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Whose Text is This? Not Mine, For I Have Died
A text is built more by its readers than its writers
Writing is an act by which authors die and readers come alive. I myself am dying little by little with every letter typed on the keyboard, while simultaneously something in you, reader, is beginning to grow: an idea, or an opinion, that is expanding as your eyes go through the letters of this article.
Roland Barthes was a French essayist, a social and literary critic, and a key figure in the after-war cultural scene, thanks to his theories on linguistics and semiotics, which had been pioneered by Saussure. In 1967, he published “The Death of the Author,” a revolutionary essay, although at the time it was hardly considered as such. With its provoking title, Barthes presented for the first time the idea that readers are much crucial players in the act reading as authors are, if not more. In his words:
Classic criticism has never paid any attention to the reader; for it, the writer is the only person in literature…we know that to give writing its future, it is necessary to overthrow the myth: the birth of the reader must be at the cost of the death of the Author.
In “The Death of the Author,” Barthes brought to the table the question of authorship and ownership, the idea that a text stops belonging to the…
