Seminar -The Death of The Author

This text is one that definitely took me a while to understand, it often takes me a while to get my head around any text that is written in this sort of way. The text addresses the topic of interpretation, and the fact that we as individuals should be able to interpret a text in our own way, with out feeling obliged to see things from the author's point of view. Barthes believes that "...culmination of capitalist ideology, which has attached the greatest importance to the "person" of the author..."  (Barthes. R, 1968, p. 143) which consequently leads to the reader trying to understand the work from the perspective of the author, instead of trying to make their own sense of it, because the author is the creator and "...still reigns in histories of literature, biographies of writers, interviews, magazines..." (Barthes. R, 1968 p. 143) This suggests that the receivers of the text, the readers, are in some ways insignificant. The memory of the author will, or should, continue and be recognised over time, therefore it is their intentions that stem from the text that are of the upmost importance. This belief, especially nowadays is clearly seen as a much more stubborn way of thinking, because over time people have become more and more open minded when it comes to interoperating creative work individually.

The work of the author can be seen as just the beginning of something, which then leads to other people having the opportunity to make of it what they will. After all "...it is language which speaks, not the author..." (Barthes. R, 1968, p. 143) meaning that once an individual has hold of the author's work, the author is no longer present and cannot direct that reader's thoughts, but must allow the reader to be influenced by the words and the language in their own way. This argument can be applied to the world of animation because, once an animation is released, the creative individual of group behind it, have to allow viewers to react in their individual way to it and see it in their way. Barthes also addresses the fact that nothing is ever completely original in the first place; "...the writer can only imitate a gesture that is always anterior, never original..." (Barthes. R, 1968, p. 146) which suggests that nobody should place all of their belief and faith into what the author says, because more often than not, the author themselves have been influenced by somebody else earlier down the line. Again this links back to animation, one creative should never put another creative on to high of a pedestal, because we are all inspired by different aspects f the world therefore nothing is completely original.



Barthes, R. (1968) "Death of the Author" in Image Music Text, (1977), London, Fontana Press

Landow, G.P. (1992) "Re-configuring the Author" in Hypertext: The Convergence of Contemporary Critical Theory and Technology, Baltimore, The Johns Hopkins University Press.