#The Death of the Author

[thirdity]

The reader is the space on which all the quotations that make up a writing are inscribed without any of them being lost; a text's unity lies not in its origin but in its destination. 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.

Roland Barthes, "The Death of the Author"

[fishyyyyy99]

"But regardless of intention, the author is dead and the text is subject to interpretation on its own merits."

I just read this on Reddit in the context of someone talking about a specific show, but I just felt like putting it out there, because it applies to all TV shows, movies, books, etc.

[flightfoot]

ChatGPT produced material embodies the concept of "Death of the Author" in its purest form

I've heard "Death of the Author" invoked many times throughout my years, but I had never actually read the essay that created the term and laid out how the concept worked before. I did so recently, as well as an analysis of that essay, which I will also reference because Roland Barthes original essay (well, translated essay, the original is in French) on "The Death of the Author" is an impenetrable mass of purple prose which can be very hard to follow, despite the essay's short word count of just over 2000 words.

If you wish to read it for yourself, here's a link to a pdf of the Death of the Author essay.

Basically the idea is that authors aren't really creators at all, but instead merely regurgitate and string together already existing writing, that "scriptor" would be a better term in fact.

The Author, when we believe in him, is always conceived as the past of his own book: the book and the author take their places of their own accord on the same line, cast as a before and an after: the Author is supposed to feed the book — that is, he pre-exists it, thinks, suffers, lives for it; he maintains with his work the same relation of antecedence a father maintains with his child. Quite the contrary, the modern writer (scriptor) is born simultaneously with his text; he is in no way supplied with a being which precedes or transcends his writing, he is in no way the subject of which his book is the predicate; there is no other time than that of the utterance, and every text is eternally written here and now.

and as the essay puts it later on:

We know that a text does not consist of a line of words, releasing a single "theological" meaning (the "message" of the AuthorGod), but is a space of many dimensions, in which are wedded and contested various kinds of writing, no one of which is original: the text is a tissue of citations, resulting from the thousand sources of culture. Like Bouvard and Pecuchet, those eternal copyists, both sublime and comical and whose profound absurdity precisely designates the truth of writing, the writer can only imitate a gesture forever anterior, never original

Or if you want to read something a little clearer, I like how this essay on filmslie puts it:

The use of the word “quotations” expresses the idea that a text cannot really be “created” or “original”—it is always made up of an arrangement of preexisting “quotations” or ideas. Therefore, the “author” is not really an author, but rather a “scriptor” who simply puts together preexisting texts.

And as it puts it later on:

The death of the Author is the inability to create, produce, or discover any text or idea. The author is a “scriptor” who simply collects preexisting quotations. He is not able to create or decide the meaning of his work.  The task of meaning falls “in the destination”—the reader.

As such, the author's actual presence as a person is not required, as the speech they utter, or rather the words they write, exist independently of a person to actually write them. From the Death of the Author essay:

Finally, outside of literature itself (actually, these distinctions are being superseded), linguistics has just furnished the destruction of the Author with a precious analytic instrument by showing that utterance in its entirety is a void process, which functions perfectly without requiring to be filled by the person of the interlocutors: linguistically, the author is never anything more than the man who writes, just as I is no more than the man who says I

Meaning is derived not from what the author intended, as their existence is unneeded, but instead from whatever meaning the reader chooses to impose on what they read.

Doesn't this fit well with what ChatGPT and other AI "writers" do? There is no question after all that they merely copy and string together writing that already exists, creating a "tissue of citations", as Barthe puts it. There is no particular "author" of a work in this case, but merely the tool that strung them together, a "void process" that does not need a mind behind it. The meaning of a piece of writing that ChatGPT produces doesn't lie in anything that it intends, as it has no meaningful intentions to begin with, but is instead given to it by what the reader interprets from it.

ChatGPT and other AI like it make a reality what "The Death of the Author" posits that all writers do. When looking to apply the concept of Death of the Author to a piece of literature, simply pretend for a moment that instead of a human mind behind it, an AI created the work instead, and analyze the work's meaning accordingly.

[remusfinglupin]

January/February wrap-up (and ratings):

- The Cruel Prince (reread): ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️/5

- The Wicked King (reread): ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️/5

- The Queen of Nothing (reread): ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️/5

- How the King of Elfhame Learned to Hate Stories (reread): ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️/5

- The Stolen Heir: ⭐️⭐️⭐️/5

- Ninth House (reread): ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️/5

- Hell Bent: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️/5

- Daisy Jones and the Six: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️/5

- Carrie Soto is Back: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️/5

- The Death of the Author: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️/5

- Cinderella is Dead: ⭐️⭐️⭐️/5

[acelessthan3]

Roland Barthes's famous essay, "The Death of the OP"

[zoonibay]

The discourse around recontextualization

This week's readings were at first glance an odd set of texts to read in succession: there seems to be very little commonality between the verbiage and the age of the Barthes essay and the web blogs around memes and their commercialization. However, as far as the connection between subject matter goes, I think it is equally simple to draw very natural links between them:

I accidentally became a meme: In this video series by Buzzfeed, people behind viral memes are invited to share the stories of their lives before and after their images or videos were uploaded to the internet and became popular as memes. In the particular video shared, Drew Scanlon mentions two specific things which I was drawn to. First, he talks about the delta of time between the actual work being created (when the original video of his reaction was filmed) and when the video finally reached its 'critical mass' on the internet. Next, he also mentions that at one point the popularity of the meme "...felt out of my control". In the context of The Death of The Author, the creator of the video is akin to the author. Just like the author has very little control over the contextualization and appropriation of their work by the readers, Drew has no control over how a global online audience is choosing to repurpose his reaction and amalgamate it with their own content. Similarly, there is no end to the relevance of the creation: it simply has its highs and lows.

Can't Help Myself: In this blog post, the author talks about the her feelings about a post her friend shared, which itself was an observation of the robotic art installation in the Guggenheim titled 'Can't Help Myself'. Objectively, this robot arm performs specific movements and clears up liquid that is spreading around it using sensors. The art installation was exhibited more than once, and recently gained a lot of traction on social media, especially Instagram and TikTok. Interestingly enough, the artists themselves have very different description about their initial ideas, but viewers have projected a human character onto the machine, creating their own powerful story. This blogpost is an excellent timeline documenting how a creation can slowly but surely divorce itself from the creator and exist solely as a figment of the audience's experience.

[psablog]

PSA: Book As Multimedia Interface 'Kill' The Authors and 'Give Birth' To The Readers

By Promise

Partially Powered by Chat GPT

What is a book? What is the definition of a book? The answer can vary as technology keeps challenging the conventional idea of a book. It does not have to be physical; it can be audio and electronic stored in the “cloud.” Our electronic devices allow us to access books from different formats and media easily. Amaranth Borsuk, an American poet and scholar, is curious about the evolution of books, and she wonders how books as interfaces will lead us in the future. Borsuk, therefore, wrote The Book to explore the book's history, technology, and future as a physical and conceptual object. The Book itself is a physical representation of this exploration, with its pages containing a mix of traditional printed text, digital images, and interactive elements such as pop-up pages and QR codes that link to online content. The Book is divided into five sections, each of which focuses on a different aspect of the book's evolution. These sections cover topics such as the earliest forms of writing, the development of the printing press, the rise of digital media, and the potential future of the book in an age of rapidly advancing technology. 

The last chapter of Amaranth Borsuk's The Book, titled Colophon or Incipit, is a reflection on the book as a physical object and the role that it plays in our lives and culture. The title of the chapter refers to two traditional elements of a book: the colophon, which is a statement at the end of a book that provides information about the book's production and publication, and the incipit, which is the opening words or phrase of a text. In this chapter, Borsuk reflects on the many ways in which books have been used throughout history, from sacred texts to works of literature to scientific manuals. She notes that while books have traditionally been associated with authority and permanence, they are also mutable objects that can be transformed by their readers and the contexts in which they are read. Borsuk also considers the future of the book in an age of digital media and explores the ways in which digital technologies are changing the way we interact with texts. She argues that while digital media have certainly had an impact on the way we read and write, the book as a physical object remains an important and valuable part of our cultural heritage. 

Brosuk’s Colophon or Incipit examines the idea of books as interfaces in the future. With technology, readers can now interact with the book with multimedia to enhance the experience of understanding the books’ ideas. As Brosuk points out, “consumers of books have never been passive…both we can the texts we read have bodies, and it is only when they come together that book takes shape” (43). Technology’s flexibility allows readers to interact with books actively more than ever which reminds me of Roland Barthes’s essay The Death of the Author. The essay is a theoretical exploration of the relationship between the author, the reader, and the meaning of a text. He argues that the author's intentions do not solely determine the meaning of a text but rather emerge through a dynamic interaction between the reader and the text. Barthes's essay is a dense, philosophical work that is primarily concerned with ideas and concepts rather than with the physical form of the book itself.

Overall, Both Barthes and Borsuk deal with similar themes related to the meaning and interpretation of literature. Books as multimedia interfaces “kill” the author because “book” or “text” can exist in various formats of multimedia for readers or consumers to enjoy. Consumers interact with “text” differently; therefore, the meaning of the “text” vary depending on how consumer interact with multimedia which further prove Barthes’s theory of “the death of the authors,” it can also interpret as the birth of the readers or consumers. 

Works Cited:

Borsuk, Amaranth. The Book, MIT Press, 2018. ProQuest Ebook Central,https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/west/detail.action?docID=5376610.

Barthes, Roland. “The Death of the Author.” Image, Music, Text, translated by Stephen Heath, Hill and Wang, 1977, pp. 142–48.

[biglisbonnews]

A romance author allegedly faked her own suicide to boost book sales I saw this tweet going around the other day: Author Susan Meachen died from suicide 2 years ago. Except it turns out she didn't. What an absolute piece of shit #authors #MentalHealthMatters pic.twitter.com/nNU0LCEU3i— Be a lot cooler if you did 💫🌪💫 (@Draggerofliars) January 4, 2023 And immediately thought "wait what?!" — Read the rest https://boingboing.net/2023/01/09/a-romance-author-allegedly-faked-her-own-suicide-to-boost-book-sales.html

[prokopetz]

Folks act like "maybe the author isn't the final authority about what their work means" is some wanky post-modern nonsense and not a simple recognition that a lot of authors are perfectly prepared to bullshit about their own work. Like, leaving big-name popular media aside, I have personally encountered authors being actively disingenuous about their own work for all of the following reasons:

A true answer wouldn't fit the image they've cultivated.

They've decided they like the explanation the readers/viewers have come up with better than what they actually had in mind.

Something that was originally intended as a standalone work ended up growing into a franchise or series, and now they're pretending that was the plan all along for some reason.

They don't want to admit that the bit you're asking about is genuinely just a plot hole.

The real answer gets into some shit they don't care to discuss, so they've prepared a cover story to explain away the parts they don't want to talk about.

Their politics have changed since they wrote it, but they don't want to acknowledge that, so they're constantly trying to re-interpret everything they've ever written to be perfectly consistent with whatever their positions are this week.

They wrote it decades ago and they honestly don't remember what they were thinking at the time, so they're just making shit up; sometimes they also don't remember what shit they made up the last time, so the answer is different every time they're asked.

The work in question is at least partly autobiographical and they can't tell the truth without confessing to a crime in the process.

Most of the good bits are plagiarised and they don't really understand it themselves.

They're lying to you on purpose, for evil reasons.

[throesofincreasingwonder]

"A story doesn't need a theme in order to be good" I'm only saying this once but a theme isn't some secret coded message an author weaves into a piece so that your English teacher can talk about Death or Family. A theme is a summary of an idea in the work. If the story is "Susan went grocery shopping and saw a weird bird" then it might have themes like 'birds don't belong in grocery stores' or 'nature is interesting and worth paying attention to' or 'small things can be worth hearing about.' Those could be the themes of the work. It doesn't matter if the author intended them or not, because reading is collaborative and the text gets its meaning from the reader (this is what "death of the author" means).

Every work has themes in it, and not just the ones your teachers made you read in high school. Stories that are bad or clearly not intended to have deep messages still have themes. It is inherent in being a story. All stories have themes, even if those themes are shallow, because stories are sentences connected together for the purpose of expressing ideas, and ideas are all that themes are.

[rs-hawk]

Working on my novel and couldn’t figure out why it felt so empty. I didn’t have any filler. It was all 100% plot. The characters only interacted when necessary. I didn’t prattle on about the scenery or how the birds sounded. I had all my fuller stuff that I loved saved in another file because I “didn’t need it”.

Y’all, I knew this existed in TV shows but it didn’t hit me until this that everything is being whittled down. We are so starving for filler that we snap up anything. I unload all mine on Tumblr or keep it in a massive Google Docs. It SUCKS.

Honestly? Death to plot necessity. Revive filler. Revive unnecessary interactions. Revive just vibing with characters sometimes. I don’t want to just consume the plot and I don’t want to just create the plot either.

[thirdity]

The modern writer (scriptor) is born simultaneously with his text; he is in no way supplied with a being which precedes or transcends his writing, he is in no way the subject of which his book is the predicate; there is no other time than that of the utterance, and every text is eternally written here and now.

Roland Barthes, "The Death of the Author"

[neil-gaiman]

I told my mother you had Tumblr and the absolute shock she was in that you are still alive and of somewhat sound mind was hilarious, would you be able to just tell her you are alive and not super old?

If not that's totally okay, ik you probably get a ton of these :)

I am sorry, but I fear I must disappoint you, for when you reach my advanced age it is difficult to remember whether you are alive or not.

[galaghiel]

Both Jack and Maddie stared at him, speechless. Silence blanketed the lab, everything but Danny’s strangled crying, his hand pressed over the muzzle as if to hide it. No- to hold it still, to still the dozen wicked barbs that were digging into his tongue, probably ripping it with each sob.

a little sketch of @liketolaugh-writes amazing one-shot fanfic that you can read here

[harbingerofsoup]

there’s death of the author and then there’s whatever the fuck is up with danny phantom

[wayward-hums]

For instance: recent studies on PTS have presented, that the diagnosed subjects show a significant difference in volume of hippocampus and amygdala. To me, this clearly indicates that those misdiagnosed with disorders of thought and affect, despite of showing signs of a psychotic breakdown, being administered medicines, must have turned out resilient to all treatment. It may take years, decades, until specialists realise the ‘worst’ option - I apologise for the bias - as it appears plausible that ‘the sufferers' (recent statistics: 1 out of 16-17 people last time I checked) aren’t really as mentally disordered as they are, I’d say, “idiosyncratically ‘retarded’".

The study of philosophy came next, as psychiatry could not bring satisfactory answers at all. 

Thankfully, a significant amount of philosophical content, was already familiar to me, since the field of linguistics is concurrently linked to the studies on being. As the constructs described by psychiatry form a system of a written law, a set of rules, a guide into productivity, that is subsequently organised within an already existing foundation, it can be deconstructed with ease. However, the issue of ‘I’ - has always been problematic, even to the wisest of madmen - ever since an animal became self aware. As psychiatry fails to explain the very root of human error, one has to venture a wee bit further - just like with anything else really - to the very source of its existence. A psychotic episode could constitute a breakthrough…: surely - the mind gets lost, and the road that leads to its retrieval is immensely unwelcoming and unsightly - nevertheless, the wisdom given by insanity from within and from without is served freely, imposed forcibly within the flow, and exchanged automatically, as the societal 'soap bubble’, or the personal ‘wall’, depending on circumstance, vanishes. The ‘traps’ left by those in doubt who were before are stumbled upon throughout further discovery. They are there to remind that we are all human, despite of it all. And most, I reckon, have to start alike: “why am I, I?”, (so many get stuck at the hyperreal red stop of monkeys in the pale moonlight, or venturing further back, get mesmerised by lizards baking in the sun), to know how it goes. It is easier now to get out of these ‘traps’, though - from sinking into the realms of religious dogmas, or being lured into the Oedipal net, into a state of organised confusion, where enslaved with a vision of the fulfillment of desires designed externally “for you” one ceases becoming, to finding self at the dead-ends of internally hidden holes of solipsism, or - on the contrary - being locked in the anxious file cabinet of radical materialism… - as those in doubt who were before us, were there too, all human, after all; some of them wrote passages of their labored release from own past inclinations that signify the prevailing nature of some profound dream we are all, seemingly, after. Hence, as long as question is posed, there’s a chance the doors of endless possibilities have been unlocked already, and with each and every one originating from the exact same source, some were friendly enough to leave the copy of their copy of the key behind them. 

What would I like you to think of me?

Know that I am

What do I think of us? 

We come so anxious and worried about the hostility of the environment; the malice of sharp smiles and beady eyes is upon us. We've felt... We continuously feel heavy pain in our heart. Our chest is growing an evil lotus flower of pastel slime that bursts intensively out of our solar plexus. The only thing still intact is our spirit, and although its walls are being pricked constantly, we don't panic. On the outside of itself, people seem hostile. We sense danger. We feel too vulnerable, our sternum holds an invisible metal screw that is receding persistently, whilst our momentum is ebbing within it the entire time, as if we existed in the applied reality only as a heavy metal body, and the rest wasn't here anymore. People are looking at us with drone empty eyes, without any glimpse of selfhood, and the demons are standing still. Our belief is that people constitute a myriad of components that form different shades of grey while our strength is determined by how much force we possess to remain decent. It terrifies us, as the reality becomes less and less real and our mind more and more abstract. Life is a state of one's mind... Such state can be heavily affected by the environment, by the other. We perceive the hyperreality slowly mesmerising us into an anxious insignificant suit asking us to join the oblivion where nothing resides, where we are (not) in a way, already.

What do I think of you? 

Sounds are essential, you know. The youth is - in fact - the key to salvation. I'm writing this to you at the age of 40, so I'd like you to think and feel the impossible: “escape”. The older you’ll get the more gradual the change will become, you will learn to defragment self, believe me, you will overcome self, you will reinvent self, to the point where you'll realise viscerally and absolutely that there is no self. Outside it is all a matter of libidinal force. One fine day your happy bubble’s gonna pop. They will start picking, and you're fragile, they will poke accordingly with their (dis) order, their musick (sick). You will start raising above, higher and higher due to your resistance, and if you’re strong you will prevail alive. The more you’ll resist, the higher you will get, there lies a  issue ahead, never the less - you can’t escape societal gender binary no matter what you are, my little tree, my flower, my transgender love, my queer, my unique "transcendered". Let’s face it now - you’re fucked, fucked up, fucked over, and god help you if you just want to get off… At this point you are scared - it seems to you that the sound became a subconscious feeling on the move to find you: sharp teeth, crooked smiles, shiny eyes of beasts start reflecting your essence. Terror of the other, so remote from you out there, resisting to the further borders of sanity. 

Now stop, and read me this: You’ve reached a channel you will surely fall from. My assumption is that your blooming understanding of violet makes you tread very carefully. As above so below.

So what do I think you should do with all this?

The only thing you should do, you should punch a Nazi

For poetic reasons.

All is transient, everything is temporary, you're capable of the personal flow, just know that you are, and everything else will unfold by itself, try not to try, accept setbacks, sit tight, and brace yourself in the face of the great annihilator and the absolute signifier, we are all scared shitless, we are in this together you and me. I hope my poetry isn't pure shite and you will find something wee for yourself within it so without further ado: