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Barthes is capable in preparing its entering in the scene, but the concept of scriptor is unbearable when one compares it with the historical complexity of the real individual who produced the work. The refuse of the duration can be ascribed (forcing a bit the hand) to the moment only when it occurs the definition of the exact words forming the text, but not to the entire creation process, that, besides, sees the author becoming the reader of himself with the purpose of accomplishing a validation or a self-criticism. In the process of setting up the literary device the author can't be considered independent from his own history. The only way for having a likely scriptor, is intending him as a subpart of the real author, as a sort of mental microclimate typical of the writing moment. LIGHTENING AND OPENING OF THE SUBJECT Reading Barthes' article, one perceives the need for a major impersonality; this term can be intended as the replacement of a cumbersome and monolithic I with a fleeting and manifold creature. As a consequence, the author does no more enter intrusively in the writing, but occupies himself handling a variety of mechanisms that will give rise to the beauty of the words tissue, accompanied by the awareness of his own specific identity acquired by experience. But in Barthes' writing i see a corrupt version of impersonality, asking us to throw away our history, both as writers and as readers. It's a request that hardly can get a positive answer. A RESIDUE THAT ONE CAN NOT ELIMINATE Unfolding the death of the author, Barthes maintains that narrated stories are other than the stories of the author's life, and that the main narration line is not close fitting the author's lived. Consequently he values inconsistent the practice, made by the literary critic, of deciphering the narrative line, leading it back to that lived. But, even if there is no direct transfer of author's stories into the text, there must be an author's specificity passing into the work. Otherwise, the authors would be barely equal one each other. Therefore, strictly speaking, it always subsists the possibility to set up an interpretation of the writing tracing back to the specific features of its origin. WHERE THE PROGRESS REMAINS Altogether the death of the author seems to me a controversial issue.4 As readers, the best use we can make of this image, is conceiving it as an invitation to temporarily set aside the causes of the past, symbo lized by the author. In doing so one creates the premises for losing himself in the present time, interpreting the writing according to the relations between the parts, avoiding any reference to an elsewhere. This way of giving trust to the text favours creativeness, in the same extent that the reflection works on fully available structures and is not broken off for the need of a search in the traces of the past, to verify the causal lines. The disadvantage, obvious, is that one gives up with certifying and enriching the analysis with the information content of the past. About me, progress consists in finding the qualitative factors that can point out the right moment for breaking the synchronous analysis switching to a diachronic check. Eager to make immersions in the various localities of Here and Now, we need a method that indicates when it's time for going back to the global context of History.5 6
Copyright Manuel Cappello 2012 Distributed under Creative Commons BY-NC-ND 3.0 Registered with MyFreeCopyright: http://www.myfreecopyright.com/registered_mcn/C1WXM-HF6GU-LFSPR First published on http://en.manuelcappello.com/2012/01/the-death-of-the-author-not-literature-only/
4 In example I, as an author, am not very inclined to commit suicide. 5 It's clear the movement between History and Here and Now localities happens many times; it's not a single isolated event. 6 This reflection has been introduced referring to the reader role, but it does not exhaust itself in this compass.