"The Death of the Author" (French: La mort de l'auteur) is a 1967 essay by the French literary critic and theorist Roland Barthes (1915–1980). Barthes' essay argues against traditional literary criticism's practice of relying on the intentions and biography of an author to definitively explain the "ultimate meaning" of a text. Instead, the essay emphasizes the primacy of each individual reader's interpretation of the work over any "definitive" meaning intended by the author, a process in which subtle or unnoticed characteristics may be drawn out for new insight.
— Wikipedia, The Death of the Author
Or explained by ChatGPT:
"Tod des Autors" ("The Death of the Author"), a concept introduced by Roland Barthes, challenges traditional notions of authorship by arguing that the interpretation of a text should prioritize the reader's perspective over the author's intentions, fundamentally reshaping modern literary criticism and theories of meaning.
Thus, arguably, the belief for an author that their ego is irrelevant when publishing their work was established through this essay, thus laying the foundation for all modern philosophy, including poststructuralism (reference: Which modern philosophical movements are directly derived from "The Death of the Author"? in ChatGPT).
Personally, obviously I fully agree with this view, because there are so many texts where the “true” author is mostly unknown, unclear or not really relevant, but those texts are still highly influential (especially religious texts.)
The author has always been dead, the authors just weren’t aware.
What’s most important about a concept is its name. If we take Tod des Autors (“death of the author”), we must consider both the connotations of “Tod” (death) and “Autor” (author).
The fact that death still has a mostly negative connotation in our society, we can associate the concept of “Tod des Autors” with a negative feeling. This doesn’t mean that it is actually a “negative” concept that would be actually perceived as directly connected to grief, sadness, shock, anger, fear, loneliness or eventual hope and acceptance by everyone. But just because “Tod des Autors” contains the word “death”, it will be inevitably connected to these emotions internally.
Authors are the ultimate hackers, specifically programmers of worms: They create an idea (in writing, i.e. in code, in a language like English), and then, through publishing, initiate the spreading of their idea like a virus from mind to mind. In the easiest case, that’s a popular author of novels, who can sell a lot of their books and become rich due to modern copyright systems, e.g. how the “meme” (according to Dawkins) of, say, Harry Potter came to be.
In a dangerous and polarizing case, this can be a political leader who manipulates his people to hate, like Hitler with “Mein Kampf” or a political theorist like Marx or Engels who, with “The Communist Manifesto,” shaped generations of hate against capitalist exploitation (reference: According to The Communist Manifesto, what should you hate? in ChatGPT). Similarly, other origins of authors are possible, apart from the leaders themselves, i.e. those working in newspapers writing supportive articles.
In an academically scientific case, this can be a new theory which explains the world a little bit better, e.g. Einstein’s annus mirabilis papers. Sigmund Freud’s works or The Second Sex. It’s not relevant whether a theory is correct, because everything in respectable academia can be disproven. It’s only relevant whether it’s popular. Academic theses can therefore contradict,
The death of the author is therefore the death of the hacker.
A 1-star-review for "poststructuralism"
⭐☆☆☆☆
"Poststructuralism is the intellectual equivalent of trying to build a house on quicksand. Every time you think you've grasped a solid concept, it collapses into endless ambiguity and self-contradiction. Sure, questioning structures and narratives can be enlightening, but poststructuralism seems to thrive on making everything needlessly convoluted and inaccessible. It’s like it wants to deconstruct the meaning of meaning itself, leaving you wondering why you bothered in the first place. I get it—'everything is relative'—but does it have to be so exhausting and pretentious? Give me clarity over this any day."
In contrast to words, facial expressions are luckily rather consistent between humans.
An incredibly evil political strategy would be to reinterpret the smile as something bad. At the same time, it can drive authenticity if you interpret the smile as a symbol of genuine joy.
Either no one smiles, everyone smiles, or there is a balance.
Send this to our fellow person who also wants a change of the governing system, away from poststructuralists, towards henists.