Death of an Author

DEATH OF AN AUTHOR - ROLAND BARTHES
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authors can have no supremacy over readers and that words can convey no meaning or intent other than what the reader experiences

(1) to the impotence of the author to control writing or the authorial experience and (2) to the power of the reader to be the determinate factor in defining the meaning of the textual discourse

Writing is that neutral, ... space ..., the negative where all identity is lost. This constitutes the entering into self-assimilation into a negative by the author: "the author enters into his own death, writing begins."

author as the object of prestige

the reader has the same access and the same ability to unite words that play to derive an original meaning on his own account

The author dies but the reader becomes supreme and invests meaning and intent.

life imitates the book that is drawn from the "dictionary ... that can know no halt," yet the book is a collection of letters and words that imitate signs, the reality behind which is "lost, infinitely deferred": thus meaning and intent can never be fixed, must always be variable and up to the reader to determine.

the meaning of a literary text is not limited to the Author's intent

The reader, the destination, is where the multiplicity (freedom) of a text's meaning is manifested. The reader(s) has the power to read the text in various ways;

As if the Author were a parent, the text his child and the Author spent his entire life being the Only influence on the text/child, therefore making it impossible for the child to grow or interact with others (readers)

he reader gives birth to a text by reading it. The reader liberates it (and him/herself

writing and creator are unrelated

"text is a tissue [or fabric] of quotations," drawn from "innumerable centers of culture," rather than from one, individual experience. The essential meaning of a work depends on the impressions of the reader, rather than the "passions" or "tastes" of the writer; "a text's unity lies not in its origins," or its creator, "but in its destination," or its audience.

a multi-dimensional space," which cannot be "deciphered," only "disentangled."