Abstract

death of the is a familiar refrain among poststructuralists, a phrase used to mean nonhermeneutic approaches to textsa label against which to react in the name of the historical subject (Kamuf 5). Probably the source of this controversial slogan is Barthes' precisely titled, brief essay, Death of the Author, in which he charts the postmodern move from a literature tyrannically centred on the author.... [where] the explanation of a work is always sought in the man or woman who produced it, to the ascendancy of the reader (143). When Barthes replaces the terms authori scriptor with critic/reader, he suggests that the future movement of literary theory requires the author's death to enable the reader's birth. Foucault, also making a distinction between the author and what happens in the text, offers the term author-function as being outside and preceding the text itself. True, the author is maker of text, but disappears once this is performed, only the function remaining, that is, being outside and preceding the text. In this role the author must accept in the text. Whereas the author in the epic form accepted early death because the epic itself would bring immortality, Foucault says that modem writing no longer is linked to death but to sacrifice of life because the author must accept obliteration of the self that does not require representation in books because it takes place in the everyday existence of the (117). More and more we're hearing another slogan: The tyranny of the author has been replaced by that of the reader. Yet I think one has to accept autonomy of neither author nor reader if we approach poststructuralist theory rhetorically. To do this we need to (1) broaden thinking about literature not only to include the discursive nature of language but also to accept its persuasive nature; (2) attempt distinctions between author and writer; (3) acknowledge the presence of the writer in the text itself (ethos); (4) embrace the concept of the world as language.