The Iowa Review
Volume 17
Issue 1 Winter
1987
Morte D'Author: An Autopsy
Harvey Hix
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Hix, Harvey. "Morte D'Author: An Autopsy." The Iowa Review 17.1 (1987): 131-150. Web.
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Article 39
An Autopsy
Morte D'Author:
Harvey Hix
"it would
IN 1968, ROLAND
a manner
radically
Barthes'
authors
proclaimed the death of the author in
of the death of God.
proclamation
are
two
the
notwithstanding,
proclamations
in nature. Nietzsche's
is an obituary;
different
proclamation
an
one
a
at
is suicide note, and
that, for "this enemy of
enigmatic
reminiscent
similarities
Yet,
BARTHES
be enough for me to know
who is writing this"
?
W. S. Merwin
is himself
reveal a personal
Barthes, himself
of Nietzsche's
in manner
an author, awriter whose
varied products
preeminently
is worse
than the fact that
style and vision."1 And what
an author,
it in writing.
proclaimed
from
far
universal;
ingly,
the death of the author, is that he
proclaimed
to Barthes' claim has been, not surpris
Assent
however,
in recent years increasing
to describe.
it attempts
been given to the phenomenon
In the investigation
of any mysterious
the positive
identification
left out of the investigation
as well
cluding Barthes himself
mally
been
death,
attention
has
one of the first steps is nor
Yet this step seems to have
of the body.
of the death of the author.
No one (in
seems to be sure who
as his
detractors)
died. For this reason, I shall attempt in this paper to perform an autopsy in
I shall examine the author's corpse with a special
both senses of the word.2
concern to establish its
identity, and I shall study the event of the author's
texts relevant to it.
death by analyzing
Barthes only hints at the history of the author; he says that the "author
our
as it discovered
is amodern figure" which
society produced
(under the
and the Reformation)
French rationalism,
influence of British empiricism,
Foucault gives a slightly fuller ac
"the prestige of the individual."3 Michel
two features of the
count
Is an Author?"
in his essay "What
noting
author's history. First, in apparent agreement with Barthes' characteriza
tion of the author as "the epitome and culmination
of capitalist ideology"
(p. 143),
it was
Foucault
says:
at the moment
when
a system
of ownership
and strict copy
right ruleswere established (toward the end of the eighteenth and
131
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that the transgressive
of the nineteenth
prop
century)
beginning
the forceful im
erties always intrinsic to the act of writing
became
of literature.4
perative
intrinsic
The
transgressive
properties
of writing
result from
its being
"an
action situated in a bipolar field of sacred and profane, lawful and
came to be con
and blasphemous"
(p. 124). It only
or
to be
real authors"
instead of
sidered a product
"assigned
possession
or
"the author became subject to punish
religious figures when
mythical
feature
Foucault points out is that the role of
ment"
The
second
(p. 124).
we now call "scientific"
texts
the author has changed over time. What
were
if
in
truthful
sanctioned
considered
the
Middle
were,
Ages, only
they
unlawful,
religious
of an author;
name
by the
in the seventeenth
and
this changed
however,
came
so
texts
to
to
be
that these
Foucault,
according
centuries,
on their own merits."
eighteenth
"accepted
On
were once
accepted without
"literary"
then the attitude toward literary texts
the other
hand,
texts we
now
call
concern
shifted
for the author's identity;
"
'literary' discourse
name" (pp. 125-26).
so that
it carried an author's
acceptable only if
are
then the
If Barthes and Foucault
right about the author's history,
about his or her
fact that the author is a modern
figure raises questions
as
as
in
about whether
well
historical
movements,
questions
larger
place
a result of the decline of the historical
the death of the author is not merely
factors that created her or him. But the history of the author is not the
was
main
essay.
concern
nor will
or Foucault,
it be my concern
in this
the history of the author only in order to further my
are interested
the author, just as Barthes and Foucault
insofar as it points to the fact that "in our day, literary
of Barthes
Iwill mention
attempt to identify
in this history only
are
of the author" (Foucault,
works
by the sovereignty
totally dominated
this his first real criticism. After only an introduc
p. 126). Barthes makes
he says:
and brief hints at the author's history,
tory paragraph
The
author
writers,
of
still
interviews,
letters
anxious
in histories
of
biographies
as in the very consciousness
of men
magazines,
to unite
and their work
their person
through
The image of literature to be found in ordinary
reigns
of
literature,
diaries
and memoirs.
culture
is tyrannically
centered on the author,
...
his passions
(p. 143)
tastes,
132
his person,
his life, his
The attempt to dethrone the author, though, is hardly new with Barthes.
It is easy to find examples of this project inmany earlier twentieth-century
critics. For instance, T. S. Eliot said, "The progress of an artist is a con
tinual
a continual
self-sacrifice,
Critics,
the "intentional
extinction
fallacy"
Criticism:
of
says in Anatomy
To the New
of personality."5
sin. And Northrop
Frye
a mortal
was
that the
formula of criticism,
the assertion
quantum
a
to
out"
of
should confine himself
poem exactly what
"getting
the poet may vaguely be assumed to have been aware of "putting
in,"
one
is
of the many
slovenly illiteracies that the absence of systematic
The
absurd
critic
criticism
to grow up. This quantum
theory
may be called the fallacy of premature
has allowed
ary form of what
How,
is Barthes'
then,
different
of the death
proclamation
as
statements
T.
these? Gregory
such
from
one way
in which
tention "in order
on
Barthes
most
is different:
to ensure
the correct
of
is the liter
teleology.6
the author
Polletta
critics
any
points out
authorial in
expelled
of literary works.
interpretation
in
intention
the author's declared
hand, excludes
control or interpretative
order to release the text from any authoritarian
we can isolate any further differences or evaluate
Before
circumscription."7
to decide just who
the author is.
Barthes'
claim, it will be necessary
Barthes,
the other
to have
the author seems to have been credited with
Traditionally,
(and
the source of the work
taken credit for) two primary functions:
being
the
work flows. Any random survey of
and/or the channel through which
literature will
the
confirm
invocation.
function.
The
The Odyssey
Tell me, Muse,
far journeys,
this, and it is especially easy to see in the tradition of
and Odyssey
the channel
strongly
emphasize
Iliad
begins:
of the man
after he had
of many ways, who was driven
sacred citadel.
sacked Troy's
From
here,
goddess,
daughter
of Zeus,
speak,
some
point
and begin
our
story.8
It is not surprising to find the bard claiming such a role in an oral tradition,
even in
not only in
the story comes almost "ready-made,"
where
plot but
133
the formulae
which
are the basic units
to the
Metamorphoses,
though,
of composition.
the author
emphasizes
Ovid's
invocation
as source:
My intention is to tell of bodies changed
To
Will
That
these changes,
forms; the gods, who made
a poem
me?or
I
so?with
hope
help
runs from the world's
to our own
days.9
beginning
different
it is the poet who
is doing the telling. The gods are only helpers; the
sure
not
even
of their help, and capable of writing with or without
poet is
the roles are more equal: Chaucer
Troilus and
them. In Chaucer's
Criseyde,
as his
but he also seems to need the help of
takes the poem
project,
Here
Thesiphone.
I have intentionally
about the purpose of the invoca
avoided questions
it seems fair to say that, regardless of its role within
the poem,
of the author as source and as
still points to the conception
the invocation
tion because
channel.10
there are other questions
But
cannot
which
be avoided.
For ex
ample, is thebard really the author of theOdyssey? IsChaucer himself really
or has he created a
account for the
persona? To
Thesiphone,
as these, and to evaluate
raised
such
questions
by
properly "the
problems
one
a
model of the author is necessary,
which
tradi
death of the author,"
tion will not supply.
the model
of the author I propose.
The following
diagram represents
calling
on
scribe
'real" //
/
/
/
/
/
"fictional"
/
poet
proxy
x =
source
= channel
y
'creative"
/
/
/ "created"
narrator
134
axis
axis
and narrator
The
poet, scribe, proxy,
entities
and are differential
in Saussure's
are four
"aspects" of the author,
sense. That is,
are "defined
they
not
content but negatively
the
by their relations with
by their positive
is in being
other terms of the system. Their most precise characteristic
are
not
In
it
not."11
that
be
all four as
the
others
what
may
any given text,
are present, or itmay be that two of the aspects are in
pects of the author
distinguishable
stance, the poet
son at all. With
imate definitions
tween
The
text. It may also be the case that, for in
regards that
and scribe are different people or that the poet is not a per
in mind,
let me offer some approx
those qualifications
as
and then some examples
the four aspects.
poet is the person
to whom
to
the work
help clarify
the differences
is attributed.
be
I use the word
the poet is most
often the person given
poet because of its etymology;
credit for having made the work. The poet is the person who carries (and
It should be pointed out that, although
for
lends to the work)
authority.
I refer to the poet as a person,
the poet (as men
the sake of convenience
in some cases will not be a
tioned above, and as the examples will
show)
is
the
historical
the work.
The
scribe
down
person who wrote
person.
aspects of the author, and they are usually
to fictional
"real" people as compared
people.
or
"fictional"
The two "created"
aspects of the author are the narrator
These
are the two
"creative"
critics have long been aware, is
and the proxy. The narrator, of whom
sometimes
referred to as the persona. The narrator is a character in the
is most visible and also closest to the scribe and poet in a nar
and
work,
in the first person. The proxy is what Foucault describes
as an
he says: "these [facets] of an individual, which we designate
an individual
as
are
in
author (or which
projections,
comprise
author),
terms always more or less psychological,
texts."12
of our ways of handling
In other words,
when we
ascribe motivations,
etc., to an
intentions,
so
on
can
as
we
of
the
basis
the
do
author
author,
only
presented by the
author (the poet or scribe), who
text, not on the basis of the historical
is,
rative written
when
at least as regards the text, lost to us forever.13 Thus,
is the
the proxy
of text and reader.
"author" as created by the interaction
to
A few examples
should help
between
the poet,
scribe,
distinguish
demonstrate
the
of
and
and
should
usefulness
this
model
narrator,
proxy,
of the author. Homer,
for instance, has been a problematic
we mean when we refer to Homer? Milman
Whom
do
ship.
case of author
Parry showed
135
were
that the Iliad and
composed
orally, and since
Odyssey
consensus
seems
to be that the Iliad and
were
then the scholarly
Odyssey
same person, nor was either poem written
not
the
down
composed by
by
in the 1930s
it.14What
is more,
the fact that the
(or bards) who
composed
were
made
almost
from
formulae garnered from the long
poems
entirely
oral tradition blurs the distinction
between
the composition
of the poems
the bard
and the performance
of them. It is clear that the author/text
relationship
in the Homeric
into the "naive"
poems is not simple, nor does it fit well
idea of authorship. And while
the model of the author I propose does not
answer
does
all the questions
about the authorship
it
of the Iliad and
Odyssey,
at least give us an
the complex
author/
improved way of describing
text
relationship.
Since the composition
of the poems appears to have been distinct from
can
we
as the poet, and the
of them,15
the writing
speak of the composer
as the scribe. In this instance, the poet could be said to include not
writer
only the bard (or bards) who
composed the poems, but the tradition
the story and the formulae from which
the poems were
provided
case the
almost wholly
composed. One could, of course, include in every
awork arises as a part of what
I am calling the poet.
tradition out of which
to avoid that on
I want
and include the
However,
pragmatic
grounds,
which
of a work
tradition
as an aspect
of its author
in only this and equally
for including
the tradition here and
cases. My only justification
sense in which
it elsewhere
is the intuitive
the Homeric
excluding
is more
tradition
linked to the creation of the poems
immediately
unusual
oral
than,
say, the pastoral tradition is to Lycidas. The Iliad and Odyssey
apparently
a
in much
in which
the same condition
reached their respective composers
crew
for final assembly. The
house reaches the construction
pre-fabricated
were
in recognizable
units which
already
simply fitted
In this sense, the
the Iliad was unable to
together.
composed
bard(s) who
or
Milton
outside
his
her
could
have
chosen to "bewail
while
tradition,
go
a learned Friend" and "foretell
in a
the ruin of our corrrupted Clergy"
mode.16
non-pastoral
poems
were
Though
the role of the scribe (to record
in the case of the Homeric
the poems inwriting)
the scribe is as difficult
is easy to
to locate
poems,
identify
one knows
as the poet. Indeed, the scribe may not be a
single person. No
or
were
the poems
first written.
has centered
when
by whom
Speculation
on the "Pisistratean
136
recension";
this term refers to the "hypothetical
Athe
nian
of
stabilization
Panathenaean
festival
the
text"
of
and under
in connection
the poems
the
the
with
of Pisistratus.17
But
supervision
exact role; no one knows whether
Pisistratus was directly
involved in the process or whether
he only super
or not the first
vised it, and no one knows whether
written
version
official
was
version
Pisistratean
also the first writ
recension)
(the
produced by the
scholars
are unsure
about Pisistratus'
it is best
of any kind. Probably
for our purposes
sense
as
Pisistratus
the scribe, but only in the
that he symbolizes
the
of
down
process
poems.
writing
ten version
Homer
and scribe,
different
for there
to talk of
for us the
is an unusually
clear example
since in the case of Homer
people. However,
to be a distinction
of the distinction
between
the poet
the poet and scribe are at least two
it is not necessary that there be two individuals
between
the poet
and scribe.
For
instance,
Coleridge describes the composition of "Kubla Khan" in the following
way:
The Author
at
in a profound
sleep,
most
time
which
he
has
the
vivid
senses, during
that he could not have composed
less than from two to
continued
for about
three hours
least of the external
confidence,
three hundred lines; if that indeed can be called composition inwhich
all the images rose up before him as things, with a parallel production
of the correspondent
without
any sensation or con
expressions,
sciousness of effort. On awaking he appeared to himself to have a dis
tinct recollection
and taking
of the whole,
wrote
and
down
the lines
instantly
eagerly
was
At this moment
he
called
unfortunately
ness . . . and on return to his room, found
passed
his pen, ink, and paper,
that are here preserved.
a
on busi
out
by person
[that]
...
all the rest had
away.
one individual
is involved,
his state when
he is acting as
Though
only
source is different
as channel for us
enough from his state when he is acting
a clear distinction
to make
between
the poet and the scribe of "Kubla
Any significant change of state will be sufficient to make the same
For instance, Descartes' Conversation with Burman, since it was
distinction.
Khan."
down in its final form four days after the conversation
apparently written
between poet and scribe
itself, seems to be a good example of a distinction
based on scenic change. Burman acts as poet when he visits Descartes
and
137
initiates
the dialogue,
but he does
he visits Clauberg.
when
not
act as scribe until
four days
later
and Burman
of the poet/
clear examples
Coleridge,
provide
But perhaps the clearest example of the proxy/narrator
scribe distinction.
is found in a satire such as Swift's A Modest
distinction
Proposal. Northrop
Homer,
satire "militant
Frye calls
and with
"standards
clear moral norms,
irony," that is, irony with
are
the grotesque
and absurd
against which
maintain
says that irony can consistently
on
content"
and "the suppression
of attitude
He
measured."
ism of
author."
satire "demands
However,
at least a token
as grotesque,
the reader recognizes
standard." Frye concludes
that satire
which
breaks
down when
of
maintaining
irony which
double
focus
a content
fantasy,
and at least an implicit moral
its content
the fantastic
is structurally
one normal
societies,
two
real
"complete
the part of the
of morality
is too oppressively
real to permit the
tone. Hence
satire is
hypothetical
close to the comic: the comic struggle of
or
and the other
absurd,
is reflected
in its
and fantasy.18
two societies" could also be thought of as a
"struggle of
struggle of
a
in two
levels of awareness,
has been described
struggle which
is to refer to irony as "the narrowness
of a
different ways. The first way
as
more
inclusive vision shared by author
character's vision
revealed by the
This
two
second way is to accord the user of ironical language "an
of irony that is not necessarily
less complex
than our own."
awareness of contrarities
a
con
Here "irony is a simultaneous
by
single
a
to
sciousness.19 The first way,
Everett Zimmerman,
is charac
according
and reader." The
awareness
the narrator "a
teristic way of explaining
and makes
irony in narrative,
character in a tale that defines him"; the second is a characteristic way of
and makes
the narrator "an authorial figure
irony in polemic,
explaining
who
defines
the tale."20
On my model of the author, though, both of theseways of describing
are
in the nar
captured
on a dis
to
this model, works
distinction.
Satire, according
rator/proxy
the level of awareness of the narrator and that of the proxy,
parity between
the
whose
struggle
level of awareness
incorporate
138
between
Zimmerman's
two
levels of awareness
to that of the reader. The model can
is equivalent
of irony ifwe take the narrator
first explanation
Ifwe take the narrator and proxy as the
and proxy as distinct
individuals.
same individual,
another (or others) in the first instance and
impersonating
as her- or himself in the next, then we have Zimmerman's
second explana
tion. We get, that is, "an image of Swift, sitting with his fellow wits in an
Augustan
drawing
while
simultaneously
room
. . . and
carrying
The "personating"
is the proxy.
their absurdities."21
Swift
menting
My model works
rator is the "I" who
a
[aWotton,
etc.],
Bentley,
. . .
on
running commentary
Swift is the narrator and the com
personating
on an ironic
like this. The nar
Proposal something
the proposal,
and the effect of the work depends
to be sincere. As Frye puts it: "one is almost led
out inA Modest
offers
on his
being naive enough
even humane; yet that
to feel that the narrator is not
only reasonable but
'almost' can never drop out of any sane man's reaction, and as long as it re
mains
It
proposal will be both fantastic and immoral."22
creates the proxy, for though the narrator must be
is the "almost" which
no sane person would
sincere for the piece to work,
believe the "author"
to be sincere. And this "author" who
is neither naive nor without
ironic
there the modest
intent
is the proxy.23
as separate individuals;
narrator and proxy do not
the first
begin
a
out the problem at hand,
two paragraphs
problem both narrator and
lay
are
sentence
it is suggested
But
last
the
concerned
with.
proxy
by
(when
The
that whoever
could find away to make the children of poor people an asset
should "have his statue set up for a preserver of the
to the commonwealth
the author has put his tongue in his cheek by identifying with
nation"),
that great ironist Socrates. By the time the heart of the proposal is reached,
of course,
the narrator and proxy are completely
separate. The narrator
at a year old is "a most
child
relates his discovery
that a young,
healthy
the proxy by his very
and
wholesome
food," while
delicious,
nourishing,
absence
lends
The model
to this discovery
its heavy satire.
of the author I propose is also effective
on such unusual
cases
of Heraclitus
of authorship as the pre-Socratic philosophers.
The fragments
are a
and will help in demonstrating
the usefulness
of this
good example,
our
case
terms.
in
its
main
In
four
model
and
the
of
concepts of
refining
seem
rather than one. Heraclitus
poets,
to him.
is the first, since all our sources attribute
himself
the fragments
"
me
not
to
to the
It
But one of the fragments
is
but
wise,
says,
listening
seems to be
to agree that all things are one."24 The implication
[logos],
Heraclitus,
there
to be
two
139
is their agreement with
their authority
words
gives Heraclitus'
of
the authority
behind
the logos, so that the logos is the authority
case
a
In other words,
the logos is second poet.25 IfHeraclitus'
Heraclitus.
is unusual for having an auxiliary poet, then it ismore unusual for having
at least 28 different hands recorded one or
scribes: apparently
multiple
a
more of the
all the pre-Socratics
share;
fragments. This is feature which
recorded
available for them are groups of fragments
the only extant works
by various scribes.
that what
interesting
By far the most
is the proxy, who
Heraclitus
tool. Not only is he created
of
aspect of the authorship of the fragments
as
an
most
is also the
important
interpretive
case with
as is
the
the
the
text,
always
by
the proxy himself helps to create the
proxy, but in the case of Heraclitus
are tested for
text by being one of the standards against which fragments
of
of his own method
careful elucidation
Charles Kahn's
authenticity.
He makes use of two funda
reading Heraclitus will help make this clear.26
resonance and
His definition
of these
mental
linguistic density.
principles,
at
terms is worth
quoting
length:
By linguisticdensity Imean the phenomenon by which amultiplicity
in a single word or phrase. By resonance Imean
of ideas are expressed
or
a
a
between
single verbal theme
fragments by which
relationship
one text to another
in such a way
that the
image is echoed from
are
understood
of each is enriched when
together.
they
meaning
resonance
are
is one
two principles
formally complementary:
for the density of any particular
factor making
text; and conversely,
is possible and
it is because of the density of the text that resonance
more
can
be
This complementarity
precisely expressed
meaningful.
in terms of'sign'
and 'signified,' if by sign we mean the individual oc
currence of aword or
in a
text, and by signified we
phrase
particular
mean an idea, image, or verbal theme that may appear in different
These
texts. Then
fied; while
and a single
is a one-many
density
resonance
is a many-one
relation
relation
between
between
sign and signi
texts
different
or theme.27
image
of iden
says, "taken together with
explicit statements
.
.
.
will serve to link together all the major themes of
tity and connection
of connected
into a single network
discourse
Heraclitus'
thoughts"
Resonance,
140
Kahn
of any one fragment "essen
density makes the meaning
(p. 90). Linguistic
the fragment mean
and complex"
(p. 91); that is, itmakes
tially multiple
ambiguous.
the proxy enters as an interpretive
tool, for Kahn
says, "It will
or
to
I think
intentional
of
deliberate
often be convenient
ambiguity.
speak
as
as it is
are harmless
and justified,
these expressions
clearly
long
no
evidence for imputing
external biographical
that there is
understood
ingfully
Here
to Heraclitus"
such intentions
(p. 91).
it is harmless
In other words,
and
justified to speak of deliberate or intentional ambiguity as long as it is
that
understood
the reference
is to the intention
of
the proxy,
not
the
poet.
results in "a prose
assumptions
as 'the obscure'
reputation
fully justifies Heraclitus'
(ho sko
a
a
not
at
such
proxy
stop
creating
reading does
teinos)" (p. 95). However,
it also forces him to live up to it. For instance, Kahn
this reputation;
with
Reading
style which
the fragments
with
Kahn's
same rivers, other and
to
gives primacy
fragment L, "As they step into the
still other waters flow upon them," instead of its more celebrated counter
same river," because the former is
part, "one cannot step twice into the
on
statement
is unmistakably
river
Heracli
the
whose wording
"the only
on
Kahn first
tean" (p. 167). Then,
commenting
fragment CXVII,28
comment:
notes its
this
"The absence
length and clarity, and then makes
in this text might
of anything enigmatic
were
not
if different
ticity,
portions
almost
cast doubt
on its authen
cited by good
and independent
in Origen)"
(p. 266). The proxy has
(Clement,
a
for obscurity
that he is able to
and ambiguity
such
reputation
developed
sources doubtful
text not backed by dependable
render any unambiguous
sources
and Celsus
account of the
he does just that to a doxographical
of the
logos in Sextus Empiricus.29 Kahn says of the "physical identification
or
it is
'common
the circumambient
atmosphere
pneuma" that
logos' with
from
the
and
evidence
that
fragments
by
unsupported
or inauthentic.
this doctrine
And
is also un-Heraclitean
in its unambiguous
precision:
it
states a psychophysical theorywhich happens to be false, but which
some
ancients
believed
to be true. But
it preserves
Heraclitus'
resonance and
that make
poetic
density
on
for a modern
sleep profoundly
meaningful
longer take seriously the ancient theory stated
no hint
own
of that
statements
reader, who
can no
in the commentary,
(p. 295)
141
It seems,
then, that Kahn and the fragments have created
not
could
have merely
stated with "unambiguous
precision"
to be false and no
known
longer "profoundly
meaningful
reader." In this way
the proxy is not merely
shaped by the
to
it
helps
simultaneously.
shape
With
a proxy who
a
now
theory
for a modern
text but
also
hismodel of the author inmind, itwill now be possible to under
our autopsy, an examination
of texts relevant to the
leg of
of the author. Iwill focus on Barthes' "The Death
of the Author"
take the second
death
andWilliam
hope
author
Gass'
to show
response
that Barthes'
to that work
fundamental
in an essay by the same name.301
project is to sever the "creative"
(the poet and scribe) from the "created" author
to reestablish
Gass attempts
while
their unity.
rator),
Barthes is rebelling against amodel of reading which
to
the
pre-Socratic
search
for
the
arche. Aristotle
(the proxy
and nar
could be compared
says the earliest
philosophers sought a singlematerial principle, "that of which all things
come to be, the last into which
that are consist,
the first from which
they
are resolved." This
is the source of all things, and is always
they
principle
conserved.31
the first step toward understanding
is to
the world
Thus,
locate this principle. Criticism
has often taken the author to be similar to
the arche not only
conserved
being
in the sense of being the source of the work,
but also as
in it. Barthes,
it
in
makes
clear
the first
though,
of "The Death of the Author"
that he is out to show that the
paragraph
author is not
conserved
in the text,
tion of every voice,
posite,
of every point
space where our
oblique
is lost, starting with
identity
The
word
"writing"
(p. 142).
for he says, "Writing
is the destruc
of origin. Writing
is that neutral, com
all
subject slips away, the negative where
the very identity of the body writing"
appears three times in this passage, and in
instances it is not clear whether
Barthes means by "writing"
or
act of writing,
is
the
written.
The
word appears throughout
a)
b) what
the essay, and it appears with both meanings.
seems to concenrate
on the first
In the first part of the essay, Barthes
the first two
He mentions
several writers who have tried to loosen "the sway
meaning.
of the Author,"
who, Barthes says, recognized
beginning with Mallarm?,
not the author"
that "it is language which
speaks,
(p. 143). The reference
to reach
is to the act of writing,
"to write
for Barthes continues,
is ...
"
not
'me'
that point where
and
only language acts, 'performs,'
(p. 143).
Barthes cites as further examples Val?ry and Proust,
Sur
then mentions
142
which
Author
tations
with
to the desacrilization
image of the
of expec
the abrupt disappointment
by ceaselessly recommending
of meaning
famous
surrealist
the hand
(the
'jolt'), by entrusting
realism,
"contributed
the task of writing
unaware
of
as quickly as possible what
the
the head itself is
is on
the act of writing.
Here,
(p. 144). Again,
to shift. Barthes says that modern
the
focus
begins
though,
linguistics has
of enunciation
is an empty process,
shown that "the whole
functioning
of"
the focus
there being any need for it to be filledwith the person of
perfectly without
takes this to mean
that the
(p. 145). Barthes
actor. The author is no
from
the
"the
past of
separated
longer
is different;
of writing
book." The temporality
"every text is
is free to conflate
written
that Barthes
here and now." This means
the interlocutors"
action
is
his own
eternally
writing
(act) andwriting (what iswritten); there isno longer any difference. And,
more
can write,
not
it means
for Barthes,
that only writings
importantly
to counter the ones
authors. The author's "only power is to mix writings,
.
.
.
can
others"
with
know no halt: life never
"writing
(p. 146). Now
does more
than
is only a tissue of
that is lost, infinitely deferred"
shift
(p. 147). Barthes'
now
can no
is
of the word
"writing"
complete:
"writing
an
of
'de
notation,
operation
representation,
recording,
imitate
the book,
and the book
itself
an imitation
signs,
of the meaning
longer designate
piction' (as the Classics would say)" (p. 145); instead, it should supplant
the world
Now
Barthes'
"literature"
(p. 147).
Polletta's
statement,
Gregory
quoted
"death of the author" differs from other
how
explaining
to
the
dethrone
attempts
con
the text "from any authoritarian
above,
author, is clearer. Barthes releases
into the hands of
trol" by releasing it from the hands of the "Author-God"
the reader, and he relegates the author to the rank of "scriptor." He says:
In the multiplicity
nothing
deciphered;
thread of a stocking)
of writing,
the structure
is to be
everything
disentangled,
can be followed,
'run' (like the
at every
at every level, but there is
point and
is to be ranged over, not
the space of writing
beneath:
nothing
to evaporate it.
pierced; writing
ceaselessly posits meaning
ceaselessly
(p. 147)
the text was a cloth to be unraveled by the reader; if the cloth
Previously,
were unwound
the reader would
find the author holding
all the way,
the
143
other
the text into a shroud,
end. But Barthes makes
and no one, not even
a corpse,
is holding
the other end. The Author-God
has not been resur
or
terms
In
he
she
has
of
of the
rected;
my model
simply disappeared.
author, Barthes completely
separates the two "real" aspects of the author
two "fictional"
from
and
the
aspects (the proxy and nar
scribe)
(the poet
rator). More
importantly,
though (and this iswhat prompts him to speak
of
of the "death
the author"), he says the "real" aspects of the author are
fictional
and the "fictional"
is, he
aspects are the only real ones. That
to the "creative"
author, who has become
any real creative power
more
"never
for Barthes "only a ready-formed
than the in
dictionary,"
stance writing."32
The poet and scribe, to the extent that they are real, are
from the text; only the proxy and narrator remain, and
severed
completely
are at the mercy of the reader.
they
denies
William
Gass,
however,
rejects
this conclusion.
He
affirms
the creative
and attempts to reunite the "creative" and "created"
of the author. Gass begins by criticizing
the comparison
of the
of the author,
power
aspects
death of the authorwith the death of god; not only is there a disanalogy,
are
are the reverse of
he says, but the "two expressions
which
metaphors
one another." The death of
never existed and
that
have
god implies
gods
that belief in god "is no longer even irrationally possible" (p. 3). But the
death
a decline in
in theological
power,
"signifies
authority,
on
of
his
thunderbolts
and
swans,
stripped
perhaps residing
of the author
as if Zeus were
still, but now living in a camper and cooking with propane. He
Olympus
is, but he is no longer a god" (p. 3). Gass quotes John Crowe Ransom's
from an essay about
that "Anonymity,
of some real if
statement,
Lycidas,
not literal sort, is a condition
of poetry,"
and makes
the important point
the overbearing
that "In this case the arrogance,
presence, of the author is
at one with his disappearance" (p. 4). It is the act of writing which is the
"essental
artistic
task," and if the author hides,
it is only
so that the reader
will seek. The hiding is a ploy, as inMoll Flanders,Gulliver's Travels, and
The History ofHenry Esmond:
These
novels
replacement
are artificial ones,
to be sure, but
authors,
they
or
no
one
"dildoes."
will
Still,
pens
imagine that Defoe
have
or Swift or Thackeray felt that by placing these fictions in front of
themselves
they
were
risking
their lives. No
one
is done
in by a dil
doe . . .These artful dodges (and itwould be awful if they fooled
144
the concepts of source and voice and purpose,
anyone)
strengthen
are central to the notion of a command
control and occasion, which
ing creator,
(pp. 6-7)
Gass' point, which he takes several more pages to
is that "the ele
develop,
vation or removal of the author is a social and political gesture, not an aes
thetic one" (p. 11). The level of awork's
has no bearing on the
anonymity
work's
Even
mean that no one did it.
quality, and, Gass says, it certainly doesn't
are creators.
authors who deliberately
efface themselves
to Gass, is that in
or her
does happen, according
removing himself from the text, an author also removes the reader; "if no one has writ
What
ten or posted the word,
then no one is addressed by the word"
(p. 13).
the self, an author "does not omit to leave his sig
Still, even in removing
nature behind, just the same. Indeed he not
only signs every sheet, he signs
is how writing
differs from speech, and as Gass
an author an author.33 There are many author
less texts, such as a grocery sacker mindlessly
saying, under orders of the
store manager,
"Have a nice day." No one authors those words, Gass say,
"It
is
but
necessary to say we author what we write precisely because what
every word"
(p. 14). This
sees it, this iswhat makes
we write
is disconnected
from any mouth we might
actually observe"
(p.
to
not
texts
It
is the ability
in
create,
19).
regurgitate
merely
previously
defines
the
author
for
of
which
and
the
absence
the
author
Gass,
gested,
from
the
whether
in no way
diminishes
this. The person of the author,
or not,
still determines
the quality of the work:
discovered
or
or
are
sentences
of
millions
penned
spoken every day
typed
text
"literally
or a
have only a source?a
which
spigot
signboard?and
(p. 24). Gass ends his article by saying that authors
readers "simply comprise
the public"
(p. 26).
Gass' last-second
insult against his audience is perhaps
not
an author"
"re-fuse,"
while
the most
pointed
of
the
difference
himself
and
between
Barthes.
Barthes
primary
example
the
"created"
author, over the "creative" author, which makes
privileges
on the other hand,
the reader a powerful
the
figure. Gass,
privileges
"creative"
the reader almost powerless.
author, and makes
Both
author
Barthes
and Gass
during which
a distinction
between
the creative
as mentioned
above, makes a sub
an
as
as what
act
and writing
is written,
between writing
is
the "Author"
the
(creative)
replace by
"scriptor"
(created
and the created
tle transition
recognize
author. Barthes,
author):
145
in, is always conceived
In complete contrast,
the modern
The Author, when
...
his own book.
believed
of as the past of
scriptor is born
a
the text, is in no way equipped with
with
simultaneously
being
or
not
as
is
the
of
the
the
book
writing,
subject
exceeding
preceding
predicate, (p. 145)
He talks at some length about the
is aware of the same distinction.
it clear that this pro
from
the
the
reader
poem, and he makes
poet
projects
a person,
"but the poet of the poem." He mentions
jected poet is not
Hume's warning
that if we are to infer a creator from the evidence of a
to
be necessary
creation, we can only attribute to it what would
produce
Gass
that creation.
sonality
This means
the art, but
behind
name
that the author's
. . . another
kind
ifwe believe at all in the Unconscious,
designates
of slippery
not
the "per
fiction."
And,
or in the impossibility of
the author's clear awareness
and control,
escaping
literally nothing
the text creates, not the
then the artificial author (the author which
creates the
author who
different from the
text) will be importantly
one of flesh and blood,
whose
picture
enlivens
envy and animosity, who holds the pen,
the gray pages of history,
(p. 21)
and
of the created author is the clue to what he means
privileging
that the
quite correctly,
by "the death of the author." Barthes observes,
a
access
not
to
has
the
and
text,
narrator,
reader, encountering
proxy
only
errs
that
the poet and scribe. But Barthes
he concludes
synechdochically;
the poet and scribe are "dead" (i.e., separated forever from the
because
Barthes'
text),
would
the whole
author,
including
this charge
to the poet
perhaps escape
"author" to refer only
is dead, he
the proxy and narrator,
in using the term
if he were consistent
and scribe, and kept his use of "author"
on pp. 143ff.
from his use of "scriptor." But his discussion
always distinct
of Mallarm?,
Val?ry,
Proust,
refers to creative
clearly
and he refers
et. al. is inconsistent
authors
wih
his own
claims:
he
to the texts
they created,
"dead."34
in their relations
as if
were not
they
creative
Gass also speaks of
authors as if they were not dead, but in do
so he does not violate his claims, since he is
to show that Barthes
trying
ing
own
to
attention
iswrong.
his
this criti
Gass directs
crime, though, with
to them
cism of Barthes:
146
IfRoland Barthes had been interested in radically simplifying the
final solution
... he could have
Question
adopted the
?
. . .Then, with
this plurality of persons
to the Author
"single author" theory.
to manage
both real, inhuman,
artificial, and imaginary?reduced
a
across
able proportions,
the top of the word would
single stroke
have been enough,
(p. 23)
The
but
is not that Barthes could have made authors
implication
that he did make authors homogeneous.
Unfortunately,
of the same sin in reverse:
makes
Of
he affirms
the heterogeneity
homogeneous,
Gass is guilty
of authors,
readers homogeneous.
course neither authors nor readers are
homogeneous,
but he
and the answer
to the question of the death of the authorwill not be found by choosing
sides. The relationships
their texts vary greatly,
mutual
interdependence.
their texts, and the readers of
authors,
it should be clear by now that there is always a
The author is dead in the limited sense that the
between
but
poet and scribe are forever removed from the text and the reader as soon as
in that sense, for the
the creative act is finished. But the author is dead
only
as
as
narrator
author includes that proxy and
well
the poet and scribe, and
as
by the reader
by the poet.
Barthes and Gass both take the question of the death of the author as a
our autopsy end with ameta
so it is
question,
theological
only fitting that
no
phor taken from religion. Barthes and Gass agree that the author is
these are created
longer
human,
Viewed
as much
as our autopsy has shown, the author is at least a
god. However,
a soul
a
with
body (the creative author) and
(the created author).
in this way, Barthes' claim seems to be that the author has died
a
and there is no afterlife; Gass, on the other hand, seems to claim that there
a
I think our au
resurrection.
is an afterlife for the author?with
bodily
a
the author's body has died; there is
topsy, though, points to via media:
an afterlife; the author's soul lives on.
Notes
1. Jonathan Culler, Roland Barthes (New York: Oxford Univ.
Press, 1983), p. 11.
2. Webster's New World Dictionary lists two definitions for autopsy (from the Greek
autopsia,
esp. by
mortem
a
one's own
"1. an examination
seeing with
eyes):
a coroner,
to discover
the cause of death,
damage
2.
a detailed
critical
analysis
of
a book,
play,
etc.,
and dissection
done
of a dead
etc.;
by disease,
or of some event."
body,
post
147
3.
Roland
"The Death
Barthes,
of
the Author,"
in
Music
Image
-
trans.
sel. and
Text,
Stephen Heath (New York: Hill andWang, 1977), pp. 142-43. Further quotations from
Barthes will be from this essay and will be cited parenthetically within the text by
to the page
reference
4.
of
numbers
Is an Author?"
"What
in
this edition.
Language,
ed.
Practice,
Counter-Memory,
F.
Donald
Bouchard, trans. Donald F. Bouchard and Sherry Simon (Ithaca: Cornell Univ. Press,
1977), pp. 124-25. Further quotations from Foucault will be from this essay andwill be
cited paranthetically within the text by reference to the page numbers of this edition.
5.
"Tradition and the Individual Talent," in Twentieth Century Criticism: The Major
J. Handy and Max Westbrook
(New York: The Free Press,
Statements, ed. William
1974), p. 30.
6. Anatomy of Criticism (Princeton: Princeton Univ.
Press, 1957), p. 17.
7.
"The Author's Place inContemporary Narratology," inContemporaryApproaches to
Narrative, ed. Anthony Mortimer (Tubingen: Narr, 1984), p. 111. Polletta, in the
and
paragraph from which I quote, is specifically comparing Barthes with Wimsatt
to
I
have
taken
the
of
his
"most
in
words
since
his
critics,"
Beardsley.
liberty
applying
sight seems to apply aswell to Eliot, Frye, etc.
The Odyssey ofHomer, trans. Richmond
1975), p. 27.
8.
9.
Ovid,
trans. Rolfe
Metamorphoses,
Lattimore (New York: Harper & Row,
Humphries
Indiana
(Bloomington:
Univ.
Press,
1955), p. 3.
10. I take it that no readerwill doubt the conception of the author as the source of his
since
work,
this
seems
to be
the commonest
notion
today.
That
the author
as channel
is a
notion that has been taken seriously is best shown by Plato's Ion.
11. Ferdinand de Saussure, Course inGeneral Linguistics, ed. Charles Bally and Albert
Sechehaye in collaboration with Albert Riedlinger, trans.Wade Baskin (New York:
Book
McGraw-Hill
Co.,
1959),
p.
In this passage,
117.
concern
Saussure's
is, of course,
linguistic value, but Imean to borrow only his definition of differential entities.
12.
"What
Is an Author?"
the word
with
denominate
"facets"
the parts
of my
p. 127.
in order
model
I have
use
to
my
of
Foucault's
replaced
avoid
confusion
with
of
the word
use
of
"aspects"
to
"aspects"
the author.
13. This is not only true of authors now dead, but living authors aswell; it is the basis of
the New Critical dictum that the author is no more an authority on the text than any
other
reader.
the many discussions of this problem, two of the best are: Albert Lord, The
Singer of Tales (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press, 1960), and G. S. Kirk, The
Songs ofHomer (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1962).
14. Of
15.
York:
148
that, as Cedric Whitman
points
mere
of the poems.
preservation
W. W.
Norton
and Co.
1965),
So
becomes
out,
writing
Whitman,
p.
5.
is severed
Homer
from
and theHeroic
composition,
Tradition
and
(New
16. There is amore difficult sense inwhich tradition has a (rather large) hand in the crea
tion of the work: clearly, language defines the possibilities of the work. This will be
discussed more in relation to Barthes, but I exclude language from my model of the
author because it is outside of what is normally included in the concept of the author.
even
(And
against
who
Barthes,
of
the concept
creative
gives
complete
the author,
instead
of
control
including
to
one within
sets
language,
the other:"
language
...
it is
speaks, not the author" [Barthes, p. 143]).
language which
17 Kirk, Songs, pp. 308-9.
18. Anatomy of Criticism, pp. 223-24.
19. Everett Zimmerman, Swift'sNarrative Satires:Author andAuthority (Ithaca: Cornell
Univ. Press, 1983), p. 68. I feel justified in pitting Zimmerman's discussion of irony
against Frye's discussion of satire since Zimmerman's concern here iswith the irony in
Swift, while satire for Frye is the type of irony which Swift makes use of.
20.
Zimmerman,
p.
69.
21. From Gardner Stout, "Speaker and SatiricVision in Swift's Tale of a Tub," Eighteenth
as quoted in Zimmerman, p. 69.
Century Studies 3(1969), p. 183,
22. Anatomy of Criticism, p. 224.
23. I have mentioned above that the proxy can never be identified with
author" (i.e., the poet and/or scribe), in this case Swift himself.
the "historical
24. Iwill refer inmy discussion of Heraclitus exclusively to Charles H. Kahn's excellent
book The Art and Thought ofHeraclitus (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1979). This
is fragment XXXVI inKahn's translation, though I have retained theword logos for the
25.
discussion.
of my
purposes
seems
Heraclitus
not
to be
claiming
that
the
logos
is the
source
of his own
words,
which would be placing himself on the channel axis rather than the source axis; instead,
he seems to be claiming that the logos is a touchstone on which his words will prove
true.
themselves
26. In "On Reading Heraclitus," pp. 87-95 of The Art and Thought ofHeraclitus.
27.
Kahn,
p.
89.
28."They are purified in vain with blood, those polluted with blood, as if someone who
stepped inmud should try to wash himself with mud. Anyone who noticed him doing
thiswould think he was mad. And they pray to these images as if theywere chatting with
houses,
not
recognizing
what
gods
or even
29. Against theMathematicians VII. 126-34,
heroes
are
like."
(Kahn,
p.
266)
in Kahn pp. 293-96.
30. William Gass, "The Death of the Author," Salmagundi 65 (Fall, 1984), pp. 3-26.
Further references to this essaywill be noted parenthetically within the text of the paper.
31. Metaphysics, A 3, 983b, trans.W. D. Ross, in The Basic Works of Aristotle, ed.
Richard McKeon (New York: Random House, 1941), pp. 693-94.
149
32.
It is worth
is not
that Barthes
noting
making
the claim
that no one
mistakenly claims (p. 11); instead, he ismaking a claim about what
what
follows
after,
the act of
"doing
"did
it,"
as Gass
is involved in, and
it."
33. Whether Gass is correct in his notion of the signature is not
immediately clear. For a
more thorough discussion of this issue, one
might profitably consult Jacques Derrida's
essay
"Signature
Event
Context,"
Glyph
1, pp.
172-97.
In that
essay,
Derrida
contends
that a similar claim by J. L. Austin iswrong. Derrida says instead that the condition of
the possibility of the power of the signature is also the condition of the
impossibility of
that power.
Interestingly,
in
making
that claim
he uses
a
metaphor
similar
to Barthes'
metaphor (mentioned above) of the text as a cloth. Barthes says that when the text is
disentangled, there is no author clinging to the end of the thread;Derrida says that the
signature is not capable of "tethering [the text] to the source." (p. 194)
34. The clearest example is on p. 144, where he talks of "Proust
himself" (my italics)
blurring
150
the
relation
between
a writer
and his
characters.