SQN - Sine Qua Non - Issue 1 - Journal - Page 26
The iconoclastic moment famously reached its climax when Roland Barthes added
the “Death of the Author” to Nietzsche’s “God is dead.”1 Theoretically, insofar as authors
remained of any interest, it was because they could be decoded, unmasked, and critiqued.
Suspicion became the new credulity, a paradoxical article of faith. The fact remains, though,
that in spite of renouncing authors as sources of meaning, and in spite of all the challenging
developments that went along with the marginalizing and suppressing of authorship as an
explanatory resource, scholars went on talking about authors and resorting to their utterances
as valuable sources of explanation. The proscription of authors was a taboo few could abide by.
Reputable scholars uttered ritual disclaimers before breaking it, but they broke it nonetheless.
In fact, they broke it much more often than they realized.
The mutual incompatibility of the many different theories that literary critics have relied
upon over the last several decades and the question as to how all of them might cope with
a stronger notion of authorship remains a challenge to the field. Courses on literary theory
now often end with a section focusing Bruno Latour’s discussion of “critique” in which
he questions the value of all those approaches that put the critic in the superior position
of decoding the author’s unintended messages.2 Meanwhile, literary critics have taken up
“agency,” especially the political agency of marginalized or oppressed groups, as a central
term and, indeed, a guiding value for the understanding of literature in its historical context.
The result is that authors have returned as historical actors even while their power of speech
remains a mystery. It does not seem unfair to label this a public intellectual neurosis.
What, then, is the cure?
My slogan, to begin with, will be saying making & doing. Let us begin at the end, with
the doing. How does doing in general work?
Aside from the inner cogitations of your psyche, all the true actions of your life have
started with bodily motions. Exertions of force upon various objects, movements and shiftings
of position, the manipulation of tools and implements, and signals in various media, these
exhaust your performance as a human agent. Your body does other things; it makes you
blink, cough, sneeze, yawn, and flinch. But these are not actions in the fullest sense. You can
sometimes choose the circumstances in which they occur, but they are largely beyond your
control.
The limited form of human action is surprising when we consider the breadth of its
operations and the grand proliferation of its effects. But there is a correlate which diminishes
the mystery. None of the motions that constitute our actions are undertaken only for
themselves. There is always some further intention, even if it be nothing more ambitious
than the stretching of a limb or the scratching of an itch. Some worthwhile result is expected
beyond the physical exertion. We accomplish one thing in order to accomplish another. We
do x to do y to do z. Intentions come in chains. The buttons you push, the steps you take
(metaphorically and literally), the words you speak, the gestures you make, their intended
effects unfold far into the future. This nested structure, action within action, goal within goal,
is essential to human agency. Intentions meld into each other in a fluid process and single
Roland Barthes, “The Death of the Author,” in Image-Music-Text (New York: Hill & Wang, 1977), pp. 142-48.
This, however, was by no means Barthes’ last word on the subject. See Gisela Bergonzoni, La préparation du
roman contemporain: présence de Barthes et retour de l’auteur chez Gonçalo M. Tavares, Enrique Vila-Matas
et Henri Raczymow. Thèse en Littératures comparées, Université Rennes 2, 2017, Introduction and Chapter One
2
Bruno Latour, “Why Has Critique Run out of Steam? from Matters of Fact to Matters of Concern.” Critical
Inquiry 30, no. 2 (2004): 225–48.
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