Authorship in literary theory

Walter Benjamin
• “The uniqueness of a work of art is inseparable from its being imbedded in the fabric of tradition.
This tradition itself is thoroughly alive and extremely changeable. An ancient statue of Venus, for
example, stood in a different traditional context with the Greeks, who made it an object of
veneration, than with the clerics of the Middle Ages, who viewed it as an ominous idol. Both of
them, however, were equally confronted with its uniqueness, that is, its aura. Originally the
contextual integration of art in tradition found its expression in the cult. We know that the
earliest art works originated in the service of a ritual – first the magical, then the religious kind. It
is significant that the existence of the work of art with reference to its aura is never entirely
separated from its ritual function. In other words, the unique value of the “authentic” work of art
has its basis in ritual, the location of its original use value. This ritualistic basis, however remote, is
still recognizable as secularized ritual even in the most profane forms of the cult of beauty. The
secular cult of beauty, developed during the Renaissance and prevailing for three centuries,
clearly showed that ritualistic basis in its decline and the first deep crisis which befell it. With the
advent of the first truly revolutionary means of reproduction, photography, simultaneously with
the rise of socialism, art sensed the approaching crisis which has become evident a century later.
At the time, art reacted with the doctrine of l’art pour l’art, that is, with a theology of art. This
gave rise to what might be called a negative theology in the form of the idea of “pure” art, which
not only denied any social function of art but also any categorizing by subject matter.” (1056)
 Roland Barthes: The Death of the Author
• [T]he writer can only imitate a gesture that is always anterior, never
original. His only power is to mix writings [...] in such a way as never
to rest on any one of them" (146).

• To give a text an Author is to impose a limit on that text, to

furnish it with a final signified, to close the writing [...] [However]
by refusing to assign a 'secret,' an ultimate meaning, to the text
(and the world as text), liberates what may be called an anti-
theological activity, an activity that is truly revolutionary since to
refuse to fix meaning is, in the end, to refuse God and his
hypostases--reason, science, law. (147)
 T.S. Eliot
• “No poet, no artist of any art, has his complete meaning alone. His significance, his
appreciation is the appreciation of his relation to the dead poets and artists. You cannot
value him alone; you must set him, for contrast and comparison, among the dead. I
mean this as a principle of æsthetic, not merely historical, criticism. The necessity that he
shall conform, that he shall cohere, is not one-sided; what happens when a new work of
art is created is something that happens simultaneously to all the works of art which
preceded it. The existing monuments form an ideal order among themselves, which is
modified by the introduction of the new (the really new) work of art among them. The
existing order is complete before the new work arrives; for order to persist after the
supervention of novelty, the whole existing order must be, if ever so slightly, altered; and
so the relations, proportions, values of each work of art toward the whole are
readjusted; and this is conformity between the old and the new. Whoever has approved
this idea of order, of the form of European, of English literature, will not find it
preposterous that the past should be altered by the present as much as the present is
directed by the past. And the poet who is aware of this will be aware of great difficulties
and responsibilities. (956)
Mikhail Bakhtin: Dialogism and Poliphony
• In Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics, Bakhtin developed the concepts which were to
inform much of his work. The concept of ‘polyphony’ (borrowed from music) is central to
this analysis. Polyphony literally means multiple voices. Bakhtin reads Dostoevsky’s work
as containing many different voices, unmerged into a single perspective, and not
subordinated to the voice of the author. Each of these voices has its own perspective, its
own validity, and its own narrative weight within the novel.
• The author does not place his own narrative voice between the character and the reader,
but rather, allows characters to shock and subvert. It is thus as if the books were written
by multiple characters, not a single author’s standpoint. Instead of a single objective
world, held together by the author’s voice, there is a plurality of consciousnesses, each
with its own world. The reader does not see a single reality presented by the author, but
rather, how reality appears to each character.
• The text appears as an interaction of distinct perspectives or ideologies, borne by the
different characters. The characters are able to speak for themselves, even against the
author – it is as if the other speaks directly through the text. The role of the author is
fundamentally changed, because the author can no longer monopolise the ‘power to
mean’.
• Dostoevsky’s ‘dialogical principle’ is counterposed to the ‘monologism’
(single-thought discourse; also termed ‘homophony’ – single-voice)
characteristic of traditional writing and thought. In monologism, one
transcendental perspective or consciousness integrates the entire field,
and thus integrates all the signifying practices, ideologies, values and
desires that are deemed significant. Anything irrelevant to this perspective
is deemed superfluous or irrelevant in general.
• Dialogism in contrast recognises the multiplicity of perspectives and
voices. It is also referred to as ‘double-voiced’ or ‘multi-voiced’. It is a
‘principle’ which can become the main referent of a particular aesthetic
field. Each character has their own final word, but it relates to and interacts
with those of other characters. Discourse does not logically unfold (as in
analytical philosophy), but rather, interacts. This makes dialogical works a
lot more ‘objective’ and ‘realistic’ than their monological counterparts, since
they don’t subordinate reality to the ideology of the author.
What is the author? Michel Foucalt

• The notion of the author as a proper name produced “the author

function” that became characteristic of certain kinds of discourses,
such as fiction, and not others, such as letter writing. The system
that produced the author function is a system of ownership and, by
the end of the 18th century, the author was placed at the center of a
system of property.
• “It is not enough, however, to repeat the empty affirmation that
the author has disappeared. For the same reason, it is not
enough to keep repeating that God and man have died a
common death. Instead, we must locate the space left empty by
the author’s disappearance, follow the distribution of gaps and
breaches, and watch for the openings this disappearance
uncovers”.
• “The author allows a limitation of the cancerous and dangerous
proliferation of significations within a world where one is thrifty not
only with one’s sources and riches, but also with one’s discourses and
their significations. The author is the principle of thrift in the
proliferation of meaning. As a result we must entirely reverse the
traditional idea of the author. the author is not an indefinite source of
significations which fill a work; the author does not precede the
works; he is a certain functional principle by which, in our culture, one
limits, excludes, and chooses; in short, by which one impedes the free
circulation, the free manipulation, the free composition,
decomposition and recomposition of fiction”.
• “All discourses, whatever their status, form, value, and whatever the
treatment to which they will be subjected, would then develop in the
anonymity of a murmur. We would no longer hear the questions that
have been rehashed for so long: Who really spoke? Is it really he and not
someone else? With what authenticity or originality? And what part of
his deepest sell did he express in his discourse? Instead, there would be
other questions, like these: What are the modes of existence of this
discourse? Where has it been used, how can it circulate, and who can
appropriate it for himself? What are the places in it where there is room
for possible subjects? Who can assume these various subject functions?
And behind all these questions, we would hear hardly anything but the
stirring of an indifference: What difference does it make who is
speaking?”(1969)