Roland Barthes, The death of the author
It is not the author but language that speaks. Analysis of text needs to explore writing and writing structures rather than a speaking voice, a self. Detaching writing from a source releases the text from an anchor, an author's intention. Weight shift to a (general) reader, and an indefinite range of possible readings is opened. Writing - the destruction of every voice, every point of origin. The Author dies in the moment of writing. As soon as a fact is narrated - no longer with a view to acting directly on reality but intransitively, outside function, the disconnection occurs - the voice loses its origin, the author enters his own death and writing begins. The author is never more than the instance writing: the "I" in a text is a single instance of saying "I", it denotes a subject (a. syntactic position) rather than an individual, a person. Its referent is irrelevant (as well as inaccessible) to comprehending its function and meaning in the writing. Writing performs rather than documents. The Author is always in the past of the text; whereas the Writer is simultaneous with it. Writing always occurs now, in the act of reading it, enunciating it, unpacking its structure. There is no single theological meaning but a space in which a variety of writings blend and clash. A tissue of ambiguous meanings, puns, paradoxes, contradictory quotations to be detected rather than solved. Assigning the text an author is equal to imposing a limit/an anchor/closure on this mesh. In the multiplicity of writing - everything is to be disentangled rather than deciphered. The structure is to be followed at every point, rather than reduced to a single angle. The unity of a text is in its destination - the reader; though the reader too is inscribed, not personal. Hence, the birth of reader begins with the death of the author [Fonte di questo abstract: http://www.deathoftheauthor.com/]
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