Some notes and thoughts following reading Death of the Author:
“Writing is the 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. R)
“In ethnographic societies the responsibility for a narrative is never assumed by a person but by a mediator, shaman or a realtor who’s ‘performance’ – the mastery of the narrative code – may possibly be admired but never his ‘genius’.” (Barthes. R)
I think this is quite interesting for several reasons. I have highlighted the word mediator because photography is an experience that is mediated for the viewer by the camera/photographer etc. Also it reminds me of something that I read somewhere else, (possibly by Stephen R Pressfield) about how he, as an author had a ritual that he observed each day when he sat down to write. He recites Homers prayer to the muses asking the deities to help him reach the state of mind he needs. The artist becomes a conduit allowing the idea or ideas to flow through her. Here is homers prayer:
O Divine Poesy
Goddess-daughter of Zeus,
Sustain for me
This song of the various-minded man,
Who after he had plundered
The innermost citadel of hallowed Troy
Was made to stray grievously
About the coasts of men,
The sport of their customs good or bad,
While his heart
Through all the seafaring
Ached in an agony to redeem himself
And bring his company safe home.
Vain hope – for them!
For his fellows he strove in vain,
Their own witlessness cast them away;
The fools,
To destroy for meat
The oxen of the most exalted sun!
Wherefore the sun-god blotted out
The day of their return.
Make the tale live for us
In all its many bearings,
O Muse.
Found here: http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/445632-o-divine-poesy-goddess-daughter-of-zeus-sustain-for-me
Personally I believe that this is about allowing one to tap the subconscious mind where all the real good creative juices are.
Another form of this is the text that I have on my wall: ‘Dear Universe (or God, the archangels Michael etc) please guide my thoughts today. Please help me to clearly hear, see, feel, and know the divine guidance that I have asked for as I sit down to write this. Allow me to keep my ego out of the way so that your wisdom can come streaming through me…. for the highest good of all those who read this, my highest good and the highest good of all concerned.’
“The explanation of a work is always sought in the man or woman who produced it, as if it were always in the end , through more or less transparent allegory of the fiction, the voice of a single person, the author confiding in us” I know I have felt the burden of having to understand or explain the unexplainable, perhaps something that I have photographed that captivates me for some reason that I don’t understand. I have felt unable to put put it forward without another explanation other than “I like it”. In fact I would say that I always feel, at the point where I am showing or sharing work that I am confiding in someone else. (Barthes. R)
Barthes’s analysis of Proust and his novel about the author trying to write is interesting of itself. According to Barthes says “Instead of putting his life into his novel, as is often maintained, he made of his very life a work for which his own book was the model”. Did his book become his subject or was he the subject of his book? Reminds me of self portraiture , identity etc. Also reminds me of the way, sometimes when we read a great novel, a piece of fiction we have to know or find out about the author and did he or she base the book on their own life or experiences.
“Every text is eternally written here and now.” (Barthes. R) So every time I read it perhaps I read it for the first time? Or perhaps I rediscover it each time.
“We know now that a text is not a line of words releasing a single ‘theological’ meaning (the ‘message of the Author-God) but a multi-dimensional space in which a variety of writings, none of them original, blend and clash. The text is a tissue of quotations drawn from the innumerable centres of culture” (Barthes. R)
This again is questioning the idea of originality, the pressure to make something that nobody has made before because whether we like or realise it or not we are at all times influenced by everything we read, see, hear and experience all around us. Also it points to the multiple meanings available in any text or in an image.
“Once the author is removed, the claim to decipher a text becomes quite futile. To give a text an author is to impose a limit on that text, to furnish it with a signified, to close the writing”. (Barthes. R)
I think this is a concept that I am really impressed by. To recognise the death of the author is to recognise the limitlessness of the piece of text or work of art.
Body of work blog 