.
Hello and welcome to yet another session of
the NPTEL course Postmodernism in Literature.
In the previous session we had started looking
at the essay the death of the author in which
Barthes discusses the text reliance on a single
self determining author and also how he questions
the traditional assumptions about the literary
criticism and traditional assumptions about
the text and the author.
We started looking at the essay in which he
begins with an epigraph where he talks about
Balzac's story Sarrasine and ah he here we
also find an extension of the Nietzsche's
philosophy that there are no agreed facts
only interpretations.
And we also find how Barthes begins to focus
on the separation of the personal from the
analytical and the creative literary works
in Barthes own words the traps where all identity
is lost starting with the very identity of
the body of writing.
So, in the epigraph of the essay where he
talks about Balzac's works he begins by negating
the presence of the identity of the author
and by arguing and by reiterating that the
moment the process writing begins the identity
of the author is also forced to go into the
background.
And he also begins to engage with this assum
to engage with this assumption that the effective
reading of a text depends on the suspension
of a preconceived ideas about author, character,
or human nature or psychology in general which
we also noted in his discussion of a particular
sentence from Balzac's story.
Throughout the discussion of this essay which
we would also realise it is a very short piece
of barely 5 or 6 pages.
The essay is divided into 7 sections which
are also divided into 7 short paragraphs in
that sense it is highly readable and short
essay.
For for the convenience of the discussion
we will be looking at each sections step by
step and referring to each paragraph as a
separate section.
In ah the second section after the epigraph
Barthes directly started talking about how
he can equate the beginning of writer with
the author entering his own death.
So, he started engaging with this element
in the title death of the author right from
the beginning of the essay and articulates
it in many different ways.
He also gets it ah historical engagement when
he begins to compare and contrast how the
author is viewed in different cultures in
different ah ah times in ah in in various
ah various ways he focuses on the shifts the
assumptions about the author across cultures
and time periods and he also talks about a
primitive culture an ethnographic culture
in which the story teller was more predominant
and that of the narrative.
In his own words he talks about how in the
primitive societies narrative is never undertaken
by herself, but by a mediator someone or speaker
whose performance may be admired that is his
mastery of the narrative code, but not his
genius.
And he here focuses on very fine distinction
between the writer and the story teller and
also brings to our attention that the writer
is the person according to the modern narrative
writer is the person who has got an attribute
of genius.
And in this story teller the primitive societies
there was no intention to look at the narra
look at the genius of this narrator, but only
the focus the focus was only on the performance
aspect which was also getting manifested and
articulated through the medium of language
and here we also find ah here we also find
that Barthes totally disagrees with this idea
of investing the responsibility of a narrative
on a single person with whose in the modern
times designated as the author.
And he also goes on to say that the the the
idea of the author is a very modern figure
produced no doubt by our society in.
So, far as at the end of the middle ages,
when English emperessor, French rationalism,
and the personal faith of reformation it is
covered the prestige of the individual or
to put the of the human person.
So, here we find him making a very succinct
claim about the author being a modern figure
and also not in a way a figure who was always
already there.
And here he also makes a separation between
good writing and intense emotion , and Barthes
goes on to argue that good writing need not
always be dependent on the intense emotions
of the author.
But there have also been a number of critics
who believe that the authors product the the
work the book is also related to his intense
emotions and his emotional conflicts and his
experiences so on and so forth.
Though many may prefer to disagree with Barthes
on this point this is also one of the things
that he continues to talk about in many of
his works about the separation between the
art of good writing and also the intense emotional
engagement of the author with whatever he
is writing.
And again in the section 2, he continues to
talk about the way in which the author is
has always been dominating contemporary literary
cultures.
And he uses expressions such as the authors
still rules and also that the the entire idea
of literature tyrannically centred on the
author.
And he talks about how we can find the the
ah the rule of the author getting manifested
in various aspects such as manuals of literary
history, in biographies of writers, in magazine
interviews, and even in the awareness of literary
men anxious to unite by their private journals,
their person, and their work.
The image of literature to be found in contemporary
culture is tyrannically centred on the author,
his person, his history, his taste, his passions,
yeah.
So, he he goes on to tell us in the multiple
ways in which the author continues to dominate
contemporary literary culture, and also the
ways in which we understand literature and
also approach literary criticism.
And he says the problem here is that there
is also a tendency to seek the explanation
of the work in the man who has produced it.
And here he is also drawing our attention
to his own critical ideas towards biographical,
and historical criticism where the focus is
always been on the biography of the author
on the personal taste and the personal context
of the author and how that has influenced
directly or indirectly the production of the
work.
And here he again draws our attention to one
of the first points that he began talking
about in the epigraph that there is an impossibility
to identify a single voice and here he reiterates
that point towards the end of the section
2 that there is an attempt being made to find
the voice of one and the same person the author
which delivered his confidence and here we
are again reminded of the fact that there
is only there is no single voice, but only
several indiscernible voices.
In the section 3 taking off from the previous
take the previous discussion he continues
to focus on the idea of the authors empire
as he puts it and he gives a particular examples
to talk about how certain writers have been
able to topple this topple the authors empire.
The first example that he gives is that of
the French symbolist poet Stephane Mallarme
and a Mallarme was a poet who lived from 1842
to 1898 his contemporaries include Baudelaire
and reboot.
And Barthes goes on to argue that Mallarme
was one of very few writers who could who
could sense and also reflect in his own [vocalized
noise] art works, in his own body of writing
that language and writing has to be separated
from the person who hitherto was suppose to
own it in Barthes own words.
So, the language became separated from the
person who wrote it in the in other in other
to put it in other way the writer ceases to
be the owner of the work that he is writing
sees to be the owner of kind of language that
he is reproducing as a part of a book and
here he also goes on to ask a couple of questions
which would also lead us to further be further
convinced about the argument that the author
is separated from the work that he produces
that the author is separated from the language,
that produces the text.
And he in that sense goes on to ask this question
about who speaks in any body of a work and
Barthes gives us the answer that it is language
and not the author.
So, it is the language which allows the text
to perform not the author here the focus is
being taken away completely from the author
and the foregrounding of language keeping
in tune with the shift from structuralism
to post structuralism.
We find a very definitive foregrounding of
a the aspect of language taking place over
here and he also says that there is a there
is a deliberate suppressing of the author
which takes place for the sake of writing,
and why is this being done this is being done
in order to restore the status of the reader.
So, in the beginning of the essay itself right
in the initial discussion Barthes gives us
a sense of where he is leading us to that
with the death of the author we are moving
away from the from the dominance from the
privileges associated with the author towards
a kind of reading of a text where language
is supreme and also which is more reader oriented
reader centric where the final destination
lies with the reader.
Even when he is talking about this detachment
of the author from the text or from the language
that he is using, he is also telling us to
be aware of the fact that the idea of the
metaphorical death of the author is not similar
to the castrating objectivity of the realist
novelist.
He here here he makes the fine distinction
between what we understand as the authors
omnipotence and also what Barthes tells us
about the separation from good writing and
the the emotions and the experience of the
author.
So, here Barthes is trying to tell us that
when he talks about the separation of the
author from the text a separation of the author
from the language that he is using he is not
talking about a realist sort of a narrative
which was also dominant during those times
on the other hand he is in fact, talking about
a radical reversal which he believes could
be illustrated through the second example
that he talks about that is through the works
of Marcel Proust.
Marcel Proust was a French novelist who lived
from 1871 to 1922 his best known work was
in search of lost time.
So, here after Stephane Mallarme Barthes gives
us the illustration of Proust in Barthes own
words.
Proust is given modern writing it is epic
by radical reversal instead of putting his
life into his novel as we often say so he
makes his very life into a work for which
his own book was in a sense the modern.
So, here we find Barthes also talking about
taking away the omnipresent, omnipotent states
us that the author here hitherto was invested
by so when he talks about the death of the
author he also realise that it is not just
a metaphorical and physical death of the author
that Barthes talks about instead there are
number of such things that he alludes to in
course of his discussion.
And thirdly Barthes gives us the example of
surrealism and according to Barthes surrealism
was something that surrealism was something
that helps secularise the image of the author.
How it is surrealism achieve this?
Because surrealism itself as a movement as
a artistic literary movement it was a play
on the system of writing and meaning.
And here the artist provides no solid conclusion
about the author to the reader.
So, surrealist are art, or the surrealist
movement Barthes identifies as a perfect site
in which the image of the author could be
secularised.
Because in this surrealist movement or in
the surrealist work of art the text does not
provide any solid clues about the presence
of the author or even what the author had
intended.
And fourthly Barthes talks about the emergence
of linguistics an idea which collaborates
many of the things that he is also he is also
he is also trying to argue out and in his
own words linguists has just furnished the
destruction of the author with a precious
analytic instrument by showing that utterance
in it is entirety is a void process.
So, in in linguistically when we analyse the
function of the author Barthes tells us that
the author is never anything more than the
man who writes.
So, just just just as I is no more than the
man who says I, he says the author does not
have any more function than being the person
who writes.
So, here we also find that Barthes we also
find Barthes using contemporary text, and
contemporary context, the contemporary evolution
of various disciplines and various art movements
to prove his own points to illustrate his
own arguments in multiple ways.
Thus in this section in section 3 Barthes
talks about 4 examples that of Stephane Mallarme
of Marcel Proust of surrealism and finally,
about linguistics to talk about how certain
authors are capable of top lengthy authors
empire.
In section 4 Barthes draws our attention to
the absence of the author and what it is implications
could be?
Barthes tells us that the absence of the author
would utterly transform the modern text, and
there also situations when we understand that
the author absents himself as well and he
tells us about how time plays a significant
role in this in this figuration of the author
in our understanding of the relationship between
the author and the text.
And here if we look at the look at the relationship
between the author, and the book, there is
a conventional sense of understanding that
the author belongs to the past of his own
book and that the book is a present and there
is also a certain way in which the relation
between the author and the book is in seen
in in the context of a relation of antecedence
may be as in Barthes own words like that of
a father and child .
But according to Barthes this is a very limiting
relationship which would not allow us to explore
the various possibilities of this relationship,
the various nuances of this relationship,
and he says it is no longer the same in the
contemporary in the modern scenario where
the author pre exists the book.
And this relation of antecedence will not
work anymore because the conventional understanding
is that of the author being always already
there and the author giving birth to the book
the author being . The author pre relating
the book in multiple ways and becoming a past
of the book itself, but the more modern author
Barthes own words and he also designates the
modern author as a scriptor, he ah Barthes
argues is born simultaneously with his text
there is no way in which the scriptor can
predate his work or his text or the book,
but the scriptor is born simultaneously as
and when this writing process is going on
and if we read this .
If we read this along with one of the previous
point that Barthes makes at the outset that
just when the process of process of writing
begins the identity of the author is forced
to derive in the same way as a scriptor the
identity of the scriptor begins to emerge
only when the process of writing begins.
So, in that sense the scriptor has born simultaneously
with his text and here he also draws us to
his final point in section 4, that the modern
writer has buried the author.
So, we do not have an idea of the author in
the modern sense according to Barthes in a
very post structuralist way which also eventually
becomes a foundations of postmodern critical
reading, and thinking that we do not have
any we do not have an idea of the author now,
but on the contrary we only have writers and
scriptors.
And this understanding becomes important in
order to be able to access the text and also
know what the text is today?
And what it is not?
So, in section 5 Barthes begins talking about
what a text is not he tells us that there
is no text is not a space where a single theological
meaning could be attributed this is the text
could not be considered as a as a as a message
from an author got here we also find him drawing
extensively from the 19th century philosophies
of , he also then tells us what a text is
according to him.
A text is not just one coherent body of articulations
by a single person, but on the contrary it
is a space of many dimensions, various kinds
of writing none of which is original a tissue
of citations resulting from a thousand sources
of culture.
So, here we find a very radically different
way in which take the idea of the text being
presented over here, where there is no attempt
to attribute any originality to the text,
where there is no attempt to attribute any
sense of coherence in terms of it is a structure,
in terms of it is sources, in terms of the
various references, and cultural contexts
that it is trying to bring together.
And here Barthes further reiterates the point
that the writer can only imitate never original
and as as he puts as he puts it the only power
perhaps the writer has his to combine in his
own words his only power is to combine the
different kinds of writing to oppose some
by others as to never sustain himself by just
one of them.
So, he absolutely negates the possibility
of a singular meaning about a single understanding
about it text and celebrates the idea of plurality,
and multiplicity by redefining the idea of
the text by looking at the text as a space
in which all of these multiplicities come
together.
All of these all of these differences from
different cultural sources, from different
different other texts from different other
philosophies and even from different other
other author figures they all come in into
this single space of the text.
And continuing with this claim continuing,
with this understanding about the author and
the text in section 6 Barthes tells us that
the claims to decide for a text therefore,
is quite a useless pursuit, there is absolutely
no point in trying to decide for a text meaning
through the conventional methods of literary
criticism, or the conventional methods of
reading a text.
In Barthes own words to give an author to
a text is to impose upon the text a stop clause
to furnish it with a final signification to
close the writing as much as Barthes is in
disagreement with this conception of reading
a text, he also understands the fact and draws
our attention to the fact that this is a conception,
this is a method that perfectly suits criticism.
So, on all sides the discussion about the
author and the text we find a new kind of
theme to discuss here criticism, and we also
find how organically Barthes manages to relate
and connect all of these aspects within his
within the discussion about the death of the
author.
And here he also tells us how this works,
he tells us how a critic through his process
of discovery of the author also successfully
manages to explain the text and here the explanation
of the text as he has mentioned before it
is sort in the man who produce the text.
So, the critic assumes obviously, and naturally
that the explanation of the text relies only
on the discovery of the of the author, the
discovery of the authors passions the intentions.
his context, the his biography and all everything
related to the author and here it also gives
us the sense that the critics has finally,
conquered the text.
So, this relation by complicating and by problematizing
this relation between the author the text
and the critic Barthes goes on to argue that
the reign of the author should ideally have
been the reign of the critic as well.
So, here he says that just like there is a
tendency to fix meaning upon the text based
on a single author, based on the authority
invested upon the author there is also a way
in which the critics have been trying to reiterate
reiterates the reiterate this process through
various methods of traditional literary criticism.
And here he also finds a problem with contemporary
literary criticism and he succinctly remarks
that the space of writing is to be traversed
not penetrated, he finds many of the contemporary
literary critical activities of his time rather
problematic because because there attempts
were mostly to penetrate a literally text
which Barthes things as a futile and useless
item on contrary.
He see the the space of writing the space
of literature as a space to be traversed because
it is a multiple space; it is a space where
many conflicting things many things from various
sources and various cultures have come together
to inhabit.
And he also ends this section by highlighting
the fact that only when we move away from
this traditional assumptions literature would
began to be a liberating activity only when
we stop assigning a secret assigning a single
meaning to a text the reading of literature
would begin to would begin to become a more
liberating activity.
And he ends this section by saying there is
a when you refused to arrest meaning arrest
a single meaning to a text there is also a
refusal of God and his hypostases reason science
and the law.
Hypostases could be usually translated as
a foundation on the essential nature of ah
ah any thing.
And in the final section which is section
7 Barthes again returns to Balzac's sentence
which he discussed briefly in the beginning
in the epigraph of the essay.
And there in the final section he again reiterates
his point that source or the voice which utters
that sentence need not be located because
the true locus of writing is in reading.
The text need not be penetrated in such a
way that the voice source of the voice is
important becomes important enough to be located
on the other hand the pleasure of reading
itself is in is in not in trying to locate
the voice to a single identity, but in the
knowing that the voice cannot be located because
there are several indiscernible voices.
And here he again draws our attention to the
space of the text which is encompassed with
multiple readings, several cultures, dialogues
with each other parody, and contestation and
here though he does not mention the term intertextuality
the obvious references also to the text being
inherently intertextual.
Intertextuality incidentally is a very key
term in postmodern criticism in postmodern
theory we shall be coming back to look at
it detail in one of the later lectures the
term was also incidentally ah used and popularized
and theorized increasingly by Julia Kristina
to briefly take a look at some of the ways
in which intertextuality functions.
Here is an example of nineteen twenty two
text by James Joyce Ulysses the understanding
of which is also heavily dependent on Homers
odyssey.
This is also a play 1966 play by Tom Stoppard's
titled Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead
in order to be able to understand this play
one needs to be very familiar with the play
by Shakespeare Hamlet.
Because [vocalized noise] Rosencrantz and
Guildenstern are two minor characters of Shakespeare's
tragedy the Hamlet.
So, intertextuality is the conscious or unconscious
ways in which a text or a context goes on
to infer other texts, and contexts and how
the presence of various such contexts various
such references could be found within a single
text .
And if a text is inherently intertextual as
Barthes tells us as and as many others have
continued to talk about in the post structuralist
and postmodern framework how do we deal with
this multiplicity.
And this multiplicity Barthes and Barthes
Barthes very briefly towards the end of the
final section tells us gives us a roadmap
as to how to deal with this multiplicity.
He tells us that there is one place where
this multiplicity is collected and united,
but incidentally this one is the not the author,
but the reader here by negating the author
by taking by taking the focus away from the
author he is not just talking about the author,
but the, but about the emergence of various
other spaces, various other possibilities
of reading a text and also the emergence of
the significance of the reader.
And here he also highlights and draws our
attention to the agency of the reader which
had either to be ignored or not been fore
grounded for a very long time within the space
of literary criticism within the space of
understanding literature.
And he then very very categorically states
that the destination of the text is the reader,
the destination of reading that in Barthes
own words reader is a man without history,
without biography, without psychology, he
is only he is only been seen as a sight as
a place where these multiple parts of the
text comes together where these multiple parts
of the text is constituted.
So, in in in in such a way he also brings
back the focus on the reader perhaps in a
more direct way towards the end of the this
section, towards the end of this essay by
telling us that the reader has never been
the concern of classical criticism so the
towards the end of the essay to almost seems
as of the the objective of the entire essay
objective of this direct direct pronouncement
of the death of the author was also meant
to bring back the focus on the reader who
never was the focus of attention throughout
the history of literary criticism, throughout
history of understanding literary understanding
the literary text.
And he he he ends this essay with this succinct
statement we are now beginning to to be the
no longer of such anti faces by which our
society proudly champions precisely what it
dismisses ignores his mothers or destroys.
We know that to restore we know that to restore
to writing a it is future we must reverse
the birth of the reader must be ransomed by
the death of the author.
So, as we have pointed out in the beginning
the death of the author becomes an emancipatory
process becomes an emancipatory event and
Barthes has managed to quite successfully
trace this entire process eventually to lead
to the final destination of the birth of the
reader.
To sum up in Barthes essay the death of the
author he engages with the complex relationship
between the author and the product and also
the role of the reader in literary criticism.
We would also later know that ah number of
ah readers response theories were had emerged
after this essay taking inspiration from the
way in which the the role of the the role
of the author was completely negative.
And ah it it this essay also tells us how
our focus on the author, his person, his life,
his taste, his passion, are all very limiting
and also it becomes eventually detracting
from the possibilities of the text.
Here on a lighter note let us also briefly
take a look at Isaac Asimov's short story
the Immortal Bard Isaac Asimov was an American
writer who lived from 1920 till 92 and he
in one of his famous short stories fantastic
work that will be immortal bard he an in fact,
satirises the interpretations built upon Shakespeare's
work through a symbolic Freudian new critical
approaches.
And the story is about 2 colleagues who engage
in a cocktail conversation and one is a scientist
and other is the professor of arts the scientist
tells the professor about how he is brought
back Archimedes Newton and Galileo through
a through a through a scientific method of
time travelling, but they could not really
fit in the contemporary because they all experience
culture shock.
And then the scientist also thought that perhaps
Shakespeare being a since he is in possession
of a universal mind may be he will fit in
well with any context and he decides to bring
back Shakespeare to the contemporary from
the 1600's and Shakespeare also thought it
was a fantastic idea.
But there are also lot of challenges that
Shakespeare faces because of his courses language
and a strong accent and nevertheless he also
shows a keen interest in enrolling in a college
course because he was very fascinated by the
idea that his own works were being taught
as a courses in colleges.
So, he was also enrolled in this professors
in this in this literature professors professor
Roberson's course and in the story takes a
turn.
The scientist tells the arts professor that
eventually Shakespeare had to be sent back
to the 1600s because of the humiliation that
he suffered and what kind of humiliation was
that Shakespeare eventually flunged in a college
course on Shakespeare.
So, here keeping apart the satire inherent
of this story the way in which Aimov is taking
a dig at a lot of contemporary methods of
criticism because the story was also published
after seeing how the literary academy viewed
Asimov's own writing.
So, regardless of the ways in which Asimov
ridicules the contemporary system of criticism
and also this entire industry of reading a
text in multiple ways.
This also draws our attention to many of the
things that the death of the author talks
about that the meaning of the text perhaps
does not inherently rest with the author anymore,
it is moved away from the author beyond redemption
to such an extent that even if the author
himself comes back author himself, or herself
comes back to look at a text he or she may
not be able to engage with a text in a fully
comprehensible way.
So, having said that on a more serious note
the significance of this essay death of the
author is is located at a very seminal point
because as we have noted before the publication
of this essay happens at a time during a transition
from the structuralist mode towards a poststructuralist
mode which is also a predominally postmodernist.
Though this essay predated much of contemporary
post modern theory we find that the this is
a seminal textual inaugural text when we begin
talking about postmodern critical approaches
and the Barthes in any case did not really
mean that the author had to be completely
thrown out because he also resurrects the
role of the author in the pleasure of the
text published in 1971.
So, may be in the death of the author the
intention of Barthes was to extend the meaning
and interpretation of the work of art to include
the interaction of the other texts in other
words the idea of intertextuality and also
the response of the reader as we would see
in the reader response criticism of the later
period.
And here we also see that Barthes manages
to put forward a series of ideas far more
important than whether the author is actually
dead or not.
So, the focus moves away from the author towards
various other things including contemporary
criticism, and also the renewed focus on the
reader being the final destination of any
reading process any literary text.
Having now looked at the entire essay the
death of the author let me also draw your
attention to the availability of this essay
online and this is a very short essay I strongly
encourage you to take a look at the essay
in original.
So, that this entire reading would also make
more sense to you the discussion any discussion
on the death of the author is not complete
until we take a look at Foucault's what is
an author.
So, in the next session we shall be proceeding
to a discussion of what is an author by Michel
Foucault we will also be taking a look at
how the poststructuralist mode of thinking
the poststructuralist mode of criticism had
tremendously influence the idea of postmodern
criticism and the emergence of postmodern
kind of a postmodern way of approaching literary
text and the contemporary this is all we have
for today.
Thank you for listening I look forward to
seeing you in the next session.
