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

    I finally pinned down why the “Death of the Author” debate annoys me so badly.

    Fundamentally, fiction is there to resonate with people, to give them an image of truth and humanity they're not liable to get in the daily grind.

    So, if you see Lothlorien as a miraculously-preserved but slowly-decaying Eden as Tolkien intended, that will probably reverberate in your heart. If you see the Shire as a communal hippie paradise, that’ll probably reverberate in your heart too, but adherence to truth would demand that you acknowledge that it’s your own application, not what the book is objectively about.

    Death of the Author seems to be more about saying that the author isn’t the unquestioned ecclesiastical authority on the book: your professor or favorite commentator is that authority. And that’s nonsense. Whether they love it or they just churn it out, authors have a necessary blind spot regarding their work, and can't fully predict the influence it'll have. Learned critics, meanwhile, have far less of a handle on their work than its author does (and the more their chosen grip on the work lines up with their favorite hobbyhorse issue, the more wrong they are liable to be). It’s an art, done by a flawed artist before a flawed audience. If it backfires entirely from what the author had in mind, it's not a well-done work. But beyond that, chance and misunderstanding and the occasional lurking subconscious happen to all books, and sometimes it's a good thing.

    As regards disagreements between the fans and the author about what actually happened: I’m a Sherlockian. My fandom is home of “Final Problem” and hundreds of clear-cut factual contradictions. As such, I say that the author is not to be tossed aside, but he can definitely be wrong. For a really clear-cut example: raise your hands if you think Harry Potter and the Cursed Child is canon.
    Last edited by DomaDoma; 2018-11-17 at 04:11 PM.
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    Default Re: The Death of the Author debate is way too blinkered in scope

    I agree, I don't like Death of the Author either. it does just seem to be a way to steal away authority over an author's work, and an author can be wrong while still having authority over their own work.
    I'm also on discord as "raziere".


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

    Death of the Author is.. one approach of literature criticism, but its hardly the only one. Its just is a useful point of view when interpreting the cultural impact of a work through the lense of its inferred symbolism.

    For example, Gene Roddenberry created Star Trek in the 60s. And after 20 years of fandom slow buildup, he managed to get a new series going; The Next Generation.

    Now, what fandom and the general public got out/inferred as a message from the original series differed a lot from what Roddenberry seemed to have intended in his original work. Sure, a lot of it coincided, but some of the worst moral failures of early TNG can be laid squarely a the feet of that disconnect.

    Alternatively, MovieBob made a great point about how certain fringes of internet political culture seem to have interpreted the Matrix as a call for generalized violence against the System (tm) where collateral is irrelevant because they are Sheople Maaaan. It was certainly not the Wachowski's sisters intent to create that sort of message, but a Death of the Author criticism of The Matrix could certainly highlight these tendencies.

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

    Quote Originally Posted by DomaDoma View Post
    Death of the Author seems to be more about saying that the author isn’t the unquestioned ecclesiastical authority on the book: your professor or favorite commentator is that authority.
    No.

    The fundamental idea of Death of the Author is that there cannot possibly be an unquestioned ecclesiastical authority on the book, not even its own author because every reader is a different person with different life experiences which will cause them to interpret things in the book in unique ways.

    The only authority is the book itself. Everything else is personal.

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

    Right, so before I get into this topic too much, I would like to make a request of most of the people who have posted or are planning on posting :

    Could you read the actual essay, The Death of the Author by Roland Barthes first?

    It's only 6 pages, one of which is the title, it's really not as dry as you'd think it is and it's available freely all over the internet. You'll get multiple pdf links from the first page of a search, and if you'd rather read just on an html page, that's available too. Not saying you're going to agree with it(although some of you might find you don't disagree with it as much as you think you do), nor that you're under any obligation to try and agree with it, but it will mean you're a bit better informed about what it is that you do or do not agree with.

    Yes I know, no one likes to do homework. But still if you're going argue about a literary theory it does help to have actually read original proposal of it
    Because if you do you'll know that this:
    Death of the Author seems to be more about saying that the author isn’t the unquestioned ecclesiastical authority on the book: your professor or favorite commentator is that authority.
    Is emphatically not what the theory is about. Or even close to what Barthes is saying in the essay. As such this is not really a point that needs to be argued, because it's a misunderstanding rather than a salient criticism of the theory.


    One thing I will address more directly though:
    critics, meanwhile, have far less of a handle on their work than its author does
    Now, while this might seem intuitive, even from an entirely pragmatic standpoint this assertion is actually kind of questionable. Because odds are someone who's spent a lot of time researching a novel, can have a more in-depth knowledge (or at least, a better memorised one) of the book's contents than the person who wrote it.
    That may seem weird, but in a lot of case most authors (or people who've created things generally) kind of stop thinking much about a work once they've finished it. Because once you've finished writing it, you're usually done with it and moving on to other things. This is not a secret, in fact even if you have no experience with creative writing you've probably at least heard of creators of long-running works turning to the fanbase for information regarding continuity, which happens for precisely this reason.
    Now, granted memorising the contents of a work and understanding that work are not the same thing, but if you're assuming having an accurate idea of a work's contents is useful for a better understanding of a work then yes, there are going to be times where a critic or academic (or even just a fan) will have a better handle on the work than it's creator does. Not every time, but enough times that the quoted position stops being accurate.

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

    So generally I have always leaned towards authorial intent as, if not the end all be all, at least the strongest of any opinions regarding a work and this is especially true when it makes sense in the context of the work as opposed to being totally against it. Such as Dumbledore being gay, it makes perfect sense in the context of the series. After reading the seventh book I had already had my strong suspicions anyways and it was nice to have confirmation. But I also think that people like George Lucas or JK Rowling can easily forfeit this when they decided to keep mucking about and changing their minds. Once the author decides to start changing things all bets are off, Han shot first, and Nagini is a gosh darned snake not some random Korean lady.
    And cursed child is in no way shape or form cannon.

    Quote Originally Posted by Mr.Silver View Post
    Is emphatically not what the theory is about. Or even close to what Barthes is saying in the essay. As such this is not really a point that needs to be argued, because it's a misunderstanding rather than a salient criticism of the theory.
    If half the people I see arguing for or defending the theory seem to be saying that exact thing despite it not being the point of the essay in question, is that the ironic death of the author of the essay?
    Last edited by Dragonus45; 2018-11-17 at 06:21 PM.
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    Default Re: The Death of the Author debate is way too blinkered in scope

    Quote Originally Posted by Dragonus45 View Post
    So generally I have always leaned towards authorial intent as, if not the end all be all, at least the strongest of any opinions regarding a work and this is especially true when it makes sense in the context of the work as opposed to being totally against it. Such as Dumbledore being gay, it makes perfect sense in the context of the series. After reading the seventh book I had already had my strong suspicions anyways and it was nice to have confirmation. But I also think that people like George Lucas or JK Rowling can easily forfeit this when they decided to keep mucking about and changing their minds. Once the author decides to start changing things all bets are off, Han shot first, and Nagini is a gosh darned snake not some random Korean lady.
    And cursed child is in no way shape or form cannon.



    If half the people I see arguing for or defending the theory seem to be saying that exact thing despite it not being the point of the essay in question, is that the ironic death of the author of the essay?
    But those things you mentioned aren't author interpretations. Author interpretation is about character thoughts and story meaning. Things like Who shot first and such are facts of the story that the author has complete control over. Like them or hate them, they are at the sole control of the creator.

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

    Quote Originally Posted by Dragonus45 View Post
    If half the people I see arguing for or defending the theory seem to be saying that exact thing despite it not being the point of the essay in question, is that the ironic death of the author of the essay?
    It depends if they've actually read the essay in the first place (because most people haven't), and also depends on whether they actually mean to be saying that (note that both you and Doma have used 'seems'*) - in which case that's possibly a Death of the Author point on their own arguments but maybe not the essay itself.


    *or, and I'm trying to put this as neutrally as I can here, whether the assumption that they are saying that is accurate in the first place. Internet arguments don't always lend themselves to 'charitable and due consideration of opposing viewpoints' after all

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

    First things first - there's already plenty of literary theory about the interpretation of the text being inherently a matter of where the text meets the experiences of the reader. There's even a whole analytical lens literally called reader response which is exactly that, and it's entirely compatible with Death of the Author, if not with other theories also compatible with Death of the Author.

    As for the idea that a professor or favorite commentator is the definitive source, that's just not how accademia works. It's all shifting conversations and building on older models and adding new nuances; the appearance of definitive sources is usually just a matter of looking at high level overviews without getting into the weeds, because the weeds are a lot less definitive as a rule.
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    Default Re: The Death of the Author debate is way too blinkered in scope

    Quote Originally Posted by GloatingSwine View Post
    No.

    The fundamental idea of Death of the Author is that there cannot possibly be an unquestioned ecclesiastical authority on the book, not even its own author because every reader is a different person with different life experiences which will cause them to interpret things in the book in unique ways.

    The only authority is the book itself. Everything else is personal.
    Not necessarily, it's also possible to misread the text of a book. Interpretations gained that way can be just as valid.

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

    Quote Originally Posted by Jothki View Post
    Not necessarily, it's also possible to misread the text of a book. Interpretations gained that way can be just as valid.
    The absence of a single right answer and a single authority on the right answer in no way precludes interpretations that are just wrong.
    I would really like to see a game made by Obryn, Kurald Galain, and Knaight from these forums.

    I'm not joking one bit. I would buy the hell out of that.
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    Default Re: The Death of the Author debate is way too blinkered in scope

    The issue with that is that you're misunderstanding 'Death of the Author' It's not about the critic or professor or the Author. It's literally saying 'Just because the author is alive and has an opinion, doesn't change the content of the book. Pretend he or she is dead.'

    It's telling you to examine the book WITHOUT looking at thing outside the text for context.
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    Default Re: The Death of the Author debate is way too blinkered in scope

    How many works function without context outside themselves? You can't understand half of Uncle Tom's Cabin without a basic grounding in Christianity (ideally one that knows the significance of Methodism in the nineteenth century). Clifford the Big Red Dog requires a working knowledge of regular proportions. Even that one wretched professor of mine who thought The Tempest was about colonialism in the Caribbean had to supply an outside context to make that point.

    Nah. The wholesale silencing of the author in particular is completely arbitrary. Not to mention unnecessary. I have my personal application for the finale to Little Shop of Horrors, and it's enriched my perspective on the world. I find no damage is done by admitting that it is a personal application.
    Last edited by DomaDoma; 2018-11-17 at 10:54 PM.
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    Default Re: The Death of the Author debate is way too blinkered in scope

    Quote Originally Posted by DomaDoma View Post
    How many works function without things outside their own context? You can't understand half of Uncle Tom's Cabin without a basic grounding in Christianity (ideally one that knows the significance of Methodism in the nineteenth century). Clifford the Big Red Dog requires a working knowledge of regular proportions. Even that one wretched professor of mine who thought The Tempest was about colonialism in the Caribbean had to supply an outside context to make that point.

    Nah. The wholesale silencing of the author in particular is completely arbitrary. Not to mention unnecessary. I have my personal application for the finale to Little Shop of Horrors, and it's enriched my perspective on the world. I find no damage is done by admitting that it is a personal application.
    He phrased it poorly. It would be better stated that you shouldn't give undue weight to the opinion of the author just because he put the thing to text.

    Ray Bradbury may have been thinking about his perceived dangers of TV and radio when he wrote Fahrenheit 451, but that doesn't mean the warnings about censorship aren't there, or that the TV-critical aspects aren't fairly weak by comparison, for example.
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    Default Re: The Death of the Author debate is way too blinkered in scope

    Quote Originally Posted by DomaDoma View Post
    Even that one wretched professor of mine who thought The Tempest was about colonialism in the Caribbean had to supply an outside context to make that point.
    Did he actually assign "Caliban and the Witch," or just crib shamelessly?

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

    If I had to sum up Fahrenheit 451, it would be "a world without introspection." As to Bradbury - he was very keen on the censorship aspects of it soon after writing it, and very keen on the parlor walls late in life. Until Hunger Games made it commercial, dystopia was always about something disquieting that the author saw in the bud all around him, and so I daresay it's a useful bit of context. Not to be held as the absolute encapsulation of the novel (no good novel can be so encapsulated anyway), but definitely not something to clap your ears against just because the author said it.

    Zimmerwald: She did not assign "Caliban and the Witch", so I guess she cribbed.
    Last edited by DomaDoma; 2018-11-17 at 11:09 PM.
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    Default Re: The Death of the Author debate is way too blinkered in scope

    Death of the Author is, in its essence, the way literary criticism can exists at all as an academic pursuit.

    It's not a way to say "my interpretation is right because subjectivity is king" it's "we can only go so far in studying a work of art based off the biographies of artists and half-baked psychological analysis. so lets use the other resources we have available to us to make this a meaningful venture in the long run". That, whatever one's intent is they can't purely reproduce it within a text, because writing is an art which has its own rules and conventions and even words themselves are barriers on expressing thoughts with ideal perfection. That it is, ultimately, easier to compare texts to one another in their own kind of microcosm, one where we see countless similarities in styles, reference points, structure, and concepts -- no book is an island onto itself. Rather than comparing actual people, who we can't psychically glean information from and are not trained to do as literary critics -- especially if said author has literally died or we have no Earthly idea who they actually are. To be a study of literature, as it were.

    Death of the Author being appropriated for arguments in fandoms and casual forum discussions where it's widely misinterpreted to mean whatever you want has given it a waxy coating of self-indulgence. Which I guess it would be ironic, except it's not poetics or prose fiction, it's an essay with a formal argument - made pretty well, it convinced me - that just got reduced to a meme.

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

    Comparing books in this way seems to add up to much less than the sum of its parts. Comparing and contrasting what everyone had to say about Jews, if not primarily a supplement to history, is far inferior in terms of a human education to examining what Shakespeare or Potok had to say about Jews. At best, it's a guide to craft; at worst, it's mere cataloging.

    As to words: an imperfect conduit for meaning, but without question the best one we have. Call language a barrier, and you may as well give over writing altogether - which, let us note, is something the adherents of Baudrillard et al will never, ever do.
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    Default Re: The Death of the Author debate is way too blinkered in scope

    Quote Originally Posted by DomaDoma View Post
    Comparing books in this way seems to add up to much less than the sum of its parts. Comparing and contrasting what everyone had to say about Jews, if not primarily a supplement to history, is far inferior in terms of a human education to examining what Shakespeare or Potok had to say about Jews. At best, it's a guide to craft; at worst, it's mere cataloging..
    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.

    Quote Originally Posted by DomaDoma View Post
    As to words: an imperfect conduit for meaning, but without question the best one we have. Call language a barrier, and you may as well give over writing altogether - which, let us note, is something the adherents of Baudrillard et al will never, ever do.
    Or you could just not reduce it to a radical binary. Word are imperfect, but beyond that you don't possess ownership of them. Take, for instance, the Holy Bible out of the core of Western Civilization - to render it meaningless - a lot of the core Western canon becomes simply nonsensical in what is the most common reference point for centuries of poets and writers. Words rests outside of ourselves, Meaning rests outside of ourselves. Not absolutely, but enough of it does that it's impossible to stand alone, we borrow too much and rely on the reader to share this recognition.

    You also have to accept that not everything will have Meaning, just as - regardless of how uniquely designed - the architecture of a building ultimately has to support its weight against time and gravity, poems and prose has similar demands by their nature.

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

    The thing is that people don't always know what they think and feel, and not everything an author puts into a text is being put there deliberately. When we form an opinion of something, we don't have thought the subject through to its complete extend. When we make an argument for something, it happens all the time that someone mentions a fact that we knew but did not consider when making our argument, and we accept that what we really should not do what we just proposed.
    When we think about a subject, we regularly stop thinking about it once we've come to something that seems like a satisfying answer. We don't continue to think about it until all other known factors have also been taken into consideration.

    And I think that this is the reason for texts having meanings that are put there by the author without the author being aware of it. And we also all have opinions and beliefs that we refuse to admit, even to ourselves, because there are logical conflicts between our various views and values. And instead of refining our beliefs until everything fits, our brains just pretend there is no such conflict.

    If you think a text makes an implication and the author states that he did not intend for that implication, nor approves of it, it doesn't mean the implication is not there.
    Classic example, every statement that includes "I am not racist, but...". Even if we belief that having prejudices is bad, we still have prejudices. And when our brain discovers such a logical conflict, it just emotionally refuses to aknowledge it most of the time, instead of going into a long rational analysis that reconsiders all our values and opinions.

    And looking at texts this way is useful because it gives us insights into the unconscious beliefs that exist in the population about a given subject. If the author is thinking it, consciously or unconsciously, then many other peole will think it as well.

    (Though I admit all this heavily overlaps with deconstruction.)
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    Default Re: The Death of the Author debate is way too blinkered in scope

    In a recent episode of Renegade Cut - which I'll post here - Leon Thomas goes over the way homosexuality has been represented (or not) within the horror movie genre, specifically looking at A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy's Revenge which has some pretty heavy homoerotic subtext to it that's transparent in retrospect (edit: and, at the time, really). This was in the script, but was magnified by choices in the production, including the main character who was portrayed by a closeted gay actor that actively resented it because it would typecast him as gay characters and led to immense emotional stress on his part.

    Point being, a fairly light critical reading of the movie can see the gay themes and how they're creatively integrated into the horror scenario with the hero being possessed by another man whose literally inside him that does increasingly sexually suggestive forms of torture while the clueless, disapproving parents look on-- among other things. However, if you subscribe to authorial intent as Author God then no, the writer and studio denied these exists - I can't think of any reason why - and simply blamed the actor for playing his role "too gay" for your misreading. So that's that. Case closed, good day sir.

    Until 2010, where, yeah, it totally was intentional according to the writer. So, the truth and the meaning of the work have been re-decided, I guess.
    Last edited by Kitten Champion; 2018-11-18 at 03:54 AM.

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

    Quote Originally Posted by Kitten Champion View Post
    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.
    Last edited by DomaDoma; 2018-11-18 at 07:06 AM.
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    Default Re: The Death of the Author debate is way too blinkered in scope

    Quote Originally Posted by DomaDoma View Post
    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.
    If you just ignore some large and well established movements (e.g. New Historicism), pretty much the entire approach of classics scholars, and a whole lot of other academic activity this works out to a reasonable summary. Otherwise this is just inaccurate.
    I would really like to see a game made by Obryn, Kurald Galain, and Knaight from these forums.

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

    New Historicism holds that every author is a puppet of his time. Thus, implicitly, the New Historicist dances on the strings of his own time, and is compelled to look down his nose at the works of the nineteenth century because they were dancing on strings marked "Industry" and "Propriety" and "Piety", which (by happenstance of an impersonal Marxian evolution) are no longer in use.

    That kind of futility - doubling as a subtler way of letting contemporary politics rule the discussion - may require education to instill, but if there's any good it does the educated, it quite escapes me.

    Classicism is better, but VERY unpopular with its proponents' colleagues at the moment.
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    Default Re: The Death of the Author debate is way too blinkered in scope

    Quote Originally Posted by druid91 View Post
    The issue with that is that you're misunderstanding 'Death of the Author' It's not about the critic or professor or the Author. It's literally saying 'Just because the author is alive and has an opinion, doesn't change the content of the book. Pretend he or she is dead.'

    It's telling you to examine the book WITHOUT looking at thing outside the text for context.
    I'm not sure I agree this is a good summary if "death of the author", but taken at face value, yeah, it' s crap.

    To be blunt: any text without outside context is just a meaningless string of letters. Even the knowledge of the language that the text nominally is written in needs to come from outside the text. Asking the author for clarification is the common sense first step because that's how we'd do in every other field of communication if at all possible. Willfully ignoring a living author is just being willfully stupid.
    "It's the fate of all things under the sky,
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    Default Re: The Death of the Author debate is way too blinkered in scope

    Quote Originally Posted by Frozen_Feet View Post
    I'm not sure I agree this is a good summary if "death of the author", but taken at face value, yeah, it' s crap.

    To be blunt: any text without outside context is just a meaningless string of letters. Even the knowledge of the language that the text nominally is written in needs to come from outside the text. Asking the author for clarification is the common sense first step because that's how we'd do in every other field of communication if at all possible. Willfully ignoring a living author is just being willfully stupid.
    Only if your intent is to read the author rather than the book. If you're using the book as an imperfect window into the authors thoughts on something, then yes. You should totally speak with the author. If your intent is to, instead, read the book. Then speaking with the author can only muddle the waters.

    The problem is that people take knowledge of the author and use that knowledge to excuse poorly written books.

    Quote Originally Posted by DomaDoma View Post
    How many works function without context outside themselves? You can't understand half of Uncle Tom's Cabin without a basic grounding in Christianity (ideally one that knows the significance of Methodism in the nineteenth century). Clifford the Big Red Dog requires a working knowledge of regular proportions. Even that one wretched professor of mine who thought The Tempest was about colonialism in the Caribbean had to supply an outside context to make that point.

    Nah. The wholesale silencing of the author in particular is completely arbitrary. Not to mention unnecessary. I have my personal application for the finale to Little Shop of Horrors, and it's enriched my perspective on the world. I find no damage is done by admitting that it is a personal application.
    Then they were poorly written books, or poor interpretations of those books. The only thing you should require to understand a book is maybe a dictionary. That's it.
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    Quote Originally Posted by AvatarZero View Post
    I like the "hobo" in there.
    "Hey, you just got 10000gp! You going to buy a fully staffed mansion or something?"
    "Nah, I'll upgrade my +2 sword to a +3 sword and sleep in my cloak."

    Non est salvatori salvator, neque defensori dominus, nec pater nec mater, nihil supernum.

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

    Quote Originally Posted by druid91 View Post
    Only if your intent is to read the author rather than the book. If you're using the book as an imperfect window into the authors thoughts on something, then yes. You should totally speak with the author. If your intent is to, instead, read the book. Then speaking with the author can only muddle the waters.

    The problem is that people take knowledge of the author and use that knowledge to excuse poorly written books.
    You are conflating speaking with an author with speaking about an author.

    Each piece of legible text is a message, it is an attempt by the author to convey information. The information may be anything, but usually knowing the author's intent makes the information clearer.

    Quote Originally Posted by druid91
    Then they were poorly written books, or poor interpretations of those books. The only thing you should require to understand a book is maybe a dictionary. That's it.
    Language does not work that way. Human experience in general does not work that way. Each piece of text is in essence an encrypted message, and to decrypt the message you need a key formed out of shared language, shared culture and shared experience.

    Merely not having such a key cannot be used as a deciding factor for the quality of message.
    "It's the fate of all things under the sky,
    to grow old and wither and die."

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

    Quote Originally Posted by Frozen_Feet View Post
    You are conflating speaking with an author with speaking about an author.

    Each piece of legible text is a message, it is an attempt by the author to convey information. The information may be anything, but usually knowing the author's intent makes the information clearer.
    What the author meant to say and what they actually said are separate things though.

    The text is the thing they actually said. It is the only thing that is necessary.

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

    Quote Originally Posted by Frozen_Feet View Post
    You are conflating speaking with an author with speaking about an author.

    Each piece of legible text is a message, it is an attempt by the author to convey information. The information may be anything, but usually knowing the author's intent makes the information clearer.



    Language does not work that way. Human experience in general does not work that way. Each piece of text is in essence an encrypted message, and to decrypt the message you need a key formed out of shared language, shared culture and shared experience.

    Merely not having such a key cannot be used as a deciding factor for the quality of message.
    Not really. I fundementally disagree with both of these assertions.

    If I am a madman and I intend to convey the message that 'The Color Blue is Magical and if you paint yourself blue you will be able to fly and conjure money from thin air' and I write a book that turns out to be a fairly decent read on the history of oil paints and their invention. Speaking with me about my intent when writing the book will not only be utterly useless, but actively hinder your understanding of the text. Knowing the Author's intent of what they meant to say is irrelevant and entirely separate from what was actually said. If you are studying or discussing what was actually said, then what was intended to be said is not the subject and so nothing more than a red herring.


    So you're saying it's impossible to derive meaning from a text in which you do not share a culture with the writer? That's patently ridiculous. Millions of people don't share a culture with shakespeare, and yet still find meaning in his works. Millions of people don't share a culture with any given author and yet they can still enjoy the books.
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    Quote Originally Posted by AvatarZero View Post
    I like the "hobo" in there.
    "Hey, you just got 10000gp! You going to buy a fully staffed mansion or something?"
    "Nah, I'll upgrade my +2 sword to a +3 sword and sleep in my cloak."

    Non est salvatori salvator, neque defensori dominus, nec pater nec mater, nihil supernum.

    Torumekian knight Avatar by Licoot.

    Note to self: Never get involved in an ethics thread again...Especially if I'm defending the empire.

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

    Quote Originally Posted by GloatingSwine View Post
    What the author meant to say and what they actually said are separate things though.

    The text is the thing they actually said. It is the only thing that is necessary.
    No, the text never exists in a vacuum, it didn't burst into existence fully formed. A person wrote it, that person and their life and informs every aspect of it. They are the ones with the final say about, well, what they actually said.
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