Get news & events by emailIn his 1968 essay “The Death of the Author,” Roland Barthes complains that “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” (1466). Those who seek such explanations—the critics whom Barthes derides—presumably abuse works of literature by explaining them as obvious or inevitable products of lives lived, reducing the magic of artistic creation to a mundane transcription of life to art. Barthes notes that this emphasis on biographical explanation and “authorial intent” was an historical boon for the literary critic: “the latter then allotting itself the important task of discovering the Author… hence there is no surprise in the fact that, historically, the reign of the Author has also been that of the Critic.” For Barthes, emphasis on authorial identity is a limiting or even fundamentalist focus: it “impose[s] a limit on that text, [furnishes] it with a final signified, [closes] the writing” (1469). To the contrary, he insists that “a text is not a line of words releasing a single ‘theological’ meaning (the ‘message’ of the Author-God) but a multi-dimensional space in which a variety of writings, none of them original, blend and clash” (1468).
Barthes and other post-structuralist critics viewed the cult of the “Author” as a quasi-Christian reverence for an ostensibly all-knowing and all-powerful authority whose judgments were always final. Not so, he pronounced, with such gusto that his now-commonplace manifesto sounds revolutionary even in retrospect. “By refusing to assign a ‘secret,’ an ultimate meaning, to the text (and to the world as text), [literary criticism] liberates what may be called an anti-theological activity, an activity that is truly revolutionary since to refuse to fix meaning is, in the end, to refuse God and his hypostases—reason, science, law” (1469). Such pronouncements may sound grandiose (or blasphemous) to contemporary ears, but Barthes envisioned his theory as an emancipatory revelation: “the birth of the reader must be at the cost of the death of the Author” (1470). One must admit that this logic is intoxicating. Why should writers—or critics, for that matter—be allowed to say what books “mean”? Why should a writer’s life necessarily inform her fiction? Isn’t biographical context the stuff of encyclopedia entries, the killer of dreams and classroom discussions, the plodding fodder of the historically obvious? Power to the people!
In his essay “What is an Author,” published the following year, Michel Foucault explored some ramifications of this new paradigm. Instead of understanding “the author” as synonymous with “the writer,” Foucault proposed that we consider “the author” as a “function of discourse” with various characteristics. Readers and critics construct “the author-function” in various, culturally specific ways that have varied over time—from eras in which authorship was considered insignificant (hence most early folklore and epic poetry is unattributed) to Foucault’s present-day, in which “every text of poetry or fiction was obliged to state its author and the date, place, and circumstance of its writing” (1629). These identifications provided a (false?) sense of coherence throughout all of the author’s works; they determined “the meaning and value attributed to the text”; they made it possible for the literary work to become intellectual property, earning royalties for the author and potentially subjecting him to punishment, “to the extent that his discourse was considered transgressive” (1628). Instead of a simpering focus on authorial identity, creativity, originality, and authenticity—which he called “the tiresome repetitions”—Foucault proposed a new series of critical interrogations, such as “What are the modes of existence of this discourse?” and “Where does it come from; how is it circulated; who controls it?” (1636).
With all due respect to Barthes and Foucault, many of us who teach (or hope to teach) college literature courses have a much more pragmatic concern. The questions above, though certainly intriguing, are not the types of questions that undergraduates usually ask—even in the most elite American universities. Indeed, in my first experience as a TA for a literature course, I was frequently asked questions such as “Did Mark Twain move to California before he wrote Huck Finn?” (Yes, it turns out—he moved to San Francisco in 1864; the first (British) edition of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn was published in 1884, and the American version was published early in 1885.) This experience led me to think about the politics of how we read (and teach) literature. I imagine that those students would not have been impressed or edified had I rationalized my ignorance about Twain’s actual life by elucidating the “author-function” or by attempting to liberate them from considering such pedantic details. However, this realization led to another: as teachers and critics of literature, perhaps thanks to post-structuralist theory and pedagogy, we are never really trained to find credible biographical information about authors. (Lest this statement appear to generalize my own ignorance, I have personally observed English professors at both UNC and Duke, in both graduate and undergraduate courses, relying on Wikipedia entries to fill the gaps.) One might question whether the reported “Death of the Author” has created such a vacuum of biographical information that such resorts are necessary, or whether biographical information is now held in such low regard that this unreliable source is deemed sufficient. To be fair, professors of literature spend their lives trying to read and reread all the books that they teach, not to mention critical books about those books; must they also read books about the people who wrote the books?
While preparing to teach my own literature course, I asked a reference-librarian-in-training for help, and her response validated all the nice things that I frequently tell undergrads about reference librarians. Julie suggested a variety of sources that are not only more authoritative than Wikipedia; they also contain much more specific information and analysis of the authors’ literary works. I will be happy to share her entire list with anyone who would like to see it (to which she has agreed, though as a disclaimer for her sake, it was merely a reply to an email, not originally intended for public dissemination). In short, she pointed out four databases that include critical autobiographies thoroughly vetted by literary scholars. Here was the answer I had been looking for. For if “the author” is not really dead or reduced to a “function,” and if students still want to know who s/he is, shouldn’t we be able to tell them? The following are Julie’s simple suggestions, which made my first literature course much easier to teach. I’m sure some of these sources will not be as useful for scholars of British or Comparative Literature(s), but I am equally sure that a similar query could produce equally helpful results. For while the cultural constructions of the author-function, both past and present, are important to note, I would argue that the “death of the author” was a premature post-mortem.
Julie Greenberg’s Sources for Biographical Information on American Authors Literature Online (LION)
http://lion.chadwyck.com.libproxy.lib.unc.edu/
[Click “Author Index” in the left-hand navigation column. Then, click “Browse by Nationality” and at the bottom of the page, under “North America,” check “American” and click “select.” You can then further browse by literary period or movement. If you click on any of the author’s names, under “Resources,” you should see a link for “Biography.”]
Literature Resource Center
http://go.galegroup.com.libproxy.lib.unc.edu/ps/start.do?p=LitRC&u=chap37669&authCount=1
[In the search page that comes up, under “by content type,” uncheck everything except “biographies,” then search for the author.]
Literary Reference Center
http://web.ebscohost.com.libproxy.lib.unc.edu/lrc/search?vid=1&hid=112&sid=fce7f81c-6579-4ea4-be2f-9253bcd698d0%40sessionmgr113
[Search for an author’s name, and then in the search results page, select the “Biographies” tab -- often there are many full-text HTML biographies.]
Early American Fiction 1789-1850
http://collections.chadwyck.com.libproxy.lib.unc.edu/home/home_eaf1.jsp
[Click the “Complete Contents” navigation button on the left-hand side. Then, browse or search the list of authors. If you click the author’s name (as opposed to the title of a work), you should see a “Biography” link.]
“3414. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.” Bibliography of American Literature. Accessed via UNC Library website, 4 Jan 2010. <http://collections.chadwyck.com>
Barthes, Roland. “The Death of the Author.” Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. Ed. Vincent B. Leitch et al. New York: Norton, 2001: 1466-1470.
Foucault, Michel. “What Is an Author?” Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. Ed. Vincent B. Leitch et al. New York: Norton, 2001: 1622-1636.
Greenberg, Julie. “Sources for Biographical Information on American Authors.” Personal e-mail. 3 July 2010. UNC University Libraries.
“Twain, Mark, 1835-1910.” Literature Online biography. 2009. Accessed via UNC Library website, 4 Jan 2010. <http://lion.chadwyck.com>
Not to resuscitate a "dead" old argument, but perhaps what Will and I have been debating is better framed by Adam Kelly's recent commentary on the death of David Foster Wallace, entitled "David Foster Wallace: The Death of the Author and the Birth of a Discipline," cited recently in The Chronicle of Higher Education:
http://www.ijasonline.com/Adam-Kelly.html
http://chronicle.com/article/The-Afterlife-of-David-Foster/125823/
Kelly writes that critics' recent response to Wallace's work, "in literary-critical terms ... is a significant development. What became known as 'literary theory,' and eventually simply 'theory' (see Culler), initially arose as a method of reading 'against the grain,' with the aim of exploring a text’s unconscious (whether political, psychological, gendered etc.). But as theory has moved from a position of peripheral challenge to one of conventional centrality in academic discourse, its relation to texts has become newly problematic, both because the epistemological claims of high theory have come under fire from a variety of sources, and because literary texts have begun to engage critically with their own relation to theoretical formulations. Literary critics such as Mark Currie, Mark McGurl and Daniel Punday have explored this problem in general terms, but Wallace critics have found it easier to negotiate because of the assumption of genius and encyclopaedic knowledge attached to their object of study. To take just one example from the 2009 conferences: Joshua Sperling prefaced his New York paper on Wallace and Heidegger with the claim that Wallace could be assumed to have read Heidegger’s late essay 'The Question Concerning Technology,' and hence that essay provided a legitimate point of entry for Sperling’s argument. Whereas the rise of theory was initially viewed as the conclusive destruction of intention, the final nail in the coffin of Barthes’s dead author, here intention is birthed again to co-exist with theory, resulting in fresh forms of critical engagement. This shift, perhaps, goes some way to explaining the influence of Wallace’s essay-interview. When theory was at its zenith in the academy, what a writer thought he or she was doing in their fiction was not a decisive factor for critics; but when major writers become willing to engage the discourses of theory itself – to speak the language of the critic, and challenge that language on its own turf – it is impossible not to take notice."
If the author is no longer presumed to write "outside" of theory, or ignorantly of it, is she then "miraculously" resurrected? Or, perhaps, was she here all along, pronounced dead prematurely, like Juliet? Or, and this is decidedly possible, have we swung too quickly from the presumption of ignorance to the presumption of genius? How can "literary theory" and "authorial intent" be reconciled -- or is this question ultimately unanswerable?
PH
Mr. Kaiser is kind enough to situate Barthes’ and Foucault’s essays in the context of their contemporary audiences and their broader bodies of work -- an interesting way to refute my argument that author biographies are necessary tools for teachers and critics of literature. He is right to point out that we are all post-structuralists of sorts these days, as it is now axiomatic that literary texts can not and should not be assigned “a singular meaning.” We acknowledge the power dynamics of reading and interpretation (implicitly or explicitly) in every class we teach, in every paper we assign. But, as the last respondent suggests, the logical extreme of these essays is to ignore the author completely, to shrug and conclude -- as Foucault repeats Beckett -- “What matter who’s speaking?” (1636).
I would argue that it actually matters a great deal. It matters, for instance, that Harriet Jacobs was the author of Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, not Lydia Maria Child, and that her book was autobiographical, not a work of fiction. It matters that Ezra Pound became an advocate for fascist political movements, that Zora Neale Hurston died penniless and unknown, that Twain himself felt the need to “light out for the territory ahead of the rest.” Why these biographical facts matter, or what they “mean,” is another question, beyond the scope of this conversation. But if such assertions smack of “anti-intellectual posturing,” particularly at a time when popular support for the humanities is so anemic, perhaps we as teachers and critics should stop to question the goals of our academic endeavors. For, as Barthes aptly notes, if we effectively dispose of the author, the critic will be next to go.
It is strange to think that we are still talking about "the death of the author" as though it were a choice, a reading strategy, or, worst of all, some hyper-intellectual method for bullying our students with non-Anglo-Saxon interpretations of literature and culture.
In the spirit of Patrick's interest in historical context, perhaps it is useful to point out that Barthes was engaged with French academics who came from a long tradition of imposing a singular, dominant meaning on the text (see, for example, Barthes' debates with the French academy over the interpretation of Racine's plays). Now I doubt that any of us walks into the classroom looking to impose a singular meaning on the text. In this sense we all agree with Barthes.
Foucault's interest in the author-function is quite different from Barthes' notions, as it is enmeshed in his thinking on the operations of power and the way subjectivity is not only rhetorically framed, but enforced on and through the act of reading. Again, I doubt any teacher at Chapel Hill walks in the classroom without an awareness of the power dynamics of interpretation.
Rather, I imagine we are all interested in the multiple voices that come out of the reading process. We are curious about literature and culture, and find it worth studying, precisely because it does not have a singular meaning. This intellectual plurality is fundamentally democratic, but if we enjoy these aspects of teaching today, it is thanks to the work of thinkers like Barthes and Foucault, despite their suspiciously foreign-sounding names and arrogantly intellectual phrasing.
Patrick mentions Mark Twain in California as an example of useful biographical information. Barthes, an extremely careful and knowledgeable scholar, and Foucault, an historian, would most likely not dispute the importance of this background. But Patrick blithely slides past the difficulty: what does it mean for Twain to be in California, and what does this tell about his writing? Whatever meanings come out of such a worthy classroom investigation will, of course, be plural and complexly contradictory, not singular. So who, in the end, is Mark Twain supposed to be if we are confronted with such a rich plurality of interpretive possibilities?
Why don't we, yes we academics and intellectuals, we professional thinkers and downright smart and enthusiastic teachers, why don't we drop this anti-intellectual posturing and ask instead how useful thinkers like Barthes and Foucault can be successfully brought into the classroom instead of finding half-hearted excuses for avoiding this difficult but essential work?
I do not think Pat intended his post as an attack on the groundbreaking philosophical contributions of Barthes and Foucault, but rather on the extent to which - perhaps as an unintended consequence of these contributions - the author and his/her biographical information often get thrown out with the bathwater. Pat, please correct me if I am wrong.