Barthes and The Author

Whilst I find Barthes’ argument to be persuasive, I also find it difficult to completely banish any notion of intentionalism from literary criticism. My intuitive impulse is to disagree with Barthes, however I am under no illusions that his incredibly influential essay must be influential for a reason. Trusting my instinct and realising that Barthes must almost certainly account for my opinion are difficult things to reconcile, however this post will document my attempt to do so.

The question of intentionalism appears to me to be at the heart of the debate surrounding Barthes’ argument. In approximately four pages Barthes believes he is able to dispel with the previously well founded notion that the Author “is thought to nourish the book, which is to say that he exists before it, thinks, suffers, lives for it, is in the same relation of antecedence to his work as a father to his child” (Barthes 222). The argument invites us to question how criticism functions, as Barthes believes the Author and Critic’s deaths to be simultaneous. Do we require a categorical framework for criticism? If so, what do we use to establish it?

Barthes argues that writing and the subject do not coexist, because writing is the “destruction of every voice, of every point of origin…that neutral, composite, oblique space where our subject slips away, the negative where all identity is lost” (221). The text is not an antecedent of the Author, but rather “a tissue of quotations drawn from the innumerable centres of culture” (223). In burying the Author thus, Barthes implicitly contests the principles of Romantic Intentionalism. By questioning the assumption that, no matter how deficient in quality or technique, an Author has a very clear idea of the meaning of his or her work, Barthes dispels with any need for attempting to ascertain the Author’s intention. I believe it to be true that a text can have meaning without any Authorial intention. Simply, that the meaning of a text can change with a typographical error suggests that the meaning of the text and the intent of the Author are not synonymous.

There are, as far as I can see, two philosophical grounds on which the death of the Author can be argued. The first is an epistemic argument, which states that no one can ever know anything about the Author’s state of mind, including the Author, and so intention and meaning bear no relation. The second is a metaphysical argument, which says that even if we could know anything about the Author’s state of mind, intention itself is ontologically ambiguous. Barthes’ argument seems to be more metaphysically based, suggesting that “a text is not a line of words releasing a single ‘theological’ meaning (the ‘message’ of the Author-God) but a multi-dimensional space in which a variety of writings, none of them original, blend and clash” (223).

The problem that I have with Barthes’ argument is its implications for criticism. His characterisation of criticism is very narrow. Today, criticism is a broad practice that involves a great deal more than simply attempting to ascertain the intention of the Author-God, and declaring victory upon its discovery. Criticism does not exist as the singular strand that Barthes implies. Similarly, his explication of textualism is possibly contradictory. The “tissue of quotations”, or a similar metaphor, is regularly used in explanations of intertextuality and adaptation, where the Author’s intention and context are but a small part of the innumerable intertexts that intersect in any work. To bury the Author is to suggest that their intention is not one of the many strands that form the tissue, which I find hard to comprehend.

It appears to me that a complete removal of intention is difficult, and unwanted. Barthes’ framework for criticism is to rebirth the reader, and allow him or her ultimate control of the text. The reader is “someone who holds together in a single field all the traces by which the written text is constituted” (Barthes 224), and as such, to determine the unity of the text, we must look to its destination rather than its origin. Having established this framework, Barthes feels no need to ever invoke the intention of the Author. There are instances, however, where Authorial intention is necessary to determine the meaning of the text. For example, irony that is not evident upon reading the primary text may be revealed with knowledge of the context in which the Author wrote, and the intent they possessed at the time of writing. Whilst this isn’t necessarily an argument for the reinstatement of the Author, it is an example of where the Author must necessarily still live in order to allow us to understand the unity of a text. Biography can occasionally be confined to historical context, and thus intent may remain separate from criticism, but this does not appear to be an adequate rule.

Ultimately, I was less concerned with my inability to adopt a finite position on this issue, because I don’t think there is one. Barthes’ argument is not invalid because there are examples of criticism where intention may be relevant. But by the same token, the Author does not appear to be dead yet. Barthes’ essay should serve to provoke us into different strands of criticism, and make us wary of any belief that the intention of the Author is the key to the meaning of a text. Provided that intentionalist criticism is approached with a healthy scepticism, our framework for criticism is only strengthened.

Works Cited

Barthes, Roland. "The Death of the Author." The Book History Reader. Ed. David Finkelstein and Alistair McCleery. London and New York: Routledge, 2002. 221-224.