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Paranoia

Death of the Author and the web identity crisis

Zachary Colbert spins a story of power and deceit brought to you via your computer.

In Death of the Author (1977), the French philosopher Roland Barthes introduces the idea that for a piece of work to be fully appreciated it must be understood in itself, completely separate from when, where and especially by whom it was created . “Writing is the destruction of every voice, of every point of origin” he says on p.143. The reader should not have any knowledge of the author’s identity, including their history, class, race, religion and political preferences, as these lead to preconceptions about the writing, and the reader may be encouraged to believe there is only one ‘correct’ translation of the text. To know the author is to know the source of the text and therefore expect a single definitive interpretation : “To give a text an Author is to impose a limit on that text, to furnish it with a final signified, to close the writing” (p.

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