Roland Barthes (Death of the author + From work to text)

Freeing the reading practice from constraints

• fidelity to origin

• unified meaning

• specific identity

• the author-god

• any pregiven exterior/interior reality:

-social/historical context

-human psychology

text

• “tissue of quotations drawn from innumerable centers of culture“

• more dynamic, open-ended than work

• focuses more on the readers

• can’t be contained in a single genre

• intertextuality extends beyond genre

• plural, irreducible

• pleasure of re-writing texts by re-reading them

work

interpretation is more predetermined than of a text

surrealist “jolt“ and “automatic writing“

• weak connection between author and writing

• focus on free association, how this breaks down

• unconscious mental activities in the preception of reality

modern scriptor

• born simultaneously with the text

• death of the traditional author-birth of modern scriptor

• eternal copyist

• can imitate a gesture that is always anterior but never original

  "modern scriptor" is born with the text at the same time. That means: every text is "written here and now" rather than after the author's thought.

meaning

• “infinitely deferred“ in any given text

• reader can only “detangle“ not decipher

(words expressed by words that are expressed by other words)

"death of the author"

• once a text is published, it takes on a life of its own, independent of the author's original intent

• emphasizes the primacy of the reader's experience and the multiplicity of possible interpretations

reader

• through the act of reading, becomes an active participant in the creation of meaning, rather than a passive recipient of the author's message

• the meaning of a text is not determined by the author's intention, but rather by the reader's interpretation