The Death of the Author debate is way too blinkered in scope

[DomaDoma]

It is, in fact, the opposite which Barthes is interest in, to have a diversity of possible interpretations based on recognition of the work as a craft and meaning as a shared culture existence rather than treating authorial primacy as theology - Author-God - and reducing the academic discourse to searching through Shakespeare's diaries or Potok's memoirs to "What it all really means".

Barthes was explicit critiquing the common academic practices of his contemporaries, because it was stagnating the whole enterprise and erasing perspectives outside that singular aim.

And now, instead, we're using this credo to bathe every work in the light of contemporary politics. After all, what other "shared cultural existence" can there possibly be? (None at all, says Foucault: nothing is ever uttered but as part of a power struggle. There's a pretty good chance that he, not Barthes, is where it all went sour.)

To take a political example that's current, but not in vogue, for illumination purposes: We don't know the author of Beowulf, but we do know he had a pretty alien and ritualistic idea of the significance of gold, and immersion in Beowulf means aligning yourself, as far as you can, with that mentality. Interpreting Beowulf in the light of what contemporary doomsayers are saying about gold would be daft.