Latest news with #Barthes
Scroll.in
09-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Scroll.in
Roland Barthes declared the ‘death of the author', but postcolonial critics have begged to differ
In 1967, French literary and cultural critic Roland Barthes published a short essay that would have far-reaching influence. Titled ' The Death of the Author ', the essay argued that, for the purposes of interpretation, the intention of the author is irrelevant, even stifling. In asserting that the author is irrelevant to the act of interpretation, Barthes put in play a wealth of interpretive possibilities. As he put it in the essay's closing line, 'to give writing its future, it is necessary to overthrow the myth: the birth of the reader must be at the cost of the death of the Author'. To write, according to Barthes, is to enter into language, inscribe oneself in its symbolic space and, in doing so, efface oneself. He initially presents the resulting disconnection between author, text and reader as universal: 'No doubt it has always been that way. As soon as a fact is narrated no longer with a view to acting directly on reality but intransitively, that is to say, finally outside of any function other than that of the very practice of the symbol itself, this disconnection occurs, the voice loses its origin, the author enters into his own death, writing begins.' The idea that authors do not lend texts their exclusive meaning derives from this universal principle that to write is, in a sense, to die. What Barthes largely means by the playful metaphor of 'death' is that the author's intentions and consciousness are withdrawn. Readers cannot access either, but have only the text before them. Though Barthes wonders about this universal principle, he suggests the concept of an 'author' is a product of relatively recent times. The author, he argues, is a 'modern figure'. It is 'a product of our society insofar as, emerging from the Middle Ages […] it discovered the prestige of the individual, of, as it is more nobly put, the 'human person'.' So while Barthes suggests that the author's 'death' in the act of writing has 'always' happened, he also historicises the figure of the author. He differentiates the creative practice of writing from the 'person' of the author. He also implicates the concept of authorship in 'capitalist ideology'. An author's name on a book cover is associated with a form of property: intellectual property, copyright. Writing is solidified under one proprietary name, even though it is, at least in part, a collective endeavour that also involves editors and readers. Intentional fallacies There were precedents for Barthes' criticism of our attachment to the 'person' of the author. British writer Zadie Smith pointed out that 'it's easy to read 'The Death of the Author' as a series of revolutionary demands, but it's worth remembering that it was also simply a licked forefinger held up to test a wind already blowing.' In the early 20th century, TS Eliot's notion of poetic ' impersonality ' established a precedent for Barthes's concept, expressing an ambition on the part of the writer to erase themselves from the work, so that it might stand alone. US-based literary critics William Wimsatt and Monroe Beardsley offered a drier elaboration of similar ideas in 1946 under the name of the ' intentional fallacy '. For Wimsatt and Beardsley, placing excessive emphasis on authorial intention led to fallacies of interpretation. We may imagine we know what the author means to say, but we only have the text present before us, not the author, so we are mistaken if we think we can know their intentions. Wimsatt and Beardsley's argument has much in common with Barthes', though it lacks the latter's panache. Where the Americans spoke of a 'fallacy', the Frenchman declares the author's irrelevance to be fatal. In declaring the death of the author and the birth of the reader, Barthes precipitated a revolution. His essay is a product of the unrest in France that would culminate in the student riots of May 1968. Barthes's anti-capitalism precipitated ideas that led to the uprising. Barthes's work of this period also exemplified the transition in French thought from structuralism to poststructuralism. Structuralist critics had sought to reveal underlying patterns through rigorous analysis of cultural signs. Poststructuralists called into question the distinction between surface details and underlying structures that was the foundation of structuralism. Barthes's early work had taken a structuralist approach. In many ways, his attack on the notion of authorship manifests the provocative logic of poststructuralism. For teachers of literature, the notion of the death of the author has been preeminent for some time. These days, many literary scholars and even some writers accept Barthes' premises. From literature departments to creative writing programmes, the idea of the death of the author has become something of an orthodoxy. Manifested experiences Barthes's ideas about authorship had their detractors. Critics came forward almost immediately. Many of the defenders of authorial intention came from the ranks of colonised people and postcolonial writers. For many of these critics, the author's presence and humanity in the text are complementary to anti-colonial politics. The death of the author and the play of signification might have served to liberate readers. But such liberation seemed to many anti-colonial writers not to be located in the sphere of emancipatory anti-capitalism, but in the zone of regressive forms of anti-humanism. To turn to the typewriter or the pen was meant to be a means of liberation, not death. Poet Édouard Glissant, from the Caribbean island of Martinique, is one example of an intellectual from a colonial society who questioned Barthes' premises. Within two years of Barthes's essay, Glissant had compiled some of his existing writings with new essays to offer a powerful rejoinder. His book Poetic Intention (1969) develops a theory of difference in relation to artistic and literary intentions. He would elaborate this theory until his death in 2011. Glissant seeks a literary criticism that will pursue more than the 'hidden purpose of the author'. He wants writers to consider 'the manifested experience of a people'. Like Barthes, Glissant is aware of the limitations of fetishising authorship. But he goes further. He enters into a tradition of black intellectuals, such as Frantz Fanon, who see the meanings of literary works as manifestations not of hidden psychic structures, but collective social endeavours. Like Glissant and Fanon, Edward Said saw writers as representatives of their people. 'Intention,' he argued, 'is the link between idiosyncratic view and the communal concern.' Said was a student of French structuralism and poststructuralism. He was both knowledgeable about and critical of figures such as Barthes and Michel Foucault. In his book Beginnings (1975), Said politely took issue with the idea of the death of the author: '…Despite recent genuinely investigative tendencies in criticism (in, for example, the work of Roland Barthes), certain conventions, persisting as unexamined vestiges of the whole history of ideas, have a strong hold […] But certain questions – such as the nature of the author's (beginning and continued) authority over his text […] remain relevant.' His reasons for insisting on the author's relevance were complex and abstract. Said was a Palestinian intellectual and unwavering critic of the forces of empire and colonialism in the US, Israel and elsewhere. In his later work, he would increasingly come to link intention to colonialism, and to its critique. By the time of 1994's Culture and Imperialism, Said had broken with key French intellectuals – notably Foucault. On one page of that book, he names a series of liberation struggles ('Algeria, Cuba, Vietnam, Palestine, Iran'), asserting that these struggles were not only against the structures of empire (though they were), but also against the use of imperial force. Recognising intention's role in texts and social relations means recognising agency. With this recognition comes an awareness of the operations of power and the capacity to resist. For Said, acknowledging intention meant acknowledging the agency of those participating in varying forms of resistance. As time has worn on, criticism of the death of the author along these lines has intensified. In a 2017 essay, First Nations (Goorie) novelist Melissa Lucashenko asserted: 'The author is not dead. More specifically, the Aboriginal author is certainly not dead, a double happiness!' Similarly, Wiradyuri author Jeanine Leane has taken aim at two aspects of Barthes's essay: its whiteness and the way its openness to the reader can serve to justify appropriation. The birth of the reader, she suggests, always carries with it the potential for such appropriation. For Barthes, Leane writes, 'A text's unity lies not in its origins, or its creator, but in its destination, or its audience. This view aptly sums the long trajectory of European appropriation, blindness to its own cultural standpoint, western literary colonialism, and the consumption of minority cultures by invading, colonising powers.' In the more than half a century since its birth, Barthes's notion that the author is dead has been incredibly influential. Yet his approach has arguably encouraged the unitary model of authorship that it sought to avoid, his decoupling of authorship and humanism giving rise to ongoing postcolonial critiques. Especially in relation to anti-colonial thought, rumours of the author's death are greatly exaggerated.
NDTV
07-07-2025
- General
- NDTV
Of Prada, Dior, And Manufactured Meanings Of Luxury
"What the garment signifies is not what it is, but what it permits us to imagine it is." Nope, it's not a lazy Instagram quote, but a well-etched theory from one of the most important philosophers of all time, Roland Barthes, who is often remembered only for his work in linguistics. Barthes interpreted the garment, and fashion by extension, as a language, and put forth all its essential arbitrariness. Barthes's idea that "Fashion is above all a system of signs" is probably the most useful framework for understanding the current goings-on in the global luxury fashion scene. Let's not waste breath or bites any further on Prada and Dior 'stealing' from the Indian artisanal traditions: the Kolhapuri footwear and the Muqaish embroidery. Given the asymmetries between the Global North and South, certain exploitative practices are par for the course. Power shirks accountability. Using Barthes, however, one can understand how fashion can become a tool to counteract hegemonic systems built on exploitation. Just like the coloniser's language, English, became a tool for Indian writers to counter intellectual colonialism, the ongoing White Man's Burden. Cultural appropriation is nothing new in a world divided between the oppressor and the oppressed. From Aztec prints to Amazonian jewellery, Javanese batik to Odisha's warp and weft Ikat and Persian gara embroidery to Han women's mamianqun, economically and hegemonically powerful designers have appropriated them all without even blinking. The paradoxical benefit of such appropriation is that the lack of acknowledgement immediately catches the discerning eye and initiates a conversation. The very brazenness of such an endeavour becomes its undoing. What is worse, however, is something that recently flew under the radar, thanks to the brouhaha over Dior and Prada. When indigenous traditions are cherry-picked and made into the mainstay of a luxury collection, it engenders another problem: the aesthetic strawman. Faced with the sheer incongruity and ugliness, the indigenous aesthete may wonder, Is this ALL you could find from our traditions, dear designer? Let's discuss Louis Vuitton's latest India-inspired show, exhibiting the spring-summer 2026 men's collection. The luxury house's website announces proudly, "Louis Vuitton Men's Creative Director Pharrell Williams drew inspiration from India and its global influence on clothing for this season's collection". Grateful for the acknowledgement, but what is all that bejewelled fetishism? Those trunks and handbags, those jackets and hoodies? Rather than being an inspiration, doesn't the collection work more as a pastiche? India's mammoth artisan diversity routinely gets represented by its most garish products. Less than a year ago, Christian Louboutin launched a similar India-inspired collection where all things gold and glittery seemed to have been slapped together. The ubiquitous Louboutins, those coveted red-soled shoes, are among the most uncomfortable footwear a modern woman can jostle her feet into. The brand prioritises aesthetics over comfort and has been responsible for many style revolutions. Many of their designs are a sight for sore eyes, even though they kill the wearer's toes. So, what happened with that India collection? This is where Barthes comes in handy. Think of a tourist coming to a town trying to absorb new sights and sounds. An enterprising local becomes their aide and teaches them all the cusswords and slangs. While the tourist may become street-smart under such tutelage, they usually do not mistake this rudimentary linguistic proficiency for language. A namaste here and a gaali there doesn't make a language. The world of fashion, however, has no compunctions in believing that it does. Because what is hurriedly processed and produced is, often, also promptly consumed. In a world swept by "logomania", the brand becomes its own aesthetic. If one doesn't pay attention, this aesthetic surreptitiously corrupts our sensibilities. Barthes explained this phenomenon through his formulation of real clothing, image clothing, and written clothing. The fashion industry cannot sell real clothing (the tangible product) on its own; it has to be accompanied by image clothing (highly stylized, idealized, and often impossible to achieve in real life visual images of the said product), and written clothing (an evocatively crafted story to turn the product into an object of desire and identity). Fashion, often, becomes a con job where the ordinariness of the real is packaged in manufactured meanings. These manufactured meanings become more important than the real product, and that's what sets the ball of appropriation-stealthy or acknowledged-rolling. As sociologist Dick Hebdige says in his study of style, "Objects are appropriated, 'bricolaged', and made to carry meanings which they did not originally possess." Until the objects per se are paid due attention, this cycle will continue.
Time Out
16-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Time Out
Find your favourite reads at BOTLC Book Fair on July 16-20
Bangkok doesn't do quiet, it hums, honks, pulses. Even its silences come laced with static. Which is why the BOTLC Book Fair feels almost suspiciously serene. From July 16-20 at 10am-6.30pm, the Bank of Thailand Learning Centre – all clean lines and soft light – becomes a kind of sanctuary for the overstimulated. Tucked beside the Chao Phraya, it offers not just books but the rarest thing of all: a pause. This isn't your average fairground frenzy. No jostling, no soundtrack engineered to keep you moving. Instead, it's slow: a page turned, a thought held, a breeze that actually matters. You can wander through tables of titles without pressure, eavesdrop on a panel, then drift outside to sit with something dog-eared and deeply yours. There'll be workshops, music, food if you need it – but the real draw is the rhythm, unhurried, unbothered. Because yes, you'll find books – but you'll also find space – space to browse, to breathe, to sit with a novel by the water and forget your phone exists. Here's how it unfolds Book fair – Not just a shopping spree. It's a curated sprawl of publishers, obscure titles, and enough paperbacks to make your tote bag ache in the best way. Book talk – Authors step into the spotlight, joined by influencers who know their Baldwin from their Barthes. Book walk – A wander through the Bank of Thailand Museum's collection of currency, stitched with stories more telling than any economics textbook. Book sharing – Bring a book, take a book, leave a piece of yourself behind. No receipts, just trust. And the rest? Think hands-on workshops, low-key gigs and stalls selling snacks that will inevitably leave crumbs in your next read. How to get there By bus: Wat Sam Phraya stop: 3, 9, 30, 32, 33, 43, 53, 64, 65, 524 Opposite Wat Sam Phraya: 3, 9, 30, 32, 33, 53, 64, 65, 516, 524 Opposite Bank of Thailand: 3, 9, 30, 32, 33, 49, 53, 64, 65, 516, 524 In front of Bank of Thailand: 3, 9, 30, 32, 33, 43, 49, 53, 64, 65, 524 By boat: Thewet Pier – Chao Phraya Express: orange flag, green and yellow flags Wat Sam Phraya Pier – Cross-river ferry (no flag)
