MODES OF READING HOWL: LECTURE 4 DEATH OF THE AUTHOR PROFESSOR EMMA MASON

‘The Death of the Author’ (1967) ROLAND BARTHES ‘The Death of the Author’ (1967) ~ MICHEL FOUCAULT ‘What is an Author?’ (1969)

‘The Death of the Author’ First published 1967; appears in Barthes’ book, Image, Music Text in 1977

Honore de Balzac, Sarrasine (1830)

‘Writing is that neutral, composite, oblique space where our subject slips away, the negative where all identity is lost, starting with the very identity of the body writing.’ – Barthes, ‘The Death of the Author’ (p. 313)

‘The Author is thought to nourish the book, which is to say that he exists before it, thinks, suffers, lives for it, is in the same relation of antecedence to his work as a father to a child’ – Barthes, ‘The Death of the Author’ (pp. 314–315)

‘the modern scriptor is born simultaneously with the text, is in no way equipped with a being preceding or exceeding the writing, is not the subject with the book as predicate; there is no other time than that of the enunciation and every text is eternally written here and now . – Barthes, ‘The Death of the Author’ (p. 315)

Barthes, The Pleasure of the Text (1975) Plaisir / pleasure = readerly experience Jouissance / bliss/orgasmic feeling writerly experience

‘What is an Author?’ (1969) Michel Foucault

‘All discourses, whatever their status, form, value, and whatever the treatment to which they will be subjected, would then develop in the anonymity of a murmur [that is, without the need for an author]. We would no longer hear the questions that have been rehashed for so long: “Who really spoke? Is it really he and not someone else? With what authenticity or originality? And what part of his deepest self did he express in his discourse?”’ —Foucault, ‘What is an Author’ (p. 293)

Instead, there would be other questions, like these: “What are the modes of existence of this discourse? Where has it been used, how can it circulate, and who can appropriate it for himself? What are the places in it where there is room for possible subjects? Who can assume these various subject-functions?” And behind all these questions, we would hear hardly anything but the stirring of an indifference: “What difference does it make who is speaking?” —Foucault, ‘What is an Author’ (p. 293)

Anaphora is the repetition of a phrase for effect. For example: I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood. I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice. I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

Carl Solomon! I’m with you in Rockland    where you’re madder than I am I’m with you in Rockland    where you must feel very strange    where you imitate the shade of my mother    where you’ve murdered your twelve secretaries    where you laugh at this invisible humor    where we are great writers on the same dreadful typewriter … where you will split the heavens of Long Island and resurrect your living human Jesus from the superhuman tomb

Holy. Holy. Holy. Holy. Holy. Holy. Holy. Holy. Holy. Holy. Holy. Holy Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! The world is holy! The soul is holy! The skin is holy! The nose is holy! The tongue and cock and hand and asshole holy! Everything is holy! everybody's holy! everywhere is holy! everyday is in eternity! Everyman’s an angel!

I want to be known as the most brilliant man in America Introduced to Gyalwa Karmapa heir of the Whispered Transmission                Crazy Wisdom Practice Lineage as the secret young wise man who visited him and winked anonymously                decade ago in Gangtok Prepared the way for Dharma in America without mentioning Dharma                 scribbled laughter Who saw Blake and abandoned God —Ginsberg, ‘Ego Confession’ (1974), lines 1–5

‘supernatural extra brilliant intelligent kindness of the soul’

Chogyam Trungpa

November 11: Horrible day. More and more wretched. Crying. —Roland Barthes, Mourning Diary (2009)  

March 25: Last night, nightmare: maman lost March 25: Last night, nightmare: maman lost. I am overwhelmed, on the verge of tears. —Roland Barthes, Mourning Diary (2009)

July 18: Each of us has his own rhythm of suffering. —Roland Barthes, Mourning Diary (2009)