Death of the Author

Keith Haring and William S Burroughs, “APOCALYPSE” Plate two (image source)

The "Death of the Author" by Roland Barthes is a concept that hinges on the idea that nothing is original. Barthes believed that the magic happened with the reader and his/her/their experience. His essay is mostly a critique on classical criticism. He believed that critics had an obsessive focus on the author and his/her/their biography rather than the analysis of the text.  He talks about Mallarme and his theory that the author is nothing more than a medium through which language speaks. Barthes further describes text as a “multidimensional space in which a variety of writings, none of them original, blend and clash.” Again, this is the idea that texts are merely an amalgamation of words that already exist. He believed that all writing was a regurgitation of something that came before therefore "Authorship" was not important.  While this theory may seem a little depressing and somewhat nihilistic, an entire art movement was built off of this type of ideology. (1)

Philosophically the Postmodernists believed that nothing was original therefore there was a need to reuse and re-contextualize that which already existed. Much like Barthes' idea that there was no new texts. It was an art movement made up of artists who were reacting to the Modernists ideologies and the strict structural bounds to which they were tied. They were rebelling against authority and not only blurring the lines between low and high art, but actually intermixing the two together. They were really good at appropriation and challenging perceptions. Postmodern artists used a variety of techniques in their rebellion from fragmentation and discontinuity to the aforementioned appropriation. They could make something seem original by either piecing together old ideas into new or by recontextualizing things that were borrowed. Sherry Levine took it so far as taking pictures of other pictures and calling them her own while others like Marcel Duchamp employed pastiche, or the imitation of another’s style. Sherry Levine claimed to be changing the narrative from a male perspective to a feminine one. Duchamp was playing with parody. They were toying with the idea and meaning of authorship just as Barthes renounced the importance of authorship.(2)

Postmodern literary artists were doing much the same thing by using parody and fragmentation in their texts. William S Burroughs was a beat generation writer who used his famous “cut up” method to tell his stories. His "cut ups" were just what it sounds like, cutting up the text then piecing it back together randomly. I remember the first time I attempted to read the Naked Lunch I thought everyone was crazy because it made no sense to me. I couldn’t figure out why It was a critically acclaimed novel that the whole world seemed to rave about. I almost laid it aside forever, but someone convinced me to keep going. It paid off. The cut ups fell into place and I finally understood what everyone was on about. I had never experienced literature like this before, and it felt like I had just read a masterpiece. I know it is hard to imagine, but it was almost like I was experiencing the act of creation while I was reading the novel. I finally understood the brilliance of this form. Burroughs understood that the text was what was important and that no matter how it was cut up and pieced back together the reader would make sense of it. It’s almost like Burroughs had read Barthes' essay right before he started the Naked Lunch and put his theory to test. I wonder if the Naked Lunch would be as important without knowledge of Burroughs? Doesn't it matter that he invented the method? The painting I added is a collaboration of William S Burroughs and Keith Haring. They have appropriated and duplicated the Mona Lisa by DaVinci and drawn a whole bunch of phallic graffiti all over it (is this parody?). I know they were doing a project that spoke on the AIDS epidemic so maybe it is. 

I don’t want to believe that there is no originality left in the world. We are all made up of totally unique experiences, and I believe that magic can come from that. In the words of William S Burroughs, “[t]he artist aims for a miracle.”(3)

William S. Burroughs and Keith Haring, Lawrence, Kansas 1987 (Photograph Kate Simon) (image source).

Sources

  1. Roland Barthes, “The Death of the Author,” 1967.
  2. Gemmel, Mallory, “Postmodernism, The Pictures Generation, and Feminist Critique,” in Artshelp.net, accessed October 14, 2021, https://www.artshelp.net/art-theory-series-appropriation-part-two/.

  3. Keith Haring and William S Burroughs: Apocalypse, in Pace Prints, accessed October 14, 2021, https://paceprints.com/2020/keith-haring-william-s-burroughs-apocalypse#.