mind reader

Barthes claimed the death of the author in 1967. This claim asked us to reject, or at least challenge, the practice of interpreting texts through the lens of “authorial intent” or biography. A repositioning of the human in a text. Critically, the theory posits that once a work is created, it exists independently of its creator’s intended meaning, background, or historical context. Instead, meaning emerges through the interaction between the text and each individual reader, who brings their own experiences and cultural context to the interpretation. Theoretically, here, poststructuralism is coming to the fore. The poststructuralist critique of authorship, from Barthes to Foucault, fundamentally challenges traditional notions of creative authority and textual meaning. Rather than viewing authors as the source of definitive meaning, poststructuralism sees them as sites where language, culture, and various discourses inters...