Roland Barthes declared the ‘death of the author’, but postcolonial critics have begged to differ

In 1967, French literary and cultural critic Roland Barthes published a short essay that would have far-reaching influence. Titled “The Death of the Author”, the essay argued that, for the purposes of interpretation, the intention of the author is irrelevant, even stifling.

In asserting that the author is irrelevant to the act of interpretation, Barthes put in play a wealth of interpretive possibilities. As he put it in the essay’s closing line, “to give writing its future, it is necessary to overthrow the myth: the birth of the reader must be at the cost of the death of the Author”.

To write, according to Barthes, is to enter into language, inscribe oneself in its symbolic space and, in doing so, efface oneself. He initially presents the resulting disconnection between author, text and reader as universal:

“No doubt it has always been that way. As soon as a fact is narrated no longer with a view to acting directly on reality but intransitively, that is to say, finally outside of any function other than that of the very practice of the symbol itself, this disconnection occurs, the voice loses its origin, the author enters into his own death, writing begins.”

The idea that authors do not lend texts their exclusive meaning...

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