A highly informative video about the history, application, and criticism of the concept of Death of the Author and how our modern relationships to authors themselves in the internet age have...
A highly informative video about the history, application, and criticism of the concept of Death of the Author and how our modern relationships to authors themselves in the internet age have changed it. Mainly through the specific cases of J.K. Rowling and John Green, who appears in the video.
I'm a big fan of Mrs. Ellis' work. This video adds more to that admiration, it is both a very clear and balanced overview of the concept in question as well as a very interesting modern take on it. Especially after her previous videos on Youtube starts and manufactured authenticity.
As much of a fan of Lindsay Ellis as I am, this was relatively weak compared to her usual work, though not because she made a bad argument or anything like that. She claims that the death of the...
As much of a fan of Lindsay Ellis as I am, this was relatively weak compared to her usual work, though not because she made a bad argument or anything like that. She claims that the death of the author is useful but limited because readers can't help valuing the author or thinking about them in some way, but she presents it like that's a flaw with that approach to criticism without considering that the concept still jives with that just fine. The difference in considering that while using the death of the author as your framework vs other ways is that you recognize that the author (or rather the reader's idea of what the author is) comes in through the reader, making it still part of the reader's relationship with the text.
Most of the time when people desperately try to poke holes in The Death of the Author, they're just assuming it's a much more restrictive way of thinking than it really is. You don't have to ignore outside factors, just shift where you think they're coming from. That said, her argument isn't really wrong...she just made it out to be something that puts a limit on The Death of the Author or goes against its real world applicability without realizing how it can be shaped to accomodate that with no issues, and that's pretty much the normal way for it to be used. She doesn't make errors in reasoning, imo, so I agree with her and really the only sin I could point out is making her point look more confrontational than it really is.
Always excited for more Lindsay Ellis though, she really is the best person working on YouTube right now.
I don't think her arguements were weak, I think they were comprehensive. As she said with her previous videos, she wants to have her videos explain the ideas instead of just saying that they are...
I don't think her arguements were weak, I think they were comprehensive. As she said with her previous videos, she wants to have her videos explain the ideas instead of just saying that they are either "bad" or "good". When it comes down to making a conclusion, death of the author is just a tool for literary interpretation that a consumer should have available. And the thing about interpretation is that there is no single correct version.
What I was trying to say is that the arguments weren't weak, the video was. If she was trying to show a variety of perspectives on this tool, she failed because the argument she made that was...
What I was trying to say is that the arguments weren't weak, the video was. If she was trying to show a variety of perspectives on this tool, she failed because the argument she made that was supposedly against The Death of the Author is really an argument that people really fond of the perspective would make themselves. The video would've worked much better if she either recognized how narrow her focus was and didn't act like she was doing anything other than arguing that the author is dead or if she actually widened her focus and also presented the argument for more traditional forms of criticism and actually made it comprehensive. I don't really have a preference between these two, but the middle ground where she only argues for one side and acts like part of her argument for that side is actually an argument against it and therefore she has showed a range of opinions just misleads people.
I'm not sure I agree with that reading of her argument. It seemed to me that it wasn't about the 'limits' of Death of Author's applicability, but rather the way its core idea is just inherently...
I'm not sure I agree with that reading of her argument. It seemed to me that it wasn't about the 'limits' of Death of Author's applicability, but rather the way its core idea is just inherently flawed: that it relies on the removal of everything external to the text itself when, in reality, humans can not achieve this state of perfect impartial removal, nor can they help creating a kind of authorial voice within the text itself. I'm basing that on the fact that this seems to be one of the modern critiques of Death of the Author, something I'm assuming both she and John Green later became familiar with.
The Death of the Author or goes against its real world applicability without realizing how it can be shaped to accomodate that with no issues
But can it actually? Because in order to shape it to accommodate the issues Lindsey puts forward, that humans do not consume text in isolation, we have to fundamentally undermine the thing Barthes was after. We have to let the Author "return", so at that point are we still using Death of the Author or have we moved past Death of the Author? In the same way Post-Structuralism wished to move past Structuralism because it viewed it's core premises as irreconcilably flawed.
Because this doesn't contradict the idea at all. The Death of the Author is about taking down the author as a given part of criticism, as literary critcism was so squarely focused on the author...
that it relies on the removal of everything external to the text itself when, in reality, humans can not achieve this state of perfect impartial removal
Because this doesn't contradict the idea at all. The Death of the Author is about taking down the author as a given part of criticism, as literary critcism was so squarely focused on the author and their intentions as something where true meaning lies. Barthes' essay is actually quite focused on taking down the Author as a figure that overshadows their work and that forces an "ultimate meaning" of the text. It's about getting rid of the capital A "Author," and doesn't go very far beyond that at all. For an idea so revolutionary, the work is really reserved.
When considering the author to be dead, the two things at play are the text and the reader. The interplay between these two is where meaning "happens," and that naturally means that the characteristics of the text and the reader both come into play. Barthes says nothing that would suggest that readers don't bring in their own things: in fact one of the greatest results of killing the author is that there's much more room to explore the reader's ideology and thoughts in general than there is with an authoritative Author. Some critics may try to push it further and claim that humans must be impartial and disconnected from anything other than the text, but that's in no way a core part of the concept and arguing against that is not the same as arguing against the Death of the Author.
In other words, there is a massive difference between the Author as an arbiter of true meaning and the author as an influence on meaning that is decided entirely by how they influence the reader, which is naturally different for each reader. It's stated again and again that the primary purpose and freedom given by killing the Author is in empowering and shifting the focus to the reader as opposed to the Author. And the reader does mean the reader and everything they bring in and take away from the text, not a cold inhuman one-sided push from text to reader.
There's a reason in high school and undergrad lit courses, the Death of the Author tends to be a starting point for introducing ideology. It's a lot easier to jump into that when you've given students a framework that allows for everything that's floating around in your brain to be part of the critical process.
A highly informative video about the history, application, and criticism of the concept of Death of the Author and how our modern relationships to authors themselves in the internet age have changed it. Mainly through the specific cases of J.K. Rowling and John Green, who appears in the video.
I'm a big fan of Mrs. Ellis' work. This video adds more to that admiration, it is both a very clear and balanced overview of the concept in question as well as a very interesting modern take on it. Especially after her previous videos on Youtube starts and manufactured authenticity.
As much of a fan of Lindsay Ellis as I am, this was relatively weak compared to her usual work, though not because she made a bad argument or anything like that. She claims that the death of the author is useful but limited because readers can't help valuing the author or thinking about them in some way, but she presents it like that's a flaw with that approach to criticism without considering that the concept still jives with that just fine. The difference in considering that while using the death of the author as your framework vs other ways is that you recognize that the author (or rather the reader's idea of what the author is) comes in through the reader, making it still part of the reader's relationship with the text.
Most of the time when people desperately try to poke holes in The Death of the Author, they're just assuming it's a much more restrictive way of thinking than it really is. You don't have to ignore outside factors, just shift where you think they're coming from. That said, her argument isn't really wrong...she just made it out to be something that puts a limit on The Death of the Author or goes against its real world applicability without realizing how it can be shaped to accomodate that with no issues, and that's pretty much the normal way for it to be used. She doesn't make errors in reasoning, imo, so I agree with her and really the only sin I could point out is making her point look more confrontational than it really is.
Always excited for more Lindsay Ellis though, she really is the best person working on YouTube right now.
I don't think her arguements were weak, I think they were comprehensive. As she said with her previous videos, she wants to have her videos explain the ideas instead of just saying that they are either "bad" or "good". When it comes down to making a conclusion, death of the author is just a tool for literary interpretation that a consumer should have available. And the thing about interpretation is that there is no single correct version.
What I was trying to say is that the arguments weren't weak, the video was. If she was trying to show a variety of perspectives on this tool, she failed because the argument she made that was supposedly against The Death of the Author is really an argument that people really fond of the perspective would make themselves. The video would've worked much better if she either recognized how narrow her focus was and didn't act like she was doing anything other than arguing that the author is dead or if she actually widened her focus and also presented the argument for more traditional forms of criticism and actually made it comprehensive. I don't really have a preference between these two, but the middle ground where she only argues for one side and acts like part of her argument for that side is actually an argument against it and therefore she has showed a range of opinions just misleads people.
I'm not sure I agree with that reading of her argument. It seemed to me that it wasn't about the 'limits' of Death of Author's applicability, but rather the way its core idea is just inherently flawed: that it relies on the removal of everything external to the text itself when, in reality, humans can not achieve this state of perfect impartial removal, nor can they help creating a kind of authorial voice within the text itself. I'm basing that on the fact that this seems to be one of the modern critiques of Death of the Author, something I'm assuming both she and John Green later became familiar with.
But can it actually? Because in order to shape it to accommodate the issues Lindsey puts forward, that humans do not consume text in isolation, we have to fundamentally undermine the thing Barthes was after. We have to let the Author "return", so at that point are we still using Death of the Author or have we moved past Death of the Author? In the same way Post-Structuralism wished to move past Structuralism because it viewed it's core premises as irreconcilably flawed.
Because this doesn't contradict the idea at all. The Death of the Author is about taking down the author as a given part of criticism, as literary critcism was so squarely focused on the author and their intentions as something where true meaning lies. Barthes' essay is actually quite focused on taking down the Author as a figure that overshadows their work and that forces an "ultimate meaning" of the text. It's about getting rid of the capital A "Author," and doesn't go very far beyond that at all. For an idea so revolutionary, the work is really reserved.
When considering the author to be dead, the two things at play are the text and the reader. The interplay between these two is where meaning "happens," and that naturally means that the characteristics of the text and the reader both come into play. Barthes says nothing that would suggest that readers don't bring in their own things: in fact one of the greatest results of killing the author is that there's much more room to explore the reader's ideology and thoughts in general than there is with an authoritative Author. Some critics may try to push it further and claim that humans must be impartial and disconnected from anything other than the text, but that's in no way a core part of the concept and arguing against that is not the same as arguing against the Death of the Author.
In other words, there is a massive difference between the Author as an arbiter of true meaning and the author as an influence on meaning that is decided entirely by how they influence the reader, which is naturally different for each reader. It's stated again and again that the primary purpose and freedom given by killing the Author is in empowering and shifting the focus to the reader as opposed to the Author. And the reader does mean the reader and everything they bring in and take away from the text, not a cold inhuman one-sided push from text to reader.
There's a reason in high school and undergrad lit courses, the Death of the Author tends to be a starting point for introducing ideology. It's a lot easier to jump into that when you've given students a framework that allows for everything that's floating around in your brain to be part of the critical process.