DeepSummary
In this episode, David Runciman interviews philosopher Kathleen Stork about Roland Barthes's 1967 essay 'The Death of the Author'. They discuss the origins and context of Barthes's idea that readers, not writers, are the ultimate arbiters of a text's meaning. Stork explains how she first encountered the concept as a student and later came to reject it as an academic philosopher, arguing instead for intentionalism - the view that understanding an author's intentions is essential for fully comprehending their work.
Stork outlines the common objections raised against intentionalism and her rebuttals to them, drawing on examples from literature. She sees the 'death of the author' stance as ultimately misguided and reductive, stripping away the richness and purpose imbued in texts by their creators. The discussion also touches on the challenges posed by computer-generated writing and the unintentional meanings that can be projected onto texts in the age of social media.
Stork reflects on her own experiences of having her work misconstrued by those who disregard authorial intent. The conversation highlights how concepts like Barthes's, while fashionable in their time, can have lasting and potentially harmful consequences when taken to an extreme - fostering lazy interpretation and neglecting the human voices behind written works.
Key Episodes Takeaways
- Roland Barthes's influential 1967 essay 'The Death of the Author' argued that readers, not writers, are the ultimate arbiters of a text's meaning - an idea that was fashionable but deeply flawed according to philosopher Kathleen Stork.
- Stork forcefully defends the opposing view of intentionalism - that understanding an author's intentions is essential to fully interpreting and appreciating their work, especially in fiction.
- While acknowledging that great literary texts can have multiple valid readings, Stork argues there are still objectively 'wrong' interpretations that miss or contradict the author's aims.
- The concept of the 'death of the author' is ultimately reductive and opens the door to lazy, solipsistic readings unmoored from the author's intended purposes, according to Stork.
- Stork sees the increasing prevalence of decontextualized social media posts and AI-generated texts as exacerbating challenges to intentionalist interpretation.
- Despite its influential legacy, Stork views Barthes's idea as misguided and potentially harmful - licensing careless readings while stripping away the vital human voices and perspectives imbued in written works by their creators.
- Stork draws on both rigorous philosophical arguments and personal experiences of having her own writings misinterpreted to make her case against the 'death of the author' stance.
Top Episodes Quotes
- “So the author hasnt got the control over meaning in the text that you might have thought that they did when you grew up reading lots of novels.“ by Kathleen Stork
- “Well, that helps my view. I mean, that really does.“ by Kathleen Stork
- “And then you think, well, that's what she was trying to do, and that makes complete sense. But you wouldn't have with an AI. There'd be no discussion about that, because it's not that they made a mistake or that they were trying to do something clever. There's just the words, basically.“ by Kathleen Stork
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Episode Information
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Ben Walker
5/16/24
For our penultimate episode in this series David talks to Kathleen Stock about Roland Barthes’s idea of the Death of the Author (1967). Once very fashionable, the notion that readers not writers are the arbiters of what a text means has had a long and sometimes painful afterlife. As well as exploring its curious appeal and its persistent blindspots, Kathleen discusses her personal experience of how it can go wrong.
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Coming Soon: The Great Political Fictions Part 2, starting with Middlemarch
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