the manner in which Christian tradition authenticated (or rejected) the texts at its disposal.” This is to say that putting a name to a text doesn’t automatically validate its content, and does not always add context and meaning to a piece of work.

Having then made all these points, Foucault contradicts himself in his conclusion, saying that “a form of culture in which fiction would not be limited by the author. It would be pure romanticism, however, to imagine a culture in which the fictive would operate in an absolutely free state...without passing through something like a necessary or constraining figure.” He is calling for a culture without the need for authors, so as works could be looked at from a rounded point of view. So that pieces would not be prescribed a meaning depending on their author. On the other hand Foucault understands that at the moment the world is not prepared to do away with the concept or authorship and is hoping that one day the world will change. His last sentence being a question; “What difference does it make who is speaking?”

Barthes (1967) argues that “linguistically, the author is never anything more than the man who writes”. This is disputed by Sean Burke. Burke analyses Barthes’ essay in a way which contradicts Barthes’ thinking. Burke looks into the mindset of Barthes, looking at the background and the circumstances in which the essay was written. (Burke, 2008) “At the time he (Barthes) was preparing to write a microscopic analysis of Balzac’s short story.” Burke (2008) goes on to say that when Barthes questions the point of view of Balzac when writing Sarrasine, that that point became the “centre of controversy” as no-one had ever questioned the author’s authority over his writing in this way before.

Burke likens Barthes’ theory of the death of the author to the “death of God for the late nineteenth-century thought. Both deaths arrest to a departure of belief in authority...” By doing this, Barthes takes away the influence of the author on a text, just as the removal of God from life took away the weight of the church on everyday life. But he fails to understand that if some people may not need this direction in life, others may struggle without it, thus why Barthes’ essay on the subject did not provoke such as reaction as becoming “...the centre of a debate or discussion.”(Burke, 2008)

Another French philosopher, Jacques Derrida, argued that the author becomes almost irrelevant once a work has been written, and questions the author’s intentions. He came up with a theory which he called “deconstruction” which showed how to linguistically deconstruct a text to arrive at all the possible hidden meanings that maybe the author had not noticed, or skimmed over deliberately. Deconstruction exists not so much to analyse works, but to show that something is missing. (Ruso, 2007) “Readers can play with texts as if playing with toys...Derrida claimed deconstruction shows that meaning is unstable and indeterminate.” Derrida encourages readers to be more playful with the texts that they are reading. He shows that to understand a text better, it should be deconstructed and thoroughly examined without the context of the author’s intentions.

Nazenin Ruso explains Derrida’s approach (2007): “...every text bears the mark of numerous hidden assumptions and values belonging to its author.” This is an expansion of Barthes’ theory of death of the author. Derrida shows and explains what would happen after the author is ignored or has “died”. He does not however say that the author should be excluded from a text, but just ignored. Derrida also mentions that this technique of “deconstruction” can also be applied to anything, not just text. Just like Barthes was saying that the “death of the author” can happen to any art, object or writing.

Dadaism is an art movement that endorsed the idea of rejecting authoritarianism. Developing during the years of the First World War in the neutral Switzerland, Dadaism proved to be a powerful influence in many cities around Europe. The manifestation of rejecting the author first took hold in Marcel Duchamp’s work titled “Fountain” which features a urinal which he purchased, placed on its back and wrote “R. Mutt 1917” onto it. The questions that arise about the authorship of the work are: Is the author Duchamp? As he is the one who modified the original urinal, or the manufacturer from which Duchamp bought the ready-made and designed urinal?

According to Dadaism, the author would be Duchamp, as he had modified the object and then submitted it for an exhibition organised by the Society of Independent Artists, however “Fountain” was not accepted. This notion embodies the idea of “death of the author” as “any ordinary "readymade" object can be chosen by the artist as a work of art.” (Jones, 2008)

Another of Duchamp’s “readymade” works is titled “L.H.O.O.Q.” It is a cheap postcard of the Mona Lisa onto which Duchamp has drawn a moustache. Again here is the same dilemma: Is the author Leonardo da Vinci? As his is the original painting, or is the author Duchamp? As he has modified a reproduction making it his artwork.

Net art is a relatively recent movement which embodies some aspects of the Dadaists. It is primarily digital art displayed and shared by means of the internet. Net artists often use what is already available online to create their works. An example of which would be the “100.000.000 Stolen Pixels (version 1)” by Kim Asendorf (2010), which was on display at Carol Fletcher gallery, London, 31 October – 22 November 2014.

The work was created by “A web crawler started with 10 URLs (See first 10 in url.log) and searched HTML pages for images and hyperlinks. Each found image got downloaded and 100 pixels in a square of 10x10 were cut out of it. Each found hyperlink got stored in the cache and thereby added to the list of searchable URLs. The process repeated itself until 1.000.000 images were downloaded and 100.000.000 pixels were stolen. The application run for 215:30 hours (9 days).” (http://kimasendorf.com/100000000/)

What Asendorf has done here, is made the authors of the original images irrelevant. By “stealing” the 10x10 pixels in a square one million times over, and then taking them out of context completely and giving them his own new context. Asendorf has managed to combine all of the ideas explored by Barthes, Foucault and the Dada movement. From Barthes, Asendorf uses the “death of the author” theory. From Foucault, Asendorf explores the relevance of the author of works. And from Dadaism, Asendorf has taken existing works, and prescribed them to a new context, thus questioning their validity.

In conclusion, we can see all the hypothesis discussed, rounded up in one modern piece of artwork, proving that the “death of the author” and the “birth of the reader” are very much relevant today. However, our literary practices and dependence in academic writing styles for backing up the validity of points made with a figure of authority devalues this school of thought.