The Death of the Author

In 1968 Roland Barthes famously declared the author to be dead, and although creditable attempts at resuscitation have been made, the health of the patient cannot be taken for granted.

Claire Lamont

The Meaning of a Text
Any reader will admit that a text can be interpreted differently by different readers, and that each reader will bring their own experience and ideologies to the text. We can see then that it does not make sense to suggest that a text has an 'ultimate' truth, since any number of readers may have any number of experiences of the text.

What does 'The Death of the Author' mean?
The author who creates the text is manipulating language for his purposes. The author is also a reader, and he too brings his own set of associations to the language that he employs. If he has a meaning that he intends to convey, we might think that there is a correct interpretation that we can make as readers. This has the implication of a value system being imposed on the reading experience - we can be 'good' or 'bad' readers.

But nevertheless we are all readers, and all have an interpretation. The imposition of a value system on this soon seems irrelevant - and indeed narrows the possibilities of the text. Ultimately we can say that the only complete interpretation of a text can be made by a kind of 'metareader', who embodies all readings of the text by all readers past, present and future. The author has lost his authority over the text to this 'metareader', and is therefore pronounced 'dead'.

How does hypertext influence textual authority?
In a conventional novel, we find that the form itself helps guard the author from the readers realisation of their own authority, since it: 'engenders certain notions of authorial property, authorial uniqueness, and a physically isolated text'. In contrast we find that 'hypertext makes [these notions] untenable'(Landow). Critical theorists have argued that we should transfer our presentation of texts from a linear format, to one which is founded on 'multilinearity, nodes, links and networks.'

This is precisely what we find in hypertext:

Electronic writing ...will in fact confirm much of what the deconstructionists and others have been saying about the instability of the text and decreasing authority of the author. (Bolter)

For more on the shift of authority from the Author to the Reader, go to The Birth of the Reader-Author.

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