Ding Dong the Author's Dead

For years I've been trying to determine why I don't care about authorship or copyright. Perhaps it's because I've never really stood to make a substantial amount of money from a publication, or perhaps it's because I'm rather nonchalant about the sharing of information and ideas.  After this week's readings, I think, for me, it comes down to an interest in what happens *after* the ideas/information are released - the discursive possibilities, as Foucault would have it. 

My earliest thoughts of this nature were in undergraduate literature classes where I began to notice (through class discussions and paper assignments) that our consideration of the text had little to do with the author's intentions and more to do about our interpretations of the author.  Save for one or two instructors who insisted that certain canonical figures had a very specific meaning by what they wrote, much of the concern was about interpretations and implications.  My current attitude toward authors most certainly differs depending on the type of work I'm reading. I approach authorship in literature much differently than I do in theoretical/philosophical work and another level of difference exists for authors of empirical research (again, much aligned with Foucault).

Thinking about this in terms of the possible functions that a subject can have in a discourse (assuming that is what the text becomes post-production) - for empirical research, the subject remains for me simply as an example.  To clarify, when I read an empirical study about classroom praxis (which I have been doing a lot of lately), I see the author of the study as an exemplar of what to do (or in some cases, what not to do) in my future work.  The author-subject is present insofar as he/she has made a dent in a body of scholarship with a study design that cannot be disputed in its structure/creation no matter how the results are interpreted/utilized in future work.  I suppose the subject of theoretical and literary work could be regarded in precisely the same way - or many ways - but my first thought immediately goes to the work of authors like Tom Robbins, particularly his book "Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas" written entirely in second person.  I'm certain if I went to Google, I would find books written in second person prior to his, but it still remains striking in its form (not just its content) and for that reason it has made a "structural dent."  The story itself I can barely recall - but I'll never forget that book in terms of its structure, and because of that I'll never forget the author.  The same thing happened when I read the novel First Light by Charles Baxter* - the story is vague, but the form (and therefore the subject in this case) remains.

Ultimately, I agree with Barthes assertion that "to give a text an Author is to impose a limit on that text" (279).  However, Barthes notes that giving a text an Author will "close the writing," but what do we do with formal/structural elements? While one can interpret Baxter and Robbins's stories however they choose, to what degree can they completely interpret form/structure? And to what end? We can weigh in on effectiveness and quality, sure, but form remains as we have given that a name far beyond the author-subject.  The same goes for the the empirical researcher - we can read her data and ruminate on the implications, but can we challenge/dispute the form of the study (beyond value judgments: good, bad, irresponsible, negligent, solid, etc)? And if so, what would we gain from it?

* The novel is written backwards.