June Reading: "The Death of the Author" by Roland Barthes

[Amity]

@Jamal

He says that Valéry recognized this, even though he was preoccupied with the workings of the creative mind. In Barthes’ view, it is the focus on language itself—the “essentially verbal condition of literature”—that gives us a better way of interpreting literature, so he is impressed with Valéry’s rejection of authors’ pretentions, but lightly criticizes his focus on psychology.

Barthes and V may well have rejected the pretentions of authors — this is due to biases of their own which in V’s case appears to be a case of misunderstanding. In any case, this is not the on the same level of an alleged toppling of ‘the Author’s empire’.

They are both against psychology for its ‘interiority’. This refers to:

the subjective experience of an individual’s inner world, including thoughts, emotions, and self-awareness. This concept is crucial for understanding human behavior and mental processes, as it encompasses the private, introspective aspects of the self that are not directly observable. The study of interiority helps psychologists explore the complexities of human consciousness and the ways in which individuals perceive and interpret their experiences. — Interiority

The concept of ‘interiority’ is of central importance in writing. It is about not only the author’s knowledge but experience of the characters, their authenticity and their transformation.

For any story to be meaningful, there has to be layers coming from both subjectivity (internalities) and objectivity (externalities).
‘Interiority’ helps the reader relate in a ‘real’ sense.

From: Once More, With Feeling: Writing Interiority That Resonates in Fiction - Writer’s Digest - there’s a illustration of a story V1 - with facts only and V2 - with feeling.

@Jamal

Against this, he is arguing for the view that everything important to the meaning of the work is exterior, that is, public and out in the open. The reader is free to interpret it without being dictated to by the author, via the critic.

The reader has always been free to interpret it how they choose or within their abilities to comprehend. The author may well prefer that their own meaning is to the fore, after all why did they go to the trouble of expressing their own thoughts and feelings in the first place.

However, once a poem, prose or picture is in the public, then it is open and available to be translated and interpreted in any way.

Unless of course, one lives in a dictatorship which bars and penalises the process and product of the writer.

I think this is certainly far from helpful and may even result in the literal death of an author.

I’ve read more about the historical background of French literature and the trials of the poets.

If the laws and courts of the land are cruel and restrictive - is this part of what Barthes is attacking? Or is it simply the traditional form in a bourgeoisie society? Yes, I know he has a special place in hell for critics — isn’t this par for the course of progress?

@Jamal

reading the comments in the TPF creative writing events. This is why the thing about the essay I’m most interested in is the idea that the meaning is in the language and on the surface—something I’ve been arguing for years in discussions during the TPF events.

Yes. I recognise your perspective held by certain others. You must know mine. I may return and link to one particular event to show the differences.

[Amity]

@Jamal

ignoring Valéry and surrealism.

I turn to Section 3 and Surrealism. To examine what Barthes has to say. Why does he include this movement as an attempt to ‘topple the Author’s empire’.

The pdf quote:

Surrealism lastly — to remain on the level of this prehistory of modernity — surrealism doubtless could not accord language a sovereign place, since language is a system and since what the movement sought was, romantically, a direct subversion of all codes — an illusory subversion, moreover, for a code cannot be destroyed, it can only be “played with”; but by abruptly violating expected meanings (this was the famous surrealist “jolt”), by entrusting to the hand the responsibility of writing as fast as possible what the head itself ignores (this was automatic writing), by accepting the principle and the experience of a collective writing, surrealism helped secularize the image of the Author.

I must leave it here for now, so that others can have their say. What are your thoughts on Barthes’ claim or argument? Are you clear on what he means by the ‘Author’s empire’? Is it true that ‘surrealism helped secularize the image of the Author’?

[RussellA]

@Amity

I’d like to focus a little on Barthes’ description of Valéry, his second writer who wanted to ‘topple the Author’s empire’…I read the words and hear a condescending dismissal of the psychology of self. Why does Barthes take this attitude?

On the one hand, Valéry, encumbered with a psychology of the Self, greatly edulcorated Mallarme’s theory, but on the other hand, he unceasingly questioned and mocked the Author.

Valéry, encumbered (weighed down) with a psychology of the Self, greatly edulcorated Mallarme’s theory, but, turning in a preference for classicism (emphasising harmony and form over emotion) to the lessons of rhetoric (using language for a purpose, such as persuading someone) he unceasingly questioned and mocked the Author, emphasized the linguistic and almost “chance” nature of his activity, and throughout his prose works championed the essentially verbal condition of literature, in the face of which any recourse to the writer’s inferiority seemed to him pure superstition. (section 2 The Death of the Author)

Valéry was interested in the psychology of the mind, and even though he watered down Mallarme’s idea that the author should disappear totally, he still thought that literature is essentially verbal and stands alone, independent of any author, someone who is someone just arranging words.

Barthes writes we must reverse its myth: the birth of the reader must be ransomed by the death of the Author (section 6 The Death of the Author). By reader he means not a single individual with a history, biography and psychology, but a conceptual space of all possible readers.

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. (section 6 The Death of the Author)

Barthes as a post structuralist argues that the idea of the individual, a human being having a unique identity, is a capitalist invention. Thereby hiding the fact that each person is just a replaceable cog in a machine whilst inventing the narrative that each person is free to choose their own destiny.

Barthes, in rejecting an authoritative author, whilst proposing that the death of the author is the birth of the reader, is careful to avoid thereby creating an authoritative reader. Barthes understands the reader as something that exists as a collective within a conceptual space.

As both the writing stands alone independently of any author and the reader exists as a collective within a cultural conceptual space, no individual psyche can be studied independently of the whole of language and culture of which the individual is but a part. Thereby negating psychology as a possible field of study.

As Barthes refers to a conceptual space where there is no individual reader, it must be for the author also, that there is no individual author but a conceptual space of authorship, a pre-existing dictionary from which the writing is picked out.

Succeeding the Author, the writer no longer contains within himself passions, humors, sentiments, impressions, but that enormous dictionary, from which he derives a writing which can know no end or halt: life can only imitate the book, and the book itself is only a tissue of signs, a lost, infinitely remote imitation. (section 4 The Death of the Author)

For the post structuralists, it may be that there is no psyche unique to an individual, whether conscious thoughts or unconscious drives, but this does mean that they dismiss any possibility of raw and unfiltered feelings.

For example, in his book A Lover’s Discourse Fragments, where he considers the feeling of love. A raw feeling may be intense and felt internally, but its meaning derives externally from a pre-existing linguistic dictionary held by the society within which you live.

As a scriptor may write the text but not originate the text, the individual may experience the raw feeling but not originate the meaning of the feeling.

There are similarities to the writings of Wittgenstein, who was not a post-structuralist, but was an important precursor to the movement.

Traditional psychology assumed that feelings are private objects hidden in the container of the mind which are thought about and described in language, however Wittgenstein proposed the identity of thought with language and wrote:

“The limits of my language mean the limits of my world” (TLP 5.6)

Thoughts are expressions of feelings, and language is thought. As he wrote

"So you are saying that the word “pain” really means crying?” - On the contrary: the verbal expression of pain replaces crying and does not describe it.(PI 244)

However, that inner feelings can only be given meaning by an outer pre-existing language within a broader society does not mean that neither the post-structuralists nor Wittgenstein proposed that individuals cannot experience raw feelings.

Wittgenstein addressed this when he wrote:

And yet you again and again reach the conclusion that the sensation itself is a nothing - Not at all. It is not a something, but not a nothing either! (PI 304)

Although Barthes and the post-structuralists may describe the reader as being without psychology, they cannot dismiss the possibility of an individual having raw feelings. Such raw feelings, however, can neither be coherently be thought about nor have any meaning outside the conceptual space of language and society of which the individual is a part.

(A Macat Analysis. Roland Barthes’s The Death of the Author)

[Amity]

@RussellA

Valéry was interested in the psychology of the mind, and even though he watered down Mallarme’s idea that the author should disappear totally, he still thought that literature is essentially verbal and stands alone, independent of any author

V. was an obsessive, self-absorbed narcissist who delighted in his own brain. He wrote a ‘poetic autobiography’.

Valéry conceived himself as an anti-philosopher, and he despised the new discipline of psychology as it was emerging in the work of neurologist and psychoanalytical pioneer Sigmund Freud, because both philosophy and psychology sought to do precisely what he wished to avoid: to interpret, to reduce, the form of thought, event, and act to a content. He criticized French novelist Marcel Proust for this very tendency, though in doing so he misread Proust. Valéry, it must be admitted, was blinded to a great deal in literature by his obsessive commitment to purity of thought…

His fascination and personal identification with the Narcissus myth is well documented.

Of an early poem on this subject, “Narcissus Speaks” (“Narcisse Parle”), he wrote (quoted in volume I of Oeuvres [Works]): “The theme of Narcissus, which I have chosen, is a sort of poetic autobiography which requires a few explanations and indications. There exists in Montpellier a botanical garden where I used to go very often when I was nineteen… —
Paul Valéry | The Poetry Foundation

I agree that literature is verbal and can stand alone. However, it is not independent of any author.

For me, there is no doubting the influence of the author and their context within a broader cultural environment.

Ironically, Barthes and ‘The Death of the Author’ is nothing but a prime exemplar of that.

Indeed, I lose patience with the moves from the personal (man/author) to the abstractions of a political ideology.

A man and author is now viewed as an ‘Author’, as if to draw a parallel with a higher Father, like God. The text is his ‘child’ and so an authority resides with the Author. The only meaning is seen to rest with the Creator.

For Barthes, this relationship must die.
He wants to kill God.

I think Barthes overplays his hand.

Of course, it is true that the author uses familiar words and one can see intertextuality. There is nothing unusual in this.

The text is not just a string of quotes from other works but a synthesis of ideas and meaning in an imaginative way. It’s like composing a new piece of music. It is not impersonal. There are new combinations — virtually an infinite amount which can create new meanings for us.

So, there are 3 people in this relationship. The author, the text and the reader. All three are involved in determining meaning.

We can read and analyse the language of a poem or story, try to work out its meaning — but knowing the author + context will reveal other aspects. This is important if we are to reach an holistic and deeper understanding.

Barthes still has a point in that once the work is published, then ownership of meaning is transferred to every reader with their own interpretations.

The author remains alive through their words and is the source of the text. Their voice and voices talk to us. The author makes us think and feel.

The Death of an Abstract Author is another story.

I am despairing of this and will take a break. Thanks for listening.

[RussellA]

@Amity

So, there are 3 people in this relationship. The author, the text and the reader. All three are involved in determining meaning.

The author has an idea and chooses that text that he feels expresses his idea, such that the actual text is determined by the author. The text can mean different things to different people, so the text determines a range of possible meanings. I read the text and discover a meaning in it, so I determine what I think the text means.

Yes, all three are involved in determining meaning

@Amity

The text is his ‘child’ and so an authority resides with the Author…For Barthes, this relationship must die.

As it is one of the roles of a parent that their child “leaves the nest” on their path to adulthood, it can also be said that one of the roles of an author is to break the link between them and their writing in order that their text can stand on its own long after the literal death of the author.

Another role of the author is to ensure a clarity of understanding of the ideas and concepts being expressed within the writing without any need for the reader to have to resort to additional explanatory texts, either from the author themselves or others attempting to interpret the intentions of the author. The reader should not be put in the position of having to infer what the author meant because of the incorrect use of words, obscurantism or improper grammar. Again, the author should ensure to the best of their ability that the text can stand on its own and be clearly understood without any need for further reference to the intentions of the author.

Because of the fundamental ambiguity in language, having multiple possible meanings, it is a logical impossibility for any reader to know which particular meaning was intended by the author. For example, even the simple word “house” can have very different meanings to different people depending on their particular social, cultural and historical background. “House” to a New Yorker may mean something very different to a Ghanaian, and something very different again to the author. It is not that the reader deliberately breaks the link to the author, but it is inevitable that the link to the author will be broken by the multiple layers of meaning not only in each word, but each sentence and each paragraph.

When Barthes says that this relationship must die, he may not be saying that he wants the link between the reader and author to be broken but perhaps he is saying that it is inevitable that the link will be broken, resulting in the figurative death of the author.

[Jamal]

Continuing with section 4…

This is where Barthes introduces the scriptor. This is the figure that replaces the Author; it’s the new conception of the writer appropriate to the detachment of the text from an authoritative source of meaning.

By the way, I may have said before that the reader replaces the author, and now I’m saying it’s the scriptor. The resolution is: the reader replaces the author as the locus of meaning; the scriptor replaces the Author as the writer’s role.

The Author, Barthes says, is conceived as the parent of the work and as the prior condition for the work—thus we have a certain temporal conception of the work of literature: before = Author, after = novel.

In complete contrast, the modern scriptor is born simultaneously with the text, is in no way equipped with a being preceding or exceeding the writing, is not the subject with the book as predicate; there is no other time than that of the enunciation and every text is eternally written here and now.

It’s clear that the concept of the scriptor is not meant to just replace a Romantic ideal with a clear-eyed representation of the brute reality of the actual flesh-and-blood writer. The scriptor is born simultaneously with the text, and must therefore, I think, be in some sense a part of the text. This is roughly what I was getting at earlier when I described my use of “Barthes” as a name to refer to the standpoint of the essay rather than the author.

Barthes goes on to explain that unlike the Author, who records and then transmits reality into the work, the scriptor’s act of writing has to be seen as a performative, otherwise known as a performative utterance, a term coined by the influential philosopher of language J.L. Austin at Oxford University.

A performative is something said or written—a speech act—that changes reality rather than describing it. Examples are “You’re fired”, “I promise to pay you back”, “I sentence you to life in prison without the possibility of parole”.

As he has a habit of doing (as @Dawnstorm has brought our attention to), Barthes takes this concept from linguistics and the philosophy of language and extends it to cover literary writing. Writing is not a record or a depiction, but a generative act. Now, obviously such works contain descriptions and representation, functioning as such within the confines of the story, but the point Barthes is making is that the writing as a whole is not a recording or transmission of something prior. It constitutes itself in the act of being written. The descriptions and narrations inside the text are part of that constitution, not reports from a world before and outside the writing.

This is not to deny that the writer and the writer’s world exist before the book, and are conditions for it—it means that they do not, for a reader, supply the text with its meaning.

He concludes the paragraph with some thoughts that show just what the shift to the scriptor figure means.

the modern writer, having buried the Author, can therefore no longer believe, according to the “pathos” of his predecessors, that his hand is too slow for his thought or his passion, and that in consequence, making a law out of necessity, he must accentuate this gap and endlessly “elaborate” his form;

We can no longer believe in the notion of the Author as one who struggles to express, in a clumsy medium, that which has its fullest realization within the mind. This is the Romantic conception of a writer whose writing hand can never quite capture his ideas and passions, and he must endlessly “elaborate” or “polish” the text so as to better express that fixed idea or passion that is inside. What was always implicit in this notion—and we get the same idea in music, especially in jazz improvisation—was that what is interior is bigger than and superior to language. According to this Romantic view, the Author’s interior exceeds what language can carry.

for him, on the contrary, his hand, detached from any voice, borne by a pure gesture of inscription (and not of expression), traces a field without origin — or which, at least, has no other origin than language itself, that is, the very thing which ceaselessly questions any origin.

For Barthes, the rejection of the Author means the celebration of writing and of the power of language. Once writing is detached from the authoritative source, language can be seen not as the deficient expression of the interior passions and thoughts of an inspired genius, but as the actual field of creativity and the generation of meaning. Language isn’t a ground of literature but its constitutive matrix. Barthes does grant that writing has an origin in language, but he immediately qualifies, calling language “the very thing which ceaselessly questions any origin.” So the concession is really a withdrawal and he is closer to saying that the work has no origin at all, in the relevant sense.

[Dawnstorm]

@Jamal

…and it seems you might be right about Barthes’ inaccurate use of linguistic terms—although it might still be possible that you’re not being charitable enough, I’m not sure.

I’ve been making a detour here, really. It’s not about what Barthes is saying, but how he chooses to say it. Using a linguistic term and then extending it beyond its technical meaning causes confusion. This is something I’ve seen again and again of creative writing boards. I’m having trouble with Wittgenstein and his use of “grammar”, too. This isn’t just Barthes; it’s very common. It’s not the most on-topic thing, but I feel I can use @RussellA’s post to illustrate what I mean:

@RussellA

…but I feel that Barthes’s use of the word “intransitive” does describe what he intends to say.

If you want me to agree to this (which I might, as I have not made up my mind yet), you’d have to amend this to “Barthe’s usesof the word ‘intransitive’”.

This:

@RussellA

for intransitive ( verb with no object - I sleep - I speak) ends

I don’t see the bracket in the original so they’re your addition, I assume? Or are they in a different edition?

In any case: “recounting an action for intransitive ends” has the ends of the recounting be intransitive. “Verb with no object” has nothing to do with this. It’s in the other article (not death of the author as far as I can tell; if I missed one, I’d ask you to quote it) that Barthes uses the word “transitive” in its linguistic meaning.

The meaning of “intranstive” in “intransitive ends” is perpendicular to the meaning of “intransitive” in “intransitive verb”. And end is no verb and cannot take an object (in the sense of what verbs do). That would lead to nonsense.

Barthes, and you maybe, might see a connection, and maybe it’s intuitive, and maybe the two of you conceptualise the connection differently, but that’s neither here nor there. For me, using the same word for what’s clearly two distinct uses in one rhetorical move leads to fruitless confusion. There’s no insight at the end of it. I’m just puzzled.

So:

@RussellA

Barthes argues that because of the ambiguous nature of language it is often impossible for the reader to know who is speaking, whose voice they are hearing and who the author is.

When I read this I’m just mildly puzzled what this has to do with the valency of the verb. I’m assuming this is set-up and I read on. But I never get there, much like with Barthes.

@RussellA

In what sense is the primitive man taking part in an intransitive act (characterized by not having or containing a direct object, Merriam Webster).

Then this: an act described with a transitive verb is a “transtive act” maybe? If so that’s a very basic error. These are two different uses of “transitive”, and you need to relate one to the other. Re-using an earlier metaphor: these meanings of “intransitive” are perpendicular to each other, and if you see a continuity you have explaining to do: what is the relationship between an intransitive verb and an intransitive act?

Philosophy often just flattens the angle and pretends it’s obvious, and if I don’t get it I’m being disingenious or obtuse, or something.

It’s worse if the intuitive connection runs deep: There’s a “transitive verb” → verbs describe actions → there must be transitive actions. Maybe something like this is going on. And maybe the world makes sense to some people like that.

And note that there are now three things that have “transitivity”: verbs, acts, and ends. Is there a super meaning that unites them all, that all are part of? I can’t find one.

Between verbs and acts, there’s often a relationship of some sort. So, when a word like “eat” has a transitive and an intransitive version, it’s often to allow situational focus. For example:

“Are you coming?” - “I’m eating.”

The verb is transitive; the act is not. The focus is on socially classified activity. We mean to inform our interlocutor that he’s being impationt. I’m not just stuffing a cracker in my mouth on the go. I’m sitting down with knife and fork before a plate and I’m having a meal. The object is there for reference, but it doesn’t matter, so we leave it out. The object drops out and the verb is now intransitive. But you can later refer to the same act with a transitive verb.

“You took quite some time, you know.” - “I was eating curry. You don’t just wolf down curry.”

You don’t even need to repeat the verb. A = Novelist, B = Friend of Novelist.

B: You coming?
A: Nah, I’m writing.
B: Ah, your unending project.
A: No, a short story. I need a break.

There’s no doubt a relationship between grammar and thought, but it’s not straightforward, and you can’t just make straightforward judgements. (I’ve long wanted to look more into cognitive grammar, Langacker et al.) But you can’t just gloss over it and assume your intuitions are pushing through.

Of course, you might be fine with the text speaking for itself and one of its instantiations to come out as nonsense. In fact, any text probably has a potential fringe of nonsense.

I’m not going to go on about this very much (unless anyone has a specific question I can actually answer); it’s a hot-button topic for me, and mostly off-topic, here. It’s off-topic because I’m not talking about what I think Barthes is saying, but I’m talking about how he goes about saying it. It’s potentially relevant to the disambiguation of the word “transitive”:

A ctrl+f finds me “for intransitive ends” (2), and that’s the end of it in Death of the author. So we can’t really do any diambiguating in this thread. I was talking about “To write: an intransitive verb?”, which Jamal mentioned. A very interesting article I didn’t know.

[Dawnstorm]

@Jamal

So, if the system of language has its own dynamic that no single speaker controls, then every individual act of speaking or writing is not a private expression but a local instantiation of the ongoing life of the language. The author is just the place where that event occurs, not its origin.

I think we need to be careful here not to establish a false dichotomy: for language to mean something, it has to be in people’s heads. And if we speak, we trigger what’s in our heads, and without that trigger there would be no language. But what’s in our heads got there somewhow. People’s lives overlap, they interact, the learn and re-learn and make things as precise as possible and keep things as vague as necessary. But there is no meaning, in a real-life-location sense, outside people’s heads. And what’s inside people’s heads changes as they bump into each other. Diverse meaning (person A =/= person B) can survive as long there’s situational compatibility. And when compatibility fails what’s in heads A and B changes across complex fault lines that involve things such as sympathy/antipathy, or social power, or, or, or…

And with published writing, what complicates matters is that the speaker and listener both drop out, and with the spatio-temporally displaced reader with no direct access to the context of orign, and simultaneously a context of reading (within a context of reception). It gets very complicated very quickly, and one might say the further into the past the essay slips, the harder it is to figure out what was in the writer’s head (and I can tell you from experience that this includes the writer himself).

What’s constant is the sign-body on the page. This also means that “what the author intended” is a reconstruction in the present moment: it’s a topic of its own, and not part of the “true meaning of the text”.

Subjective expressions are a vital part of the genesis of the text, but so is the anxiety of being misunderstood, which is - already - a sense of the opening up of the text: a potential of the text’s meaning going beyond or deviating from intention. In my case, there’s also always a sense of “do I really know what exactly I want to say?” So even in creating a text, you’re also its reader: you can stop a “dangerous” text (one likely to be misunderstood), a “vague” text (one unlikely to make sense), and so on. Some people (like me) second-guess themselves a lot; others (like Humpty Dumpty) always know what they mean to say (and others be damned). But language is scoial. Subjective expression is a necessary part of it; but it doesn’t preserve well. Archeologists tend to find mostly bones, so to say.

[Dawnstorm]

@Amity

This begins to sound biblical. The death of a crucified writer/person but whose story survives. God-like?

It’s the move from structuralism to post-structuralism. “God” actually often serves as a metaphor for something transcended that’s foundational to meaning, and post-structuralism denies this.

Look at how Barthes uses the word “God”:

@Barthes: Death of the Author

We know that a text does not consist of a line of words, releasing a single “theological” meaning (the “message” of the Author-God),

@Barthes: Death of the Author

Thus literature (it would be better, henceforth, to say writing), by refusing to assign to the text (and to the world as text) a “secret:’ that is, an ultimate meaning, liberates an activity which we might call counter-theological, properly revolutionary, for to refuse to arrest meaning is finally to refuse God and his hypostases, reason, science, the law.

These are the two instances of “God” I found. It seems you can’t, internally, seperate the meaning of the text of a message from the author, and thus you see some sort of divine resurrection here, but for Barthes, the death of the author is the death of the text’s god. God does not survive: the text does, and freed of its creator it can now become whatever it can become: no fixed meaning, but a complex interplay of sometimes incompatible meanings. There’s no ultimate end to this process; no secret key in the text; no mythic origin. Just the ongoing dance around the words on the page (and people dance with each other, as well as with the text).

None of this means you can’t be interested in what the author wanted to say. But the clues aren’t just in the text; in fact most of them are in the context of its writing. And most of them are lost to time.

[Jamal]

@Dawnstorm

I think we need to be careful here not to establish a false dichotomy

Nice critique, and I agree with you. I may have gone too far and ended up dissolving readers and writers into the system, or excessively subordinating them to it. I should have learnt my lesson from Adorno on mediation: to single out the system as the primary, most real entity is a reification that fails to follow the trail and recognize the reciprocal relation. You could say that the system and speakers and writers are mutually constitutive.

This is probably a side-issue but I can’t help registering my resistance to the idea that language is in people’s heads. I don’t necessarily want to debate that but it’s worth pointing out that I can agree with the main point you’re making here without an internalist view of language.

[Jamal]

@Amity

Indeed, I lose patience with the moves from the personal (man/author) to the abstractions of a political ideology.

A man and author is now viewed as an ‘Author’, as if to draw a parallel with a higher Father, like God. The text is his ‘child’ and so an authority resides with the Author. The only meaning is seen to rest with the Creator.

I think Barthes is reacting to an ideology, more than offering one of his own. The Romantic ideology of the author, struggling to express the greatness of his (always his, in this ideology) interior thoughts and feelings, has dominated the cultural reception of literature for a couple of centuries and is still influential.

Barthes suggests that we instead celebrate the verbal act of writing in itself.

@Amity

The text is not just a string of quotes from other works but a synthesis of ideas and meaning in an imaginative way. It’s like composing a new piece of music. It is not impersonal. There are new combinations — virtually an infinite amount which can create new meanings for us.

Well put. I think we can reconcile this with the essay. When we come to look at the “tissue of citations” concept, this will become clearer. My instinct is that Barthes in the end agrees with you on this, but that he uses an exaggeration to get a point across.

@Amity

So, there are 3 people in this relationship. The author, the text and the reader. All three are involved in determining meaning.

Good point, which makes me realize there’s an important distinction we need to make. Yes, the writer is involved in producing the text—without them, there would be no text at all. But for Barthes, the question isn’t about who produced the text, but about where its meaning is located, or if there is even a singular meaning to be located at all.

So in a literal, causal sense the writer is the one who makes the marks on screen or paper. But in terms of meaning, the writer is a participant (with their own special role, of course) in the production of a text whose meaning emerges in reading.

[Amity]

@RussellA

Because of the fundamental ambiguity in language, having multiple possible meanings, it is a logical impossibility for any reader to know which particular meaning was intended by the author.

Yes. There is ambiguity. Some philosophers use equivocation when making arguments. To muddy the waters.
However, it is not logically impossible for a reader to know what is meant. Or what the meaning is in any given context.

How much it matters depends on the message and the audience. If a reader wants facts or to feel.

Consider the word ‘fall’. How it is used in prose and poetry. There are plenty of examples. Here from:
Poetry - Form, Rhyme, Meter | Britannica

Between the ages of 30 and 90, the weight of our muscles falls by 30 percent and the power we can exert likewise….The number of nerve fibres in a nerve trunk falls by a quarter. The weight of our brains falls from an average of 3.03 lb. to 2.27 lb. as cells die and are not replaced. (Gordon Rattray Taylor, The Biological Time Bomb, 1968)

Let me disclose the gifts reserved for age
To set a crown upon your lifetime’s effort.
First, the cold friction of expiring sense
Without enchantment, offering no promise
But bitter tastelessness of shadow fruit
As body and soul begin to fall asunder.
Second, the conscious impotence of rage
At human folly, and the laceration
Of laughter at what ceases to amuse.
And last, the rending pain of re-enactment
Of all that you have done, and been…

(T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets)

I can read a dictionary to appreciate the brilliance of language:
What is another word for fall? | Fall Synonyms - WordHippo Thesaurus

As to what is intended by the author, remind ourselves of what ‘literature’ is:

In its simplest definition literature is a body of written works. However, the name has traditionally been applied to those imaginative works of poetry and prose distinguished by the intentions of their authors and the perceived aesthetic excellence of their execution.
Literature may be classified according to a variety of systems, including language, national origin, historical period, genre, and subject matter.— Literature | Definition, Meaning, Characteristics, Genres, Types, & Facts | Britannica

Verbal expression or writing is the closest thing we have to know what is in someone’s mind.

The plain puzzle of life is shared in ways that can shift other minds and culture, even if this is not what directly motivates the author.

@RussellA

It is not that the reader deliberately breaks the link to the author, but it is inevitable that the link to the author will be broken by the multiple layers of meaning not only in each word, but each sentence and each paragraph.

I don’t accept that that the tri-partite relationship of author-text-reader (or Barthes’ parent/child) is broken, quite the opposite.

Analysing and reflecting is part of growth. Dialogue, asking questions, writing a response is learning.

Getting to knowing an author and his thinking (as we are doing)…how can that not be important?

@RussellA

When Barthes says that this relationship must die, he may not be saying that he wants the link between the reader and author to be broken but perhaps he is saying that it is inevitable that the link will be broken, resulting in the figurative death of the author.

Perhaps. How will we know?

[Jamal]

Section 5 now. This introduces the conception of the text as a tissue of citations (or quotations in the other translation). This is to say that the text is “a multi-dimensional space in which a variety of writings, none of them original, blend and clash.”

The text is a tissue of quotations drawn from the innumerable centres of culture.

I think it’s important to get this right, and avoid interpreting this in a way that makes Barthes obviously wrong. To put it in a single sentence: Barthes is not saying that nothing new happens in a work of literature, but that the new things are in the “blend and clash” of prior materials, not in those materials themselves. The prior materials—the words, locutions, metaphors that make up any piece of writing—have to be taken from elsewhere in the culture if they’re to be intelligible to readers at all. From one angle this is obvious: writers do not generally just make up words, and even when they do (Shakespeare and Joyce), those neologisms gain what sense they have from some prior meaning and use.

Notice that I’ve avoided the word “original” even to describe this recombination of borrowed materials, though I’ve called it “new”. This is intentional, because I think it’s also what Barthes is doing. The idea of originality is tainted by the strong Romantic sense about the inspired genius creating something out of nothing. That’s exactly what Barthes is denying, so “new” works where “original” wouldn’t. In a more ordinary sense of “original”, the writer’s combination of existing materials may indeed be original—it’s just that the word carries baggage that Barthes (and I, following him here) want to keep out of the picture.

The last sentence can be seen as inspiring:

Succeeding the Author, the scriptor no longer bears within him passions, humours, feelings, impressions, but rather this immense dictionary from which he draws a writing that can know no halt: life never does more than imitate the book, and the book itself is only a tissue of signs, an imitation that is lost, infinitely deferred.

[My bold]

The upshot is that the writer is not a vessel filled with thoughts and feelings that can only be expressed in words with a Herculean effort, but is rather an agent productively saturated with the culture’s meanings in a field of infinite possibilities.

I haven’t read Flaubert’s novel Bouvard et Pécuchet or anything by Thomas De Quincey, but I’ll briefly say a few things about how I see the relevance of the latter. Bouvard et Pécuchet apparently appears quite a lot in Barthes’ work so it’s a naturally prominent part of the essay’s context and I doubt there is much to be gained from looking into it if you don’t know the novel.

The Thomas De Quincey example seems clear enough though. De Quincey internalized ancient Greek so thoroughly that insofar as he had his own resources they were not constituted by interiority in the Romantic sense but by a lexicon. Thus he was exemplary of the scriptor, embedded in language, without reference to the expression of an interiority.

Did he [the writer in general] wish to express himself, he ought at least to know that the inner ‘thing’ he thinks to ‘translate’ is itself only a ready-formed dictionary, its words only explainable through other words, and so on indefinitely;

[Amity]

@Dawnstorm

@Amity

This begins to sound biblical. The death of a crucified writer/person but whose story survives. God-like?

It’s the move from structuralism to post-structuralism.

Thanks for your informative response. My quote is an expression of my feeling and questioning as I read Section 2.

@Dawnstorm

These are the two instances of “God” I found. It seems you can’t, internally, seperate the meaning of the text of a message from the author, and thus you see some sort of divine resurrection here, but for Barthes, the death of the author is the death of the text’s god.

The 2 instances of the word ‘God’ you found are in Sections 5 and 6, respectively. I’ve still to fully read and reflect on this.

Barthes. The man, author, text and meaning remain a mystery to me.

I don’t see a ‘divine resurrection’, I was wondering about the religious aspect of his writing. Who it was meant to appeal to…

@Dawnstorm

There’s no ultimate end to this process; no secret key in the text; no mythic origin. Just the ongoing dance around the words on the page (and people dance with each other, as well as with the text).

Yes. The dance and the play continues.

[RussellA]

@Amity

Yes. There is ambiguity. Some philosophers use equivocation when making arguments. To muddy the waters. However, it is not logically impossible for a reader to know what is meant. Or what the meaning is in any given context.

Those who write about philosophy and deliberately use equivocation and obscurantism are poor writers.

In a piece of text, where words often have more than one meaning, is it logically possible to discover a single true meaning?

I don’t think that it is.

@Amity

Getting to knowing an author and his thinking (as we are doing)…how can that not be important?

It is important. But we can only know the thinking of an author through their text. We cannot directly know what is in the mind of an author. We can only hypothesise the thinking of an author by reading their text, which we may well misinterpret.

@Amity

How will we know?

Yes, how can we know what the author intended. We cannot look into their mind, we can only look at their text. As you point out, even a simple word such as “fall” has different meanings in different contexts.

[Amity]

@Dawnstorm

I was talking about “To write: an intransitive verb?”, which Jamal mentioned. A very interesting article I didn’t know.

The article is part of a book. I just found and downloaded the pdf:
Roland Barthes. The Rustle of Language

Thanks @Jamal for the mention in your post 29/75.
Sounds like a attractive read

[RussellA]

@Dawnstorm

If you want me to agree to this (which I might, as I have not made up my mind yet), you’d have to amend this to “Barthe’s usesof the word ‘intransitive’”.

I am not sure that this is correct.

Consider the two possibilities: i) “Barthes’s use of the word “intransitive” does describe what he intends to say” and ii) “Barthes’s uses of the word “intransitive” does describe what he intends to say”.

I can say “I use my car to go to work”. Although “use” is in the singular, it is referring to multiple occasions. To say “I uses my car to go to work” would be ungrammatical.

Similarly, I can say “his use of the word “intransitive”". Although “use” is in the singular, it is referring to multiple occasions. To say “His uses of the word “intransitive”” would be ungrammatical.

@Dawnstorm

I don’t see the bracket in the original so they’re your addition, I assume?

I inadvertently left the brackets in as a self-reminder.

@Dawnstorm

The meaning of “intranstive” in “intransitive ends” is perpendicular to the meaning of “intransitive” in “intransitive verb”. And end is no verb and cannot take an object (in the sense of what verbs do). That would lead to nonsense.

Barthes wrote:

Probably this has always been the case: once an action is recounted, for intransitive ends, and no longer in order to act directly upon reality — that is, finally external to any function but the very exercise of the symbol — this disjunction occurs, the voice loses its origin, the author enters his own death, writing begins. (section 1 “Death of the Author”)

What can we say about the relationship between writing and the primitive man? Possibly i) the writing is its own voice, ii) the writing is the source of authority, iii) the writing is its own author. All these are intransitive.

There is “intransitive verb”, meaning a verb with no object, such as “I sleep”.

There is “intransitive ends”, meaning that an action is recounted no longer to act directly on reality, no longer to act on the object that is reality.

Yes, words in language frequently have distinct uses, and in such cases the intended meaning should be discovered within the context it is being used.

For example, the word “perpendicular” has several meanings, and cannot be understood in isolation from the remainder of the text. It can mean i) right angles, ii) steep, iii) architecture, iv) uniting different types (Merriam Webster).

We understand the intended meaning of the word “perpendicular” from its context. Similarly we understand the word “intransitive” also from its context.

@Dawnstorm

When I read this I’m just mildly puzzled what this has to do with the valency of the verb. I’m assuming this is set-up and I read on. But I never get there, much like with Barthes.

It directly leads into “The discussion is between the primitive man, the modern man and the post-structuralist.”, and their relationship with, in Barthes’s words “intransitive ends”.

[Amity]

To return for clarification:

@Amity

However, it is not logically impossible for a reader to know what is meant. Or what the meaning is in any given context.

This was in response to:

@RussellA

it is a logical impossibility for any reader to know which particular meaning was intended by the author.

and not to this change you made, from assertion to a different question:

@RussellA

is it logically possible to discover a single true meaning?

I don’t think that it is.

Perhaps not, and I’m not even sure that this is desirable. It would depend on what is at stake. This is related to the concept of ‘Truth’ and its nature. The small ‘truths’ of a person may be mythical. They can reveal their character and values. ‘No one is an island’ ‘No one was born wearing clothes’.

More substantial and interesting:

Dostoyevsky once threw off the cryptic comment: ‘The world will be saved by beauty’. What did he mean~ For a long time I thought it was just a phrase. How was it possible> When, in our bloodthirsty history, did beauty ever save whomfrom what? Ennobled, exalted- yes, but whom did it ever save~ There is, however, one special characteristic of the essence’of beauty and the position of art: the conviction carried by a true work of art is utterly irrefutable and conquers even the resisting heart. A political speech, a vehement argu ment, a programme of social reform or a philosophical system can to all intents and purposes be constructed equally smoothly and elegantly on a mistake or a lie; and what has been concealed or distorted is not at once apparent. But when an opposing speech or argument or programme, or a philosophy based on different premises, is put forward, everything again works out so smoothly and elegantly and everything seems fine. That is why they are so easily believed- and disbelieved. It is a wasteof time shouting what doesn’t ring true — Alexander Solzhenitsyn Nobel Prize Speech

@RussellA

Yes, how can we know what the author intended. We cannot look into their mind, we can only look at their text.

There is more than the text, there is the surrounding context.

Earlier I showed use of the word ‘fall’ in T.S. Eliot’s poem: ‘As body and soul begin to fall’.

This concerns growing old but what does it matter? What prompts this expression? I can read something like this:

Eliot’s insights into the cyclical nature of life are revealed through themes and images deftly woven throughout the four poems.
The work addresses the connections of the personal and historical present and past, spiritual renewal, and the very nature of experience; it is considered the poet’s clearest exposition of his Christian beliefs. — Four Quartets | Modernist Poetry, T.S. Eliot & Mysticism | Britannica

[RussellA]

@Dawnstorm

And note that there are now three things that have “transitivity”: verbs, acts, and ends. Is there a super meaning that unites them all, that all are part of?

The Merriam Webster dictionary defines “intransitive” as an adjective “especially : characterized by not having or containing a direct object”. As an adjective it can describe or modify a noun or pronoun (Merriam Webster - adjective), such as intransitive ends, intransitive acts or intransitive verbs.

Barthes refers to “intransitive ends”

Probably this has always been the case: once an action is recounted, for intransitive ends, and no longer in order to act directly upon reality (section 1 The Death of the Author)

In grammar, an “intransitive verb” is a verb, aside from an auxiliary verb, whose context does not entail a transitive object. (Wikipedia - Intransitive verb)

The Merriam Webster dictionary defines “act” as “the doing of a thing”, such as the act of a primitive man listening to a story, and hearing the text as if the text itself was the voice. The expression “the text itself was the voice” is an intransitive expression.

The super meaning that unites them all is the fact that “intransitive” is an adjective.

[RussellA]

@Jamal

Section 5 now. This introduces the conception of the text as a tissue of citations

The scriptor may be thought of as a LLM combining material that is already present within the society that the scriptor/LLM is part of in a new but not original way. The scriptor/LLM is contemporaneous with their text.