In today’s COP seminar we were introduced to a seminal text
written by the French philosopher Roland Barthes in 1968 entitled ‘The Death of
the Author’. In the session, we read through the text with Richard to get a
good grasp on the content and a general overview of the issues being discussed.
At first, I was a bit overwhelmed by the topics being debated in the text and
the formal lexis being used, but after Richard had clarified a few points I was
able to get quite a good basic level of understanding of the content. Here are
a few interesting things that I took away from reading the article in depth:
·
Barthes is fundamentally a post-structuralist
philosopher, which means he rejects ideas laid down by structuralist thinkers.
Post-structuralism is defined by its coming after structuralism, an
intellectual movement developed in Europe from the early to mid-20th century.
It argued that human culture may be understood by means of a structure—modelled
on language (i.e., structural linguistics)—that differs from concrete reality
and from abstract ideas—a "third order" that mediates between the
two. Post-structuralist authors all present different critiques of
structuralism, but common themes include the rejection of the self-sufficiency
of the structures that structuralism posits and an interrogation of the binary
oppositions that constitute those structures.
·
The text was written during a significant point
in Western culture. There were lots of revolutions attempting to take off in
the late 60’s, especially in France. Students and workers attempted to stand up
to the ‘higher powers’. The uprising was unsuccessful, but it paved the way for
the sexual revolution in America. The ‘Death of the Author’ is a significant
text to come out of this period.
·
Auteur theory - This quite abstract theory aims to explain the relationship between the author/creator of a piece of cultural text and the audience. It suggests that if you can understand the signature style and personal opinions of the director/author/creator then you will be able to understand the central meaning of the specific work. A key example would be Van Gogh's painterly style, which is often interpreted as a reflection of his inner turmoil, angst and utter madness that he experiences within himself and towards the world he saw around him.
We were then asked to analyse the text in greater depth in
small groups. My group was allocated the word ‘technology’. Our task was to
find key quotations from within the text and analyse them in depth. We also had
to find a way of relating the key quotes back to the context of graphic design
culture and history. The first significant quote we picked up on is as follows:
“The removal of the Author (one could talk here with Brecht of a veritable
‘distancing’, the Author diminishing like a figurine at the far end of the
literary stage) is not merely an historical fact or an act of writing; it
utterly transforms the modern text (or – which is the same thing – the text is
henceforth made and read in such a way that at all its levels the author is absent.
The temporality is different.
Summary of technology:
When this text was written in the 1960s, mass media was only
just coming into its own. Information in text was still pretty difficult to
attain if you didn’t have the means to access it. For example, if you didn’t
live near a library or have a book collection of your own, finding information
in books was not exactly a straight forward task. Back then you actively had to
go out and seek the information. Newspapers and magazines were being printed on
larger scales, but even so, if you didn’t have much money or came from a
disadvantaged background it was challenging to access the information. Nowadays,
information is literally everywhere and is pretty much accessible by everyone.
The internet has facilitated this. We are living in the information age, and
the quote from Barthes stating ‘the removal of the author is not merely an
historical fact or an act of writing; it utterly transforms the modern text’
couldn’t be more relevant or prominent to the current age. Text, image and
music found on the internet is always difficult to fully appreciate because you
are never 100% sure on who the author truly is. Online journalism for example,
should always be viewed in a subjective stance, because as a reader, you have
no relationship with the author. The cyber world has warped the concept of an
author to a certain extent. The author/reader relationship has fundamentally
changed. Take Wikipedia for example. Articles found on this site are more often
than not edited by multiple authors, resulting in a body of text that contains
mismatching facts and statistics and so on. It is becoming more and more
difficult for the ‘reader/consumer’ of the information to have a relationship
with the ‘author’
Barthes, R (1968) Image, Music, Text/The Death of the
Author, London, Fontana Press, Pages 142-148
No comments:
Post a Comment