"You only wrote this, I actually read it"

[Drathnoxis]

The author carefully chooses every word, and every idea in their work. It's a laborious process. The idea that there are themes the author is unaware of is, I think, untrue. Instead what we have is an audience reading too much into things, or misinterpreting information. Which is fine. But when they try to assert their interpretation over the authors, then they are truly arrogant. I see no arrogance in an artist claiming to understand something they themselves created.

I largely agree that most things are relative, but if you take that concept too far then it becomes impossible for any work of art to really mean anything. Art becomes nothing more then a mirror that reflects your own ideas.

Oh come on, you've never written something, then read it later and realized it doesn't actually imply what you thought you were implying at the time?

And what about people that write by the seat of their pants, like Akira Toriyama? You don't think that he never wrote a meaning to a character or event without fully being aware of it?

Spoiler: I think this video provides a pretty convincing argument that he did.

I think the end of this video provides a pretty convincing argument that he did.

Or what about a work that an author wrote twenty, thirty, forty+ years ago and hasn't looked at since? You don't think their interpretation could be muddled by experiences they've had since they finished writing it, or by things they've forgotten? Again, I remember people talking about an interview Toriyama had where he had forgotten that the Piccolo in the later arcs was not the same Piccolo that had initially conquered the world. Stuff like that would completely change the interpretation of the character.

I think it's very improbable that a writer will remember their exact intentions for every part of a story decades later, and many authors come to dislike their earlier work. So why should their imperfect interpretation be any more valid than somebody who has been rereading and analyzing the work for a decade?

Saying that an author knows the definitive meaning of their work, now and forever, is just too much for me to buy.

 

[DoPo]

What sticks in my mind in the version I heard is that after Vonnegut read the teacher's comments, he looked up at his nephew and said "Holy shit! He's right!"...which just seems like a very Kurt Vonnegut thing to do.

Oh, this is good. Indeed very Vonnegut-like

 

[chikusho]

Ahh the "death of author" fallacy.

Yup, I said fallacy because it's bunk. Pure, unadulterated garbage and people using it as an explanation are deluding themselves.

See, here's the thing, literary works fall in the realm of art for a very good reason. They are subjective and open to interpretation. Despite that your interpretation of a work is different from an author's does not erase their intent and interpretation. Neither you nor the author are wrong. It might be flawed which opens itself to further analysis but which is "right" and "wrong" is trying to apply an objective response to a subjective work.

First, you say that the "death of the author" is "pure unadulterated garbage"... And then you describe how it really is by using the definition of the death of the author ... What?

 

[Thurston]

My favourite example is Jack Chick tracts. Mr. Chick's intent is to warn of us of the imminent dangers to our immortal soul. What I get from it is that Jack Chick is a horribly misinformed paranoid delusional conspiracy-theory racist.

 

[FalloutJack]

Of course, no reader has the actual right to do that, but unfortunately this has been happening since...well...religious texts all over the world became a thing.

 

[LordLundar]

Ahh the "death of author" fallacy.

Yup, I said fallacy because it's bunk. Pure, unadulterated garbage and people using it as an explanation are deluding themselves.

See, here's the thing, literary works fall in the realm of art for a very good reason. They are subjective and open to interpretation. Despite that your interpretation of a work is different from an author's does not erase their intent and interpretation. Neither you nor the author are wrong. It might be flawed which opens itself to further analysis but which is "right" and "wrong" is trying to apply an objective response to a subjective work.

First, you say that the "death of the author" is "pure unadulterated garbage"... And then you describe how it really is by using the definition of the death of the author ... What?

Read it again. I said that having a different interpretation does not erase the original intent or interpretation. "Death of the Author" tries to do exactly that by trying to assign only one interpretation that cannot be challenged. Or did I really need to spell it out that directly?

 

[briankoontz]

This doesn't just apply to art - this is a function of all communication. So when you say something in a conversation it means something to you, but the listener might interpret it in some other way entirely.

Or, alternatively, we could say that all communication is art.

 

[chikusho]

Read it again. I said that having a different interpretation does not erase the original intent or interpretation. "Death of the Author" tries to do exactly that by trying to assign only one interpretation that cannot be challenged. Or did I really need to spell it out that directly?

In that case, I don't think you know what the death of the author theory means. What it means is that the authors intentions do not matter; only the work itself can be judged. That doesn't invalidate the authors own interpretation. You just can't or shouldn't take it into account when reading and interpreting it yourself.

And there are plenty of good reasons for this, with the most apparent and obvious being: it's literally impossible to know what the authors intentions were. Even in cases where the author explicitly tells you, there's no way to know whether or not their statements or explanations are true.

 

[maninahat]

I like death of the author theory, even if the authors themselves might find it exasperating. To an extent, all literacy criticism becomes redundant if we slavishly have to agree with the author's interpretation of their own work, and I'd rather not have some writer deciding for me the implications of a goddamn story.

 

[Fox12]

Read it again. I said that having a different interpretation does not erase the original intent or interpretation. "Death of the Author" tries to do exactly that by trying to assign only one interpretation that cannot be challenged. Or did I really need to spell it out that directly?

In that case, I don't think you know what the death of the author theory means. What it means is that the authors intentions do not matter; only the work itself can be judged. That doesn't invalidate the authors own interpretation. You just can't or shouldn't take it into account when reading and interpreting it yourself.

And there are plenty of good reasons for this, with the most apparent and obvious being: it's literally impossible to know what the authors intentions were. Even in cases where the author explicitly tells you, there's no way to know whether or not their statements or explanations are true.

But this where the whole argument comes apart at the seams. Art doesn't exist in a vacuum. You can read Dante's Inferno, and appreciate it by itself. But it's literally impossible to fully appreciate it unless you research the actual author, and the politics of the Catholic Church and Italy. You can't research the text itself, and discount important outside influences. The authors intentions are paramount in this case, because the author himself is both the narrator and the protagonist. They are inseparable. It throws out important aspects of literary criticism for the sake of subjectivity. But this type of subjectivity could never produce the kind of literary scholarships that other methods have.

 

[DoPo]

Ahh the "death of author" fallacy.

Yup, I said fallacy because it's bunk. Pure, unadulterated garbage and people using it as an explanation are deluding themselves.

See, here's the thing, literary works fall in the realm of art for a very good reason. They are subjective and open to interpretation. Despite that your interpretation of a work is different from an author's does not erase their intent and interpretation. Neither you nor the author are wrong. It might be flawed which opens itself to further analysis but which is "right" and "wrong" is trying to apply an objective response to a subjective work.

First, you say that the "death of the author" is "pure unadulterated garbage"... And then you describe how it really is by using the definition of the death of the author ... What?

Read it again. I said that having a different interpretation does not erase the original intent or interpretation. "Death of the Author" tries to do exactly that by trying to assign only one interpretation that cannot be challenged. Or did I really need to spell it out that directly?

How did what you said not relate to exactly what Death of the Author is? And how is Death of the Author trying to assign only one interpretation? This is exactly the opposite of what the essay suggests - it claims, and I quote,

To give an Author to a text is to impose upon that text a stop clause, to furnish it with a final signification, to close the writing.

it explicitly argues against having a single interpretation of the work and against that single interpretation being the actual author themselves.

 

[chikusho]

But this where the whole argument comes apart at the seams. Art doesn't exist in a vacuum. You can read Dante's Inferno, and appreciate it by itself. But it's literally impossible to fully appreciate it unless you research the actual author, and the politics of the Catholic Church and Italy. You can't research the text itself, and discount important outside influences. The authors intentions are paramount in this case, because the author himself is both the narrator and the protagonist. They are inseparable. It throws out important aspects of literary criticism for the sake of subjectivity. But this type of subjectivity could never produce the kind of literary scholarships that other methods have.

No, art doesn't exist in a vacuum, it's literally being created as it's being consumed. You can research the author, you can research the history and the times and the politics all you want; it will still be a subjective experience based solely and exclusively within the consumer. The only way an authors true intentions can ever be known is if we can somehow record and play back the neurons firing when the work is created - anything and everything outside of that is nothing more than conjecture.

 

[Fox12]

But this where the whole argument comes apart at the seams. Art doesn't exist in a vacuum. You can read Dante's Inferno, and appreciate it by itself. But it's literally impossible to fully appreciate it unless you research the actual author, and the politics of the Catholic Church and Italy. You can't research the text itself, and discount important outside influences. The authors intentions are paramount in this case, because the author himself is both the narrator and the protagonist. They are inseparable. It throws out important aspects of literary criticism for the sake of subjectivity. But this type of subjectivity could never produce the kind of literary scholarships that other methods have.

No, art doesn't exist in a vacuum, it's literally being created as it's being consumed. You can research the author, you can research the history and the times and the politics all you want; it will still be a subjective experience based solely and exclusively within the consumer. The only way an authors true intentions can ever be known is if we can somehow record and play back the neurons firing when the work is created - anything and everything outside of that is nothing more than conjecture.

No, it's not "created as its consumed." Only someone who doesn't understand the process of making art can think that way. This is because the consumer is ignorant of future events the first time they read a book. However, those future events are determined, and can't be altered, regardless of how the consumer feels. It already exists as a certainty. It's more accurate to say that it all exists simultaneously. Past and future events exist simultaneously within the work, informing each other. You have to look at the entire work as a whole to appreciate it. This is because all points of time within the work exist simultaneously, even if you are unaware of it. As an example, go research eternalism.

As for discounting authorial intent, you can't do that when the entire story is built around the author, like in Dante's Inferno. They don't exist as separate entities, and to study the Divine Comedy without studying Dante is an exercise in futility. Your whole argument falls apart around this single example. How do you expect to understand a work of art, if that art is heavily tied to the actual writer? In that case the writer and the art essentially the same. It's essentially an autobiography mixed with a work of high fiction. Even in less extreme examples, many great works of art are a form of expression by the author. The themes are tied to the experiences of the creator. If a piece of art exists as a form of self exploration, how can you separate it from the creator? The lines are far to blurry to claim that the author and work are separate distinct entities. For someone who likes subjectivity, that's a very objective statement to make. Sometimes a work can exist as a separate entity. Sometimes the two are so closely linked that it's essentially impossible.

 

[Gorrath]

As a historian, I've constantly run into a particular phenomenon that resembles what you're talking about. Basically, when someone creates something, a speech or pamphlet for example, once that something has been released to an audience, the author loses control over their creation. The audience is able to interpret that creation however they see fit and further use that interpretation as they desire as well, regardless of the desires or intent of the original creator.

This is why I always argue that Art is not Art without an audience and that Art is not a piece of work or a creation, it is a process that includes both the creation of an art object and, equally important, the interpretation of that art object by its audience. To me, art is like science in this way; it is a process not a product.

 

[Gorrath]

But this where the whole argument comes apart at the seams. Art doesn't exist in a vacuum. You can read Dante's Inferno, and appreciate it by itself. But it's literally impossible to fully appreciate it unless you research the actual author, and the politics of the Catholic Church and Italy. You can't research the text itself, and discount important outside influences. The authors intentions are paramount in this case, because the author himself is both the narrator and the protagonist. They are inseparable. It throws out important aspects of literary criticism for the sake of subjectivity. But this type of subjectivity could never produce the kind of literary scholarships that other methods have.

No, art doesn't exist in a vacuum, it's literally being created as it's being consumed. You can research the author, you can research the history and the times and the politics all you want; it will still be a subjective experience based solely and exclusively within the consumer. The only way an authors true intentions can ever be known is if we can somehow record and play back the neurons firing when the work is created - anything and everything outside of that is nothing more than conjecture.

No, it's not "created as its consumed." Only someone who doesn't understand the process of making art can think that way. This is because the consumer is ignorant of future events the first time they read a book. However, those future events are determined, and can't be altered, regardless of how the consumer feels. It already exists as a certainty. It's more accurate to say that it all exists simultaneously. Past and future events exist simultaneously within the work, informing each other. You have to look at the entire work as a whole to appreciate it. This is because all points of time within the work exist simultaneously, even if you are unaware of it. As an example, go research eternalism.

As for discounting authorial intent, you can't do that when the entire story is built around the author, like in Dante's Inferno. They don't exist as separate entities, and to study the Divine Comedy without studying Dante is an exercise in futility. Your whole argument falls apart around this single example. How do you expect to understand a work of art, if that art is heavily tied to the actual writer? In that case the writer and the art essentially the same. It's essentially an autobiography mixed with a work of high fiction. Even in less extreme examples, many great works of art are a form of expression by the author. The themes are tied to the experiences of the creator. If a piece of art exists as a form of self exploration, how can you separate it from the creator? The lines are far to blurry to claim that the author and work are separate distinct entities. For someone who likes subjectivity, that's a very objective statement to make. Sometimes a work can exist as a separate entity. Sometimes the two are so closely linked that it's essentially impossible.

The problem with your argument above is that it hinges on the idea that a scholarly critical interpretation of art is superior to a wholly subjective one; which I believe is untrue. One could understand nothing about the author of a work or what informed that author's motivations for making a work and still find the work compelling and powerful for their own fully subjective reasons. Sure, by doing this you won't understand what the author was getting out of making the work but there is nothing about what the author is getting out of their own work that makes the author's subjective experience of the work more important than the subjective experience of the audience of the work. A scholarly critical review of art is a perfectly fine endeavor of course and for that work one must have the understanding you talk about above but it is by no means innately superior to a wholly subjective appreciation of art.

Take for example Starship Troopers. I have ready many critical interpretations of the book and one thing that constantly pops up is fascism. One can read Starship Troopers and come to an interpretation of the text that it supports fascist ideology. However, nothing in Heinlein's greater body of work nor his own professed ideology does support for fascism pop up. The man was a staunch libertarian, which would be totally at odds with fascism. That truth does not discredit the critics though, who can rightfully point to parts of Starship Troopers that do seem to overtly support fascism. It doesn't matter that Heinlein most certainly did not intend it to come across that way, his creation inspired that thinking and critical analysis even if he wouldn't agree with any of it.

Edit: I would like to note that your first claim doesn't hold water either. My wife is a professional artist with extensive formal training and she would not agree with you one bit that art isn't created as it is consumed. Art is created as it is consumed because the audience interpretation of the art is the last step in the process of creating art. A painting is a painting when the last brushstroke dries but it is not art until the audience reacts to it even if the audience is just the painter themselves.

 

[Fox12]

snip

Maybe there's a middle ground to be found.

As it currently stands, I think Death of the Author is too flawed to work. It makes some very valuable points. For instance, what do we do if the author of a work is unknown? We can't know what he or she wanted. The best we can do is research the time period, and try to guess. Unfortunately, all this leaves us with is conjecture. We simply have to interpret the story as best we can o our own.

But this doesn't work very well in certain cases. There are a lot of situations where authorial intent is paramount. Like I said before, there's no getting around work like Dante's Inferno. It's simply too connected to the author. It's a blending of autobiography and fantasy, and an autobiography is entirely about authorial intent. To claim that Death of the Author covers all fiction, or even most fiction, if fillatious. It doesn't work for everything. What it does is solve specific problems, while creating entirely new ones. Maybe we're all asking the wrong questions. Maybe the answer is that we're both partially wrong (and partially right). It may be time for a new literary outlook.

Some artists will disagree with me. They say that they want everyone to get their own interpretation from their work. Unfortunately, I find this too often is an excuse for lazy writing. Their work tends to be aimless and inconsistent. In these cases, they simply leave it up to the reader to try and make sense of their ramblings. In these cases, certain writers will try to use Death of the Author as a crutch. I find this to be a worrying phenomenon. Art should be much more then a Rorschach test.

 

[Imperioratorex Caprae]

I think the way people see the whole idea of "what the author/artist intended" is wrong by way of a perceptual flaw. Short of having the answer to that directly from the author/artist, the only interpretations we can ever have are colored by our own perceptions and experiences. Therefore the real question isn't "what was the author/artist thinking/intending?" but rather "what does this piece of work mean to you?"
That is the more honest idea, because it doesn't attempt to attribute a view that wasn't intended to the creator and it owns up to our own perceptions. Anything else is pretentious as hell because its trying to force one's own viewpoint on a creator one more than likely has never met and doesn't know in any personal way.

Of course, its my viewpoint, subjective and impossible to be right or wrong objectively.

 

[Gorrath]

snip

Maybe there's a middle ground to be found.

As it currently stands, I think Death of the Author is too flawed to work. It makes some very valuable points. For instance, what do we do if the author of a work is unknown? We can't know what he or she wanted. The best we can do is research the time period, and try to guess. Unfortunately, all this leaves us with is conjecture. We simply have to interpret the story as best we can o our own.

But this doesn't work very well in certain cases. There are a lot of situations where authorial intent is paramount. Like I said before, there's no getting around work like Dante's Inferno. It's simply too connected to the author. It's a blending of autobiography and fantasy, and an autobiography is entirely about authorial intent. To claim that Death of the Author covers all fiction, or even most fiction, if fillatious. It doesn't work for everything. What it does is solve specific problems, while creating entirely new ones. Maybe we're all asking the wrong questions. Maybe the answer is that we're both partially wrong (and partially right). It may be time for a new literary outlook.

Some artists will disagree with me. They say that they want everyone to get their own interpretation from their work. Unfortunately, I find this too often is an excuse for lazy writing. Their work tends to be aimless and inconsistent. In these cases, they simply leave it up to the reader to try and make sense of their ramblings. In these cases, certain writers will try to use Death of the Author as a crutch. I find this to be a worrying phenomenon. Art should be much more then a Rorschach test.

Firstly, thanks for engaging with me. Art is something I value and that I'm passionate about so I love getting to talk to other people with a nice fire for talking about it.

To your first paragraph, having an unknown author is really only a problem if you believe that a work of art needs to be interpreted through the lens of the author's intent. While interpreting a work of that way is helpful in a scholarly context, it isn't necessary. Out own interpretations of art are every bit as important, profound and of interest as the author's interpretation of their own work. So while I will fully agree that knowing as much about the author is necessary for specific sorts of art appreciation and interpretation, it is not of monumental importance outside of that.

Your second paragraph here cites Dante and his work again but again I'd argue that knowing Dante is only important to interpreting Inferno if you care what Dante felt about it. One can read Inferno and draw their own conclusions without caring one whit what Dante actually meant to say about anything. Your or my interpretation of Inferno is of no greater or lesser objective importance than Dante's own, even if he really, really meant for the work to be interpreted through the lens of his own experiences. Take for example, The Tyger by William Blake. When I was asked to interpret the poem I wrote pages about how it made me think of nightmares, shapeless things that haunt us dangerously but only in our imaginations. I wrote about how our imagined nightmares inform our behaviors and the way fear of fake unknowns drive our prejudices. Turns out, the whole poem had nothing whatsoever to do with anything I said. Blake was writing about an issue that was very personal to him, and profound. But my interpretation of Blake's poem was no less than Blake's own. If I can use Blake's beautiful, frightful poem to talk about human fear, does it matter that he intended the poem for a different purpose? Not at all.

I would agree that one can use these ideas as a crutch but so what? Even if the author is a brilliant wordsmith who puts grace, effort and skill into their work they should not, cannot, discount the interpretation of their work by their audience. Surely they have a right to express what they meant and present their own meaning in detail but that in no way diminishes the audience's interpretation of the work either.

If we look at art with the intent to understand the author by way of their work, then art is more than a Rorschach test, it is a window into the mind of the creator and that is a powerful thing. But, if we look at art with the intent to understand ourselves, then art does indeed become a Rorschah test, a window into ourselves. Neither of these endeavors, understanding the author or understanding ourselves, is the lesser of two goals. Both are of equal merit worthy of our time and effort. Both require us to become an audience for the work and interpret it, which is what transforms a book or a painting from merely an object into art. And in both cases, we are still subject to seeing our own reflection in the work.

 

[davidmc1158_v1legacy]

As a historian, I've constantly run into a particular phenomenon that resembles what you're talking about. Basically, when someone creates something, a speech or pamphlet for example, once that something has been released to an audience, the author loses control over their creation. The audience is able to interpret that creation however they see fit and further use that interpretation as they desire as well, regardless of the desires or intent of the original creator.

Some how somewhere your post smells of Nietzsche.

You went and made me curious. How does Nietzsche figure into this? I admit that I have very little familiarity with his philosophies.

I was referring to the reality of arguments made in political circles that are then picked up by other people who go on to use those arguments in ways the originator never intended.

 

[Politrukk]

As a historian, I've constantly run into a particular phenomenon that resembles what you're talking about. Basically, when someone creates something, a speech or pamphlet for example, once that something has been released to an audience, the author loses control over their creation. The audience is able to interpret that creation however they see fit and further use that interpretation as they desire as well, regardless of the desires or intent of the original creator.

Some how somewhere your post smells of Nietzsche.

You went and made me curious. How does Nietzsche figure into this? I admit that I have very little familiarity with his philosophies.

I was referring to the reality of arguments made in political circles that are then picked up by other people who go on to use those arguments in ways the originator never intended.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%9Cbermensch#.C3.9Cbermensch_and_Nazis

I think the wikipedia page is close to accurate in this case.

The Nazi's took Nietzsche's ?bermensch idea and both contaminated and expanded upon it.
They created the untermensch idea from his philosophy but the point about Nietzsches philosophy was to look up and not down to progress and attain better understanding and become better humans.

But then again Hitler isn't the only person who took Nietzches ideas and rolled with them, Superman (the hero) is a similar way of how the idea has been interpreted.