Being perfectly honest, I found today's discussion very odd; however, I did feel like the discussion points out very well the theory behind The Death of An Author.
For an entire class (or two), we have struggled to define the "author", "autobiography", and "text". We, as a class of less than twenty, struggle with seemingly basic definitions. Everyone came with theories: the idea of analysis, the idea of language, and ideas concerning the nature of the billboard. In the end, each person in the class had a unique definition based on a number of factors: our upbringing, our culture, and our knowledge of history up to that point. The definition of "text" became an amalgamation of seemingly random (or not so random) cultural and historical factors.
Therefore when we apply the idea to the author, how is a reader supposed to gain a real grasp of the author when we apply this previous train of thought to sentences, paragraphs, or the novel? When doing the rhetorical analysis of a particular work,
a rationalization of a paragraph may make perfect sense to us in 2008 but when applied to the time this book was written, could this interpretation even make sense? A deeper look into the intricacies of the work may only yield a tighter, more exhaustive grasp of our proposed "theory" about the book but nothing to reassure that our sense of the author is any clearer. The author is now a collection of institutions that influence him or herself in logical yet unpredictable ways and whose conflicts manifests in words that are perfectly unique to him or herself.
Knowing this, I feel like I should admit my own helplessness when trying to understand any author and acknowledge the ambiguity inherent in any work.
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One can say that the concept of the author embellishes the social aspect more so than anything else. Does the determination of the author solely lie behind the perceptions and judgment of the reader? Is it up to society, to decide whether someone is an author or not? Or perhaps one can claim their own self to be the author themselves. Whether or not there is an answer to any of these questions, one has to understand that throughout history the “acceptance” of an author lies in the environment where the work has been produced. Every known author produces sentiment and pre-determined assumptions about them. But ultimately, it is up to the reader to create their own opinions; no one is the same as the other; therefore, no author is the same. This subjectivity to inevitable characterization of variance in qualities and ideals determines the author. Every author will convey different ideals in peoples and societies, that is what makes them authors.
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