If I am reading Barthes correctly his main concern is the dominant part played in literature and other art forms of the 'author'. He writes "The image of literature to be found in ordinary culture is tyrannically centred on the author, his person, his life, his tastes, his passions,.....The explanation of a work is always sought in the man or woman who produced it, as if it were always in the end, through the more or less transparent allegory of the fiction, the voice of a single person, the author 'confiding' in us". It is difficult to dispute this statement. I cannot recall ever reading a critique of a book that was not concerned with the author and how the present work compared with his/her other works. Indeed it is the norm for the publishers to fanfare the arrival of a new book by referring to the author's other works either directly or by such stratagems as "Writer of the No 1 in best-seller list for x weeks". The literary merit is subsumed to the reputation and fame of the author.
Barthes argues later: "To give a text an Author is to impose a limit on the text, to furnish it with a final signified, to close the writing." In his counter-argument, and the statement that I think is the core of his position, he writes: a text is made of multiple writings, drawn from many cultures and entering into mutual relations of dialogue, parody, contestation, but there is one place where this multiplicity is focused and that place is the reader, not, as was hitherto said, the author".
Here he is arguing that it is the reader that creates meaning for himself as he reads the words. Whilst this may coincide with the meaning intended by the author this is not a 'given' even if the two are from the same cultural background. It seems to me that this must be the case because we all bring with us to our reading the person we are, created by our nature and nurture. Our interpretation of the world around us and how we 'construct' it is unique to us.
Rather surprisingly Barthes adds: "Yet this destination cannot any longer be personal: the reader is without history, biography, psychology: he is simply that someone who holds together in a single field all the traces by which the written text is constituted." He denies the uniqueness of the individual. In part this is explained by his contention: Succeeding the Author, the scriptor no longer bears with him passions, humour, feelings, impressions, but rather this immense dictionary from which he draws a writing that can know no halt.Yet he fails to explain how this "immense dictionary" comes into being without being affected by the passions, humours,.... of the person. It seems that Barthes is unable (?because of his passions and humour) to avoid the over-dramatisation. Perhaps it his journalism background or his need to keep himself in the public eye. Either way he risks failing to persuade his readers of what his intention was when he wrote the piece.
Michel Foucault in asking 'What is an Author' raises similar issues as Barthes about the status of the 'author' . He writes : ....An author's name is not simply an element in a discourse....it performs a certain role with regard to narrative discourse, assuring a classificatory function. Such a name permits one to group together a certain number of texts, define them, differentiate them from and contrast them to others......It would seem that the author's name, unlike other proper names, does not pass from the interior of a discourse to the real and exterior individual, who produced it; instead the name always seems to be present, marking off the edges of the text, revealing, or at least characterising , its mode of being. The author's name creates expectations in the reader's mind of what he is likely to find inside. If you like, we are already partially conditioned to approach the discourse in a certain way and would find it discomforting if our expectations are not realised. We cannot approach our reading in a naive way where we can explore the literature with an open and questioning mind.
Later he suggests .....the author is not an indefinite source of significations which fill a work; the author does not precede the works, he is a certain functional principle by which, in our culture, one limits, excludes, and chooses; in short, by which one impedes the free circulation, the free manipulation, the free composition, decomposition, and recomposition of fiction.". Does Foucault see the end of the limiting effect of the author figure? He describes as pure romanticism "to imagine a culture in which the fictive would operate in an absolutely free state". Yet he has the hope that at some time when society is in a state of flux the author-function will disappear. He offers no clues as to when this might happen nor what state of change is a necessary pre-requisite. He has (actually 'had' as he died in 1984) but the wish.
It is reasonable to ask whether Barthes or Foucault were advocating the ' death of the author'. I do not think either expected nor predicted that texts would suddenly appear. Barthes writes of the 'scriptor' as the producer of texts. Foucault seeks the removal of the limitations that occur by ascribing a work to a particular author. I think both want the 'power' to lie with the reader or the listener. I would suggest that in the end the reader is the deciding factor. It is true that if I enjoy a particular work by a particular author I will seek out his/her other works. However I have free will to decide whether I like a particular text and whether I will read other material. In a world as commercial as the one in which we live the market is the final arbiter. It is difficult to imagine a world where book sellers fill there shelves with books that give no clue to the writer. There are too many being published every day to make a choice realistic.
It has been suggested that the views of Barthes, Foucault and others would lead to a world in which all literature would be open to everyone to change or copy as they sought fit without the risk of breaching a person's copyright. The concept of copyright would be dead. There is a lot to be said for this argument and would be inevitable if the author was not recognised. The question then arise should the author receive any payment for his labours. I presume neither Barthes or Foucault refused to accept money for their work as this was the way they earned their living. (I do not know if either offered their works copyright free). It would not be inconsistent to expect a reward for their labours the same as any labourer letting the market decide the level of remuneration. In other words the author/producer lives on but he would be anonymous and unrecognised leaving the rest of us to do as we wished with any piece of literature or other art.
Note: The quotations from Barthes were taken from "The Death of the Author" Roland Barthes in the Athenaeum Library of Philosophy.
The quotations from Foucault are taken from "Art in Theory 1900 - 2000" (pp949 - 953) eds Charles Harrison & Paul Wood 2010 Blackwell Publishing
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